Choctaw SUN

Here's the article I wrote on your ministry here in Choctaw County. I am pasting it into the body of this email.

Great to hear from you again! Hope all is well with the awesome work you do!

Thanks, Dee Ann

'It's what angels do'

By Dee Ann Campbell

The Choctaw Sun

BUTLER, BIRMINGHAM, Alabama

This is what we think angels do,? says Lisa Mitchell of Birmingham.

Last Thursday, a truck filled with gifts arrived in Choctaw County, destined for the homes of 11 needy families. The gifts were part of an outreach to bring Christmas to those who needed it most. Through the efforts of Social Worker Tikisha Brooks-Graham of the Choctaw County School System, and a Birmingham-based ministry team called Angel Friday, needy families in the area were given a hand of encouragement and love for the holiday season.

For Graham, it is a way to extend her work to touch the lives of local families who need extra help. For Mitchell, it is simply a way to put feet to her faith.

And for the families who have been touched by the outreach, it is a welcomed extension of Christian love at Christmas.

Based through Brook Hills Church in north Shelby County just outside of Birmingham, the Angel Friday ministry got its start following a mission trip to Guatemala that spurred Mitchell into action. Some friends of mine and I met during a foreign ministry trip to Guatemala, Mitchell explains. We worked in the orphanages there, and when we got back to Birmingham, we did some work with a homeless shelter called Bethany Home through The Church at Brook Hills. Since Friday is only day that we don’t work full-time, we began to just practice a random act of ministry that one day. That’s where Angel Friday came from.

We’ve gone back to Guatemala and taken books to a school without books, helped Katrina victims, taken homeless ladies to get their hair done, continues Mitchell. We’ve paid power bills for families who were about to have their power cut off, and given people rides to the bus stop. Those are the kinds of things we feel like God wants us to do. Working through the Angel Friday ministry, Mitchell and members of her group have been reaching out to fill the needs of low-income families in a variety of ways in their own Birmingham area and beyond. This year, beyond included Choctaw County. Their first experience in the county occurred around Easter, 2006. We heard about the problems in the Black Belt, she recalls. So we called the Governor’s office and asked for contacts in Greene, Choctaw, and other counties to do some mission work there. Through the Governor’s office, Mitchell was put in contact with Pennington native Billie Jean Young, who serves on a committee with the Black Belt Action Commission.

I met with her (Young) at Judson College where she teaches, Mitchell says. She gave me the name of a family in Choctaw County. The father had gone to fight in the war, and their young son was trying to pick up work here and there, but they were eating what they could kill in the woods around their home. Mitchell came to Choctaw County just before the Easter holiday and put together Easter baskets and a special holiday meal for the family, which included 8 kids, age 4 to 20. The Angel Friday ministry also provided tons of food items to help the family through the following months. The provisions allowed the family to use their limited income to purchase a part for their car that had been disabled for some time. After that, says Mitchell, we knew that was where God wanted us to be.

With Choctaw County on their hearts, Mitchell and her group began to look for other ways to help the needy in the area. They got their opportunity when Hurricane Katrina hit. We had collected schools supplies for Katrina victims, Mitchell explains, and we had a lot of supplies that the schools here couldn’t use. That’s when I connected with the Choctaw Board of Education. I called Kesha (Graham) and told her we had some things to bring there for people who needed them. She contacted me over the summer, recalls Graham. Since then, we’ve been in contact on a regular basis. Graham says that the Angel Friday outreach has now become a vital part of her work with the school system. It is, she says, a way to ensure that the children within the school system are cared for in every facet of their lives. Since their first trip to the county, the Angel Friday ministry has been working alongside Graham to pursue every avenue open to them in order to help Choctaw County families. We’ve provided school uniforms, backpacks with school supplies, and we came back right before school started and brought more supplies, says Mitchell. It’s an ongoing thing with some of these families. In November, with the holidays approaching, the opportunity to help presented itself once again. The ministry grew during Thanksgiving, Mitchell says. We picked up 4 more families in the Southern Choctaw area then and provided them with Thanksgiving dinner. This time, the Angel Friday ministry was joined by another ministry team from Brook Hills.

The MOMS group is made up of mothers at Brook Hills, Mitchell explains. When we told them what we were doing in Choctaw, they wanted to help. They made the boxes that we delivered on Thanksgiving.

Altogether, Mitchell -- along with the Angel Friday team, the MOMS group, and Graham -- helped 10 families during Thanksgiving, giving them non-perishable food items that would last, as well as items they could use for a traditional Thanksgiving meal.

"We came Monday before thanksgiving, and went to each house and delivered it to them," Mitchell says. "Kesha had contacted them before we arrived so they knew we were coming."

"It was an eye-opener," she adds. "One house had no windows, and they had turned the eyes of stove on to heat the room because they had no other source of heat." Mitchell admits that, for some families, their gifts were a little difficult to accept.

"One lady drove to the school while we were there in August delivering school supplies," she says, "and saw us loving on her two children, telling them that Jesus loved them. She came in and said she thought we were there for a tax write-off. I told her I was there to love her and her children, and when we came back, she welcomed us with open arms."

With Christmas approaching, Mitchell and Graham began to plan another outreach for the families. Through an angel tree project at Brook Hills, gifts were purchased for the families, with delivery set for just before the holidays. On Thursday, as Mitchell, Graham, and the group from Birmingham gathered in Butler to deliver the last of the Christmas gifts, they paused to pray with one needy family who had met them at Board of Education office. The moment was a tender display of emotion, and an opportunity for the group to say "thank you" to the God whom they credit for the outreach.

This is something we do in order to walk with Jesus everyday, Mitchell says. We have been so much more blessed than these families have been, just by being able to help them. "We want God to get all the glory," she adds. "We are just His hands and feet."