Check out Stephanie's Louisiana Together for Hope Website:
www.togetherforhope-la.org
including "Made it to Providence" a blog about her work in Lake Providence:  

Updates from Missionary Stephanie Vance

Called by God, Yes, ma’am, we are!

August 2011

Whew! This Spring and Summer has been a whirlwind of activity, prayer, preparation, and good old
volunteerism at its best in Lake Providence. Groups from Alabama and all over Louisiana have been partnering with
our local folks to meet the needs of this great community.

One of the folks we partnered with is Ms Annie Bailey. Ms Annie has spent most of her adult life taking
care of people, including fostering over 50 children over the years and working in the high school cafeteria for 35
of those years. A few years ago, she lost a leg due to a chronic condition and has lost a lot of her independence.
In June, the young people of Pulaski Heights Baptist Church of Little Rock painted her house as part of their
week of ministry.

They weren't able to replace some siding on her house that had softened over the years. Enter
Motorcycles on Mission from First Baptist Church of Madison, AL. Three men, along with my parents, replaced
the siding and painted that corner of the house. They also spent a little time strengthening a handrail and securing
her wheelchair ramp. Her response was that all of those who worked on her house were "angels from God." I
assured her that these were regular folks and she came back with a statement that often is said about the work we
do in our communities. She said that we were called by God. Yes, ma'am, we are!

We are called to work in the heat playing kickball with kids from the neighborhood as Pulaski Heights’ young
people did. We are called to drive three hours to lead high school football players in our third annual football clinic
like the coaches and players from Arkansas Baptist College and to cook and serve hamburgers like Glenn
Dixon from Lake Providence and the Kelley family from Shreveport.

We are called to take time out of our hectic days to give local businesses the opportunity to donate time,
money and supplies for our 9th annual Bags of Hope book bag drive, just as the members of the local East Carroll
Book Bag Committee did this Spring. They raised over $3,000 for the students of East Carroll Parish.

We are called to spend a week of summer vacation to help a lone minister to buy, count, and sort
school supplies, including 12,000 pencils, 3,000 pens, 1,800 spiral notebooks (you get the picture), just like the
youth and adults from Haynes Avenue Baptist Church from Shreveport. There were over 30 volunteers from
Broadmoor Baptist in Baton Rouge, Haynes Ave and Church for the Highlands in Shreveport, Temple Baptist in
Ruston and thanks Reid Doster for also making the trek from South Louisiana!

We are called to be the ministers of God in all of these ways and many more. Thank you all for answering
the call through your prayers, gifts, your presence and your hard work!

Reflections on the New Year

January 2011

As we begin our new year, I am doubly blessed. On January 11, I celebrated my one year anniversary with CBF Louisiana as your Together for Hope missionary. This has been a great year, both for me and for the community of Lake Providence. We have experienced the annual Martin Luther King, Jr. service, the annual Pancake Dinner on Mardi Gras, the Together for Hope 2nd Annual Football Clinic and the Lake Providence Soul Food and Heritage Festival.

My first group to work here in the community was the youth group from FBC, Madison, AL. They had a great time getting to know Mr. Sye Williams and painting his home. Many would like to return this year. I am grateful for this group’s willingness to be a test group for this ministry.

The 8th Annual Bags of Hope Book Bag Drive was a great success. Working alongside local educators and community leaders, we were able to provide over 1,200 book bags and supplies to East Carroll parish students. In Tensas parish, over 450 students received book bags and supplies. I am thankful for the groups from FBC and Haynes Ave. Baptist in Shreveport, Emmanuel Baptist and New Life Community Church in Alexandria/Pineville, and Broadmoor Baptist and University Baptist in Baton Rouge , as well as Kenny and Shirley Crump from Ruston. Your work here was much appreciated by our local committee and those attending the event.

New Life Community Church sent a group of guys to replace Mr. Sye Williams’ roof and it was finished just in time. A powerful wind and rain storm passed through within an hour of the group’s departure and the roof worked just fine! Thanks, guys!

Since then, in our community, we have elected new town officials and prepared packages for the senior citizens in the area with the Make-a-Difference-Day Committee. Thanks for sending blankets, CBF Louisiana!

I am writing this sitting on a comfy couch in the missionary house here on Scarborough Street (between the Capital One Bank and St. Patrick’s Catholic Church), which is possible because of your generous support. We now have blankets for beds, mattresses, curtains, pillows, lamps, pots and pans and all of the items we need to have a great place to stay for all of the groups that will come to Lake Providence in the future(hint, hint).

Yes, this is where you come in. If your church or just a group of friends wants to plug into a community in need, if you want to partner with a local group or organization to create renewal and change, if you want to give of your time and energy in Lake Providence, this is your time!

Contact me anytime and we can talk about some opportunities here and ways to make things happen. Come and see what God can do through you in Lake Providence!

Always blessed by your prayers!
Stephanie

Greetings from Lake Providence!

It’s been seven months since I began my journey here in Lake Providence and with CBF-LA. Wow, it’s been a great, busy, growing time for me! In the past few months, we have held the 2nd Annual Spring Football Clinic with Arkansas Baptist College, hosted a youth group from Alabama, and distributed book bags to students in East Carroll Parish.

The football clinic was mentioned in the spring newsletter. From that day’s gifts and the gifts that you have given, we have been able to send our first student to Arkansas Baptist College.

In July, the youth group from my last church (FBC Madison, AL) came to work in the community. The group, which usually attends Passport youth camp, decided that they would come to Lake Providence as their main project this summer. They were a diligent group, hardly complaining though the temperatures for that week were consistently in the 100˚ range. We worked for four days scraping, priming, caulking and painting the exterior of Mr. Sye Williams’ house.

One youth made a point to engage Mr. Sye in conversations about all topics and called Mr. Sye from Alabama the next week to wish him a happy birthday.  It was a great experience for me to see this group of young people from the church of my youth experiencing Lake Providence and its unique hospitality.

After the youth left for Alabama, I began once again to think about the meaning of providence. If you look up providence, you ’ll find many definitions. If you look online, you’ll mostly find references to Providence, RI (which was named Providence in recognition of God’s hand at work in the life of Providence’s founder Roger Williams). One of my favorite definitions of providence is in this list from Princeton University’s WordNet:

Noun

• S: (n) Providence, capital of Rhode Island (the capital and largest city of Rhode Island; located in northeastern Rhode Island on Narragansett Bay; site of Brown University)
• S: (n) providence (the guardianship and control exercised by a deity) "divine providence"
• S: (n) providence (a manifestation of God's foresightful care for his creatures)
• S: (n) providence (the prudence and care exercised by someone in the management of resources)

While I think the definition that the world usually gives for providence is the second about the guardianship and control exercised by a deity. My favorite, however, is the third. When the early settlers of this area were deciding on their name, they understood their place in the world. A place along the river with rich soil and transport possibilities must have seemed to them as being placed there by the foresight of a caring God for God’s creation.

While these days Lake Providence is the parish seat in one of the fastest shrinking parishes in Louisiana, it still has an air of God’s Providence. There are people working here who have been working for years to eradicate poverty in the Delta. There are volunteers who just want to make sure that the elderly don’t spend their golden years alone. There are churches that give school supplies to the children in their congregation and provide oil changes for widows.

When I arrived, it was with a sense of excitement and trepidation about my new adventure. Seven months later, I still have that excitement and sometimes the trepidation but mostly a sense that God stepped into my life with foresight to care for me. Lake Providence, with all of its quirks, has become my home.

There is work to be done here. That’s where you come in! There are lists of homes that need TLC and I’m trying to start now to plan next summer’s opportunities for service here in the community. My hope is that for every volunteer we have from outside Lake Providence, we will have one from Lake Providence.

What better way of showing that we are working alongside the Creator in caring for all of Creation! Please contact me if you are interested in possibilities in the summer of 2011.

Together for Hope Missionary: Stephanie Vance
318-418-4075
sthepny@gmail.com