Monthly Archives: June 2016

Trinity lights up sky for 4th

Posted on by Lynda Stringer
June 30, 2016 | By LYNDA STRINGER

The Trinity Baptist Church campus in Mount Pleasant will be packed this Sunday night as thousands gather to watch the spectacular fireworks show the church has been hosting for two decades.

The event kicks off at 7 p.m. with free activities for kids, concessions available, live music and even George Washington will make an appearance.

“Our pastor, Mike Kessler started it with the community. This is our 20th anniversary,” said Trinity Worship Pastor Daniel Evans. “It’s an opportunity for Trinity to give back to the community and to show them the love of Christ and put on a free fireworks show and patriotic celebration.”

Evans said each year, the fireworks draw several thousand people in the area including those watching at Independence Day barbeques at homes in the surrounding neighborhoods and an estimated 3,000 that bring their lawn chairs and blankets to the Trinity grounds to watch the pyrotechnics bursting in air.

“We want everyone to just come out to our campus and have a good time,” he said.

Before the fuses are lit on the fireworks, there’s plenty for families to do. All the activities start at 7 p.m. with inflatable water slides and bounce houses, face painting, temporary tattoos and other games for kids.

Concessions will be available for purchase, but coolers are allowed.

“While all the activities are going on we’ll have the same band we had last year, The Argyles. They are an awesome cover band who will entertain the adults while the kids play,” Evans said.

At 8:30 p.m., the stage shifts to a patriotic program, including songs, a salute to the military and a special guest speaker.

“We will celebrate our country’s birthday and recognize each branch of the military, those who served and those who gave the ultimate sacrifice for our country,” Evans said.

Justice Josh Morriss, chief justice of the Sixth Court of Appeals in Texarkana, will perform a monologue.

“He dresses up as George Washington and he’ll read one of Washington’s letters. It’s a pretty neat deal,” Evans said.

The Trinity Worship Ministry will sing a patriotic song set that paints a picture of God and country, Evans said.

“We will sing patriotic songs that mention our reliance on God as a country, so God is definitely intertwined within the night,” he said.

The fireworks begin at 9:30 p.m. and the show is expected to last 15 to 20 minutes.

Evans said with the current political and social climate, it is more important than ever to celebrate America’s founding with unity during the Independence Day holiday.

“Our country is pretty divided and this is a chance to unite together from different backgrounds, denominations, races and parts of the world to just celebrate the freedom we have to be different and honor those who fought for and stood up for that freedom,” Evans said.

Lynda Stringer is a Mount Pleasant-based freelance writer and the owner of Stringer Media. Contact her at Lynda.Stringer@outlook.com.

 

Softball tourney raises “Skylarships”

Posted on by Lynda Stringer

June 20, 2016 | By LYNDA STRINGER

 

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Contributed Photo/BECKY CARPENTER

 

 

Skylar Carpenter wasn’t that big on acing tests, so a co-ed softball tournament held in her memory raises money for scholarships that aren’t tied to grades, but to heart.

The 5th Annual Skylarship Foundation Benefit Softball Tournament is named for the Quitman High School student who was killed in a car accident in 2011 at age 15. The tournament will make its Mount Pleasant debut this Saturday at Heritage Park. It has been held in Quitman the past four years, but the family decided to move it to Mount Pleasant because they will be relocating to the area soon.

Skylar’s mom, Becky Carpenter, who founded One Day Closer Ministries following her daughter’s tragic death, said the co-ed slow pitch tournament has raised more than $28,000 in scholarships since it began.

“Of that amount, $25,000 has been East Texas scholarships and this year, we’ve given three international scholarships, two in Haiti and one in Honduras” Carpenter said. “In those countries, $1,200 funds a full year of university education.”

She said next year, the foundation plans to expand its scholarships to Guatemala and El Salvador.

That all depends on how much money is raised at the tournament, which has in the past drawn 15-18 co-ed slow pitch teams from highly competitive teams to church league teams.

The tournament will be held Saturday at Heritage Park in Mount Pleasant. The cost to enter is $200 per team. To register a team for the softball tournament, go to skylarshipfoundation.org or call Tournament Director Tammy Daniel, Skylar’s aunt, at 903-517-2725.

Carpenter said while her daughter wasn’t interested in getting a 4.0 grade point average like her sister Shelbi, who is now a teacher at Chapel Hill Elementary School, she did have aspirations of going to college.

“I was an educator and the one thing I got frustrated about as a high school teacher and principal was that just about every scholarship was tied to grades or athletics. Our scholarships are awarded based on the heart. I make them do an essay and tell me how they are going to make a positive impact on the world,” Carpenter said.

Because Skylar was so good with the elderly, Carpenter said she always thought her daughter would go into the medical field. After Skylar died, her daughter’s friends told her Skylar always said, “God has a plan for you and he’s gonna use you. I hope God can use me, too. I wanna change the world.”

“That was her thing and so many things like that came up that led us to starting this ministry,” Carpenter said. “The Skylarship Foundation was the first arm that we started immediately.”

Skylar played softball growing up and her cousins are big in the sport, so a benefit tournament was a natural first step for the ministry that now includes a communications arm led by Carpenter, who left her 25-year education career to launch the ministry. She is a Christian motivational speaker who takes her message to speaking events all over the country. There is a field missions arm that meets physical needs locally and around the world. There are also plans to build a Christian-focused retreat and conference center in the future.

Carpenter said she named the ministry after a prayer that got her through the dark days that followed Skylar’s death.

“After the wreck, it was really hard to function physically, so I leaned in on the Lord,” she said. “Every morning before my feet hit the floor I would say, ‘Lord, thank you for bringing me one day closer to that reunion with Skylar.’ The best advice I got was from a lady who also lost a child. She said, ‘Grieve. Grieve hard, but grieve forward.”

Since starting One Day Closer Ministries in 2014, Carpenter said she and her husband, David and daughter, Shelbi, have all learned surprising lessons from Skylar, whose Christian faith was unwavering and whose mission was to befriend and defend the outsiders.

One of the students who attended a candlelight vigil for her said, ‘Why Skylar? She’s the only one that was ever nice to me,’ Carpenter said.

Stories shared in a memory book her classmates made for their devastated principal included one of when Skylar was in elementary school.

“It told how she had punched a kid in the face, but that kid was a bully who had been making fun of a special needs kid,” Carpenter said.

Another student shared that his favorite memory of Skylar was when she hid in his locker and jumped out and threatened to continue every day until he agreed to come with her to the Fellowship of Christian Athletes meetings at school.

“He said he went and it was because of FCA that he came to know the Lord,” Carpenter said. “Those are the things that are embedded in me. It’s all about relationships. It has nothing to do with being behind stained glass windows inside a church building. She changed all of us.”

Lynda Stringer is a Mount Pleasant-based freelance writer and the owner of Stringer Media. Contact her at Lynda.Stringer@outlook.com.

 

First Cares4kids class graduates

Posted on by Lynda Stringer

June 7, 2016 | By LYNDA STRINGER

 

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Contributed Photo|TITUS COUNTY CARES

Cares4kids is Judy Lee’s baby.

 

She launched the local child sponsorship program in the fall of 2011 through her organization Titus County Cares.

The program matched 140 adult sponsors from the local community with 168 elementary school kids from Mount Pleasant, Harts Bluff and Winfield school  districts. The  $20 per month sponsorships provide school clothes, school  supplies with a backpack and letters from their sponsors throughout the year, as well as gifts for their birthdays, Christmas, Easter and Valentine’s Day.

The kids in the program, who remain matched with the same sponsor each year  they are eligible, are also automatically enrolled in Titus County Cares’ Empty Stocking program, which provides Christmas gifts and the Food4kids program, which sends them home at the end of the school week with a sack full of food.

This past school year, the program was open for students in first through fifth  grades, so that initial class of first-graders graduated  from the program, which was a bittersweet moment for Lee and her staff.

“I have attended most of the birthday parties and seen them grow. These  children are special to me, but it isn’t about me. I just happened to start the  program that God gave me a vision for,” Lee said.

Lee said the program plays an important part in Titus County Cares’ outreach efforts, and while most of the children won’t meet their sponsors, the impact they have made in their lives is immeasurable.

“They have made a difference in these kids’ lives. They love their sponsors. Somebody in our community cares for them, loves them, prays for them and provides for them,” Lee said. “That is a relationship that will stick with them for the rest of their lives.”

The lessons the students take away from the program as they age out are also life-changing.

“The quotes that we got from the kids says it all. When we started this program, it didn’t cross my mind that the kids would learn the lesson of how important it is to give back. But, several of them said when they grow up they want to give back and care for other people,” Lee said.

“I started seeing this several years ago and I realized that this is making a bigger difference than I had anticipated.”

Cares4kids Program Director Kim Hedges, who took over administration of the program two years ago, said it makes an impact on the sponsors as well.

“Many of the sponsors have been with the same child from the beginning and they really get attached.

It’s a neat opportunity for the sponsors to pray for the kids and write encouraging letters,” she said.

To sponsor a child for the 2016-2017 school year, contact Kim Hedges at Titus County Cares at 903-575-9157.

Lynda Stringer is a Mount Pleasant-based freelance writer and the owner of Stringer Media. Contact her at Lynda.Stringer@outlook.com.