Hephzibah Baptist Association

August 2026

Missionary Moment

by Tim Batchelor

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I Chronicles 12:32 mentions the sons of Issachar as men who “understood the times, with knowledge of what Israel should do.” This bit of extra commentary in an otherwise ordinary list of armies that served with David reminds me of the great need of our day. Sometimes we say, “times are changing” and indeed they are, and they always have.

Gardening has changed since I was a kid. When I was growing up we didn’t have to deal with Japanese Beetles, tomato leaf blight, army worms or squash bugs and vine borers. Our garden produced all summer. Now my tomatoes are dead by mid-summer, and my squash produce for a couple of weeks and then die from vine borers. Last year, in trying to find a solution to the squash bugs and borers I thought back to a variety of squash we grew when I was a child. When I was eight or nine years old, my father came home from his work with some squash seed that a man from India gave him. We planted those seeds and they produced a vine that grew squash all summer and up until it frosted. This squash far outproduced the yellow squash that we normally grew. The plants produced so much squash that we kids became tired of squash casserole and were glad to see the plants die at first frost. We called them Indian squash. I saw the same sort of squash growing in India where nearly every house had one growing up its wall and onto the roof. Last year I began to wonder if perhaps that variety of squash might do well in the hot summer weather here in east central Georgia since it seemed to grow prolifically in very hot regions in India. Perhaps it would be more pest resistant as well.

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