GIVING MY GREATEST RESOURCE
It sometimes feels to me like my whole life has been involved in “Taking the Gospel to the Whole World’. I grew up across the street from Greer First Baptist Church (SC), which means that every visiting missionary came home with us for Sunday dinner! I was active in Girls in Action (GA’s) and went on every youth mission trip available; yet, it was a huge surprise when God called me to international missions. My husband, Allen, and I left a pastorate in Manning, SC, for a lifetime career in Ecuador. Cholera brought us home at the end of 1991. We returned to the U.S with two boys and a baby girl in tow.
Allen became the pastor of Double Springs Baptist Church, and God not only added another little girl to our family, but He also gave us a seventeen year old girl who had been abandoned by her family. As I prayed about opening our home, God sent me to Isaiah 54:2 to confirm that we were the ones to ‘make room in our tent’ for her. He gave me a precious promise when He gave me that call. In Isaiah 54:13, He told me that ‘my sons would be taught by the Lord and that great would be the peace of my children’. I thanked Him profusely, and we opened our home. Jodi lived with us for eighteen months, and then our family was reappointed with the International Mission Board (IMB) and returned to Ecuador. The effects of cholera brought our term to an end after only seven months. We returned to Spartanburg, SC to pastor Southside Baptist Church, and in 2002, we moved to Tigerville, SC for Allen to serve as the Director for Global Missions at North Greenville University (NGU).
Out of all that God has asked us to give, there is one thing that brings me the most joy. He has asked us to give our greatest resource and investment so that the Gospel might be taken to the whole world; He has asked for our CHILDREN. Do you remember that He promised to teach them and give them great peace? He has kept His end of the bargain! My son, David, is a student at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary where he and his wife are preparing for a future in missions. My son, Jonathan, and his wife taught our family how to minister to the homeless, as they and many NGU students worked to feed breakfast to a large crowd of cold and hungry people that gathered in a parking lot early on Sunday morning. He carried a grill in the back of his red truck, and as they ate, he would share a message from God’s Word, standing in the back of that truck. My two daughters helped them cook and serve. Later, my daughter, Elizabeth, and I went to a movie. She asked for my keys and left to buy dinner for a homeless man on the corner. As she talked with him, she asked if he ever ate breakfast at this particular parking lot. The man asked, “Is that the guy that stands in the back of that red truck?” She had already fed him months earlier! Elizabeth is my child who was born to us while we were in Ecuador. She graduated from high school a semester early, and left in January 2010 to return to her “home country”, where she lived with IMB missionaries and taught English as a Second Language (ESL) in the public school for ten weeks. She had the opportunity to share Christ with many precious school age children.
My youngest child, Mimi, is fourteen. She was born during the time that Jodi lived with us. I always felt that she was my gift from God for caring for one of His children. She was born on Jodi’s birthday with a birthmark identical to Jodi’s. When it was removed, the stitches left a tiny scar that looks just like a little handprint. I always have told her that the Hand of God is on her life. I have no idea where God will take her to serve Him, but it is PURE JOY to this mother’s heart to give back to Him the most precious resources He has given to me – my CHILDREN.
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Ruth McWhite is a native of Greer, South Carolina. In 2006 the Lord opened the door for her to become Director of Women’s Ministries at North Greenville University—a place she joyfully continues to serve today! She has a great passion to see women come into a relationship with Christ and then grow in that relationship through knowledge of the Word. Ruth is the mother of four wonderful children and two precious grandchildren. Ruth and her husband Allen make their home in Travelers Rest, SC.
Ruth is one of the speakers for the Women’s Lifestyle Evangelism Conference in 2011. Click here for more information about the 2011 Women's Lifestyle Evangelism Conference.
