If it hadn't have been for Ms. Julia, I'm not for sure you know what direction it
would have been. She has poured out continues to pour out into to my life
and to many other lives.
I was raised in Gadsden, Alabama at my Sononia Baptist Church and that's where
I attended GAs and Actines and also Mission Friends. When I began seventh grade
one of my Actine's leaders, Ms. Julia Ford and some other leaders Gellblath and
Wanda Simmons, they all continued to invest in us and began teaching us how
to be involved with missions.
I always enjoyed hearing missionaries speak and always felt God wanted to use me
working with missionaries on the mission field.
Maggie was always very, always smiling, always still smiles, but she was very
involved in mission friends and GAs and she had a great GA director. They taught
her a lot and then she came to Actine's and she was always had a heart for
missions and was always wanting to be involved in anything that we could do.
Maggie was willing and ready to go and so I was seeking another way to to serve
and to see how God was calling me into missions so I was open to an
opportunity to serve at World Song Mission Place my junior year of high
school. And she loved working with the campers and I've watched her grow. I
think three summers she came here and worked and she grew as a Christian. She
grew in her love for missions and she continued that. We actually, after she was
married and had children, she would come back and go on our mission trips with us
with our association with her children. God bless us with two boys. We have
Matthew. He will be ninth grade this year and Luke is going into third grade and
they are actually our first mission field. We're investing in them, teaching
them how to be hands-on and feet-on missions when they grow up to continue
on investing in others. We've taken many of mission trips in the United States
with youth groups from our church, Sulphur Springs. We've taken many
teenagers with us to teach them how to serve hands-on missions. My family has
always traveled as a family to serve but we knew that at God's timing we would
probably go abroad together and so we were blessed to be able to take our
whole entire family this past summer and also a high school senior with us as a
cop of Guatemala. There's a church in the village that we serve at. We have a
feeding program that kids are being fed when they haven't been before and
right now it's all about discipleship. Discipline those youth, discipline the
women and even discipline the teachers. They're investing in them of how they
can continue teaching in their village while we're not there. I love investing
my life in teenage girls but Maggie and I have a special connection because we've
always continued to stay in contact with each other. My oldest acting is 43 now
and they are all to see what they accomplish in their life and what they
have done and to be a part of teaching them to see them still involved in
missions and still loving WME is a special. Because Miss Julia invested in
my life and continues to invest in my life I see the direction of how important
it is to continue that legacy of investing.
