FLORENCE—Kentucky Baptists teamed up with missionaries to share the gospel in Sub-Saharan Africa when they brought hospice buckets by the truck loads to Florence.

The 825 hospice buckets collected at the Kentucky Baptist Convention Annual Meeting at Florence Baptist Church will be set overseas through a partnership with Baptist Global Response.

“More people are dying of AIDS in Sub-Saharan Africa than in any other part of the world, and with the help of something as small as a hospice bucket, their eternal lives with Christ could be secured,” said Paul Chitwood, executive director of the Kentucky Baptist Convention.

Sub-Saharan Africa accounts for two-thirds of the world’s new HIV infections, according to the World Health Organization. The region reported 25.6 million people living with HIV in 2015.

Hospice buckets collected at the annual meeting will be added to the 778 buckets churches brought to the Kentucky Woman’s Missionary Union earlier this year.

Southern Baptist missionaries on the other side of the globe will receive the shipments and use the buckets to open doors to sharing the gospel.

“That’s what it’s all about, getting the Word and the love of God out to people,” said Kentucky Baptist Disaster Relief leader Bill Johnson, a member of Liberty Missionary Baptist Church in Cannonsburg. (KBC)