Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SATURDAY, July 17, 1993                   TAG: 9309040329
SECTION: RELIGION                    PAGE: A4   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: CODY LOWE STAFF WRITER
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

RETURNING TO THAILAND ON A MISSION FOR GOD

``I'm never coming back here,'' he recalls saying at the time.

Surprise!

Seven years later the Roanoke native has learned his ``never-say-never'' lesson.

He's going back. And this time it's no temporary assignment. He'll be a full-time missionary in Southeast Asia for the Southern Baptist Foreign Mission Board.

It's a long-term commitment. While he and his family will get vacation time each year, they probably won't get back to the States for four years - when they get paid transportation home for a one-year furlough.

Porter, the 31-year-old son of Mr. and Mrs. Vaughn Porter, was reared in First Baptist Church at Third and Luck streets.

He studied business at the University of Virginia, but later followed a calling to the ministry by attending Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, Texas.

It was there he met Texas native D'Ann Hall, 29, whom he later married. They have a 2-year-old daughter and year-old son.

For the past three years, Porter has been the pastor of Marshfield (Wisconsin) Baptist Church, which he started as a mission project of the denomination's Home Mission Board.

The couple's new assignment technically is to serve as representatives of Cooperative Services International, a denominational aid agency.

Phillip Porter explained that its job was to ``do the necessary work to open up areas that are not open to traditional missionary work.''

While the Porters will be based in Thailand, their assignment is to help create mission opportunities in another Southeast Asian country that has not been receptive to Christian missionaries.

The Porters are aware of the controversy that has surrounded the mission agencies of the Southern Baptist Convention in recent years. ``It's politics, and we don't care to get involved in politics,'' D'Ann Porter said.

``Our going overseas is in obedience to God, not because the Convention said `go,''' Phillip Porter said. ``The vehicle is the Foreign Mission Board, but our call is from God.''

The couple is ``still very comfortable with who we are as Southern Baptists and the work we are doing overseas. ... As long as we're able to go and carry out what God wants us to do,'' they'll continue the association, Phillip Porter said.