July 17, 2000
Hale Center churches cooperate
in fast-growing community ministry
___By George Henson
___Staff Writer
___HALE CENTER--Tillie Burgin came to Hale Center with a simple message that has exploded in ministry.
___"Begin by finding one person with a need and trying to meet that need," the well-known director of Mission Arlington told a group of Christians in the Panhandle town, located near Plainview.
___The result was creation of Mission Hale Center, a community-wide effort to minister tothose in need. In its first year of operation, the number of clients served has exceeded the community's population of 2,000, with the families of many migrant workers among those helped.
VOLUNTEERS Vonne Jones and Nilda Morales restock the shelves at Mission Hale Center's food pantry.
___Gene Meacham, pastor of First Baptist Church in Hale Center, initiated the project, but co-directors Lloyd Louthan and Naomi Brown and their volunteers have given the project legs and arms and feet.
___Changes in agriculture don't require farm owners to employ as many migrant workers as they once did, Meacham said, but those workers remain in the community and still need to earn a living. Mission Hale Center is helping some of the people caught in the squeeze.
___"I had a man come by the church this morning," Meacham explained. "He was a migrant worker and didn't find the work he anticipated, and his family was hungry. I sent him to the center, and I know they will help him."
___All eight churches in the community participate in the project. "This is not Mission First Baptist Church, but Mission Hale Center," Brown said. "The whole community is involved."
___"I have been blown away by what's happened in a town this size, the way the people have volunteered with their clothing and food, and also with their time," Louthan added. "I'm just flabbergasted."
___"It's amazing to see what God has done in just a year's time," Meacham agreed.
___Louthan also has been amazed at how God has called just the right people to help the foundling mission overcome all its obstacles.
___"We were given this building, and after we cleaned it up enough to see what we had, we noticed there was a crack about an inch wide that ran from one side to the other. We thought, 'Oh, no. We've got structural problems. What are we going to do?' But every time a problem comes up, someone with the expertise to fix it shows up. I find myself in a state of continuous praise and thanksgiving before the Lord," Louthan explained.
JUANA ROSE and her granddaughter shop for shoes at the Mission Hale Center clothing store.
___The mission has been an outlet for ministry that was needed in the community, not only for those being served, but also those providing the service, he said. "A lot of Christians want to serve the Lord but don't know where or how. This has given them a real opportunity."
___Brown noted an additional benefit.
___Seeing how others live has made the Christian volunteers more compassionate, she said. For example, if volunteers learn a family needs a size 11 shoe for a child and the center doesn't have that size, the volunteers are likely to get on the phone to their friends to find out if they have an item at home that could be donated.
___In addition to its food and clothing ministry, the mission is now preparing to begin a Christian Women's Job Corps program to help single mothers in the area.
___Brown believes God was very plain about showing her the need for the program.
___One Tuesday, a young unmarried mother came to the center with her 1-month-old child. They had been kicked out of her sister's home because the child cried during the night, and now they were living in her car.
___"I told her we didn't have any money to give her or a place for her to go but we could give her food and clothing and maybe that would free up enough money for her to get a room," Brown explained.
___The next day, three other sisters of the girl came to the shelter--all unmarried, all with children, several of them with more than one child and none with the same father.
___The same day another single mother came in with her baby needing assistance.
___"The difference was this girl was one I had watched grow up in our church, and I thought, 'Man, we've really dropped the ball."
___Those young women were the only ones to come to the center those two days, an unusual experience for the normally bustling facility.
___"It was if God used those two days to show me, 'Yes, you need to help the migrant workers, but the people in this town have different needs," Brown explained.
___Louthan, Meacham and Brown traveled to the Baptist General Convention of Texas in El Paso last fall to receive the Salt and Light award for the Mission Hale Center ministry, and at that meeting God showed them the way to meet the need of the young women in their community.
___Woman's Missionary Union representatives showed a video that night about Christian Women's Job Corps. The impact was immediate, Brown said.
___"We thought we were only there for the award presentation, but God brought us there to show us that video," she said. "God shined a little light and said, 'Naomi, you don't have to figure out how to do this. It's already been prepared.'"
___Once renovation of a building given to the ministry is completed so that a classroom is available, the women not only will be trained in parenting skills but in job skills such as using computers.
___"These ladies have immediate needs like food and clothing, but they also need to learn to care for their families," Louthan explained. "They need to learn job skills, parenting skills--just how they can start to have a better life for them and their children."
___What will come after that, Louthan doesn't know. He said they'll wait and see what need God shows them next.
___"If the Lord had revealed to us last year at this time all he wanted to do, we would have said, 'We can't do that.' And we would have been right; we wouldn't have been able to with that attitude," Brown noted.
___But she is constantly amazed at how something that started out as a way to provide people with food and clothing can touch lives and meet deeper needs.
___"As we share the material things, we are also able to share God and love."
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