Appalachian

I am thankful that God called my family several years ago to develop a ministry to the needy children in the hills of Eastern Kentucky. When we began this ministry we were working for a national board and living at Pine Crest Youth Camp at Beattyville, KY. I was the director of the camp and was a commissioned missionary. The ministry at the camp was to provide food and lodging for churches or church groups for meetings. We were mowing grass, preparing meals, doing laundry, etc. I was pastoring a small congregation and speaking at missions conventions and in several camp meetings and churches. While God was using us in this ministry I was able to take my youngest daughter Lisa to Lima Peru on a mission trip. During the trip Lisa saw first hand the difference a sponsorship program was making in the lives of the needy children in the area where we were working. Lisa had a desire to return to Lima and work in the ministry there. As we talked about the needs in Lima I mentioned the needs in the area where we were located and asked if we could start a ministry to the children near the camp. Lisa began immediately to look into that possibility.

This was a different direction in ministry and it wasn't our intention to change the ministry of the youth camp. The first children to be sponsored through our new ministry were from Morehead, KY. Both my daughters, Michelle and Lisa, were students at Morehead State University and were working in a youth program in a church there. As the ministry began to develop, our leadership took notice and desired to be a part of it. They were able to shine a light on what we were doing and helped to promote this area of ministry. We enjoyed several years serving both ministries. Rather than the sponsorship program hurting the ministry of the youth camp, I feel just the opposite was true.

After years of working both ministries together there was a change in our national church structure and a different set of leaders. It was about three years when we learned of the plans to close the camp and sell the property. As I mentioned at the beginning, God called us to develop the ministry to needy children. It was hard to see how we would be able to continue without salaries, housing, benefits, etc. but at the same time it was God who called us. If we were going to make it work, it would be God who would have to partner with us. I say partner because we were willing to do all we could to continue helping the children we had grown to love. All salaries, insurance, housing, and benefits stopped the last day of 2002.

One of the things that happened about the same time was that Lisa wanted to start a web page. I didn't know much about those things then, but I do know that, as people started to contact us and inquire as to what they could do for our ministry we began to see a blessing we didn't know existed. Our church preaches, teaches, and sings about "Reaching our hands in fellowship to every blood washed one." We began to experience this as more than a teaching of words of a song. People who had lived in poverty in the Appalachian region of our country would see our web page and want to help. The stories are many, too numerous to tell, of the people who could relate to the lives the children lived in our part of the world.

Since poverty is still a reality where we live and since God has not changed His calling on our lives, we must continue. This is not meant to criticize anyone or the decisions made in the past, just to let you know that God called us and not man. Since God called us, it is not a choice we make as to where to go from here. God has been faithful for many years and we are confident God will continue to bless as we do His work.

I, like many of the children we work with, was born in poverty. My father and mother were poor, uneducated people. I'm seventy four years old and as I look back I remember life without electricity, without indoor plumbing and life without an automobile to drive down the dirt road that ran past our rental home. There is no end to the stories I can tell about growing up in these beautiful mountains. I was born in poverty but I live and will die as a child of the King. Thank God for His wonderful call on our life. Thank God for my wife and two daughters who are committed to serve without salaries, benefits, etc. Our reward is in the people we are able to minister to and the people we meet who want to share in our work.

Bro. Garland Lacy