The Ornament of Hope for 2022, Kiokee Baptist Church, is being offered to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the first Baptist Church community organized in Georgia (1772) and, specifically their church which is Georgia’s oldest continuing Baptist church. The structure on Tubman Road in Appling was built of brick, unusual for 1808.The events leading to the founding of the church are closely tie to religious developments within colonial America. The Kiokee founder, Daniel Marshall, was influenced by the Great Awakening of religious sentiments that spread from New England in the 1730’s to the rest of the colonial areas by the 1770’s. The organization of the church occurred at a time when America was moving toward war with England. Daniel Marshall preached in a small frame building that housed worshippers in the village of Appling until his death in 1784. His son, Abraham Marshall, took over the pastorate and oversaw a notable growth of the congregation and the erection of a new frame building by 1788 in the location where the existing brick structure of 1808 now stands.