August 23, 2016 | By LYNDA STRINGER

Contributed photo/HOPE MINISTRIES

Judy Capps poses with Hope Ministries residents Janet Reeves, left, and Maribel Rodriguez, right. Both earned their GEDs. Reeves has also graduated from the Mount Pleasant Police Academy, while Rodriguez is in the nursing program at Northeast Texas Community College.

Hope Ministries of Northeast Texas had its first crop of graduates go through the program earlier this year.  Among the 12 single moms it has helped transform practically and spiritually are a business owner, a police academy graduate, a bilingual teacher and a first in her family homeowner.

The women who apply for the two-year residential program come from all over the United States. They live in Hope Apartments behind the ministry’s offices on Ferguson Road. Under strict standards, they take part in parenting classes, finance classes, life coaching, Bible studies and mentoring while working and going to school.

The women have to be drug and alcohol-free and agree to stay single for two years.

“Sometimes, those are the things that trip us up and make us get caught in a cycle. I’m trying to create a place where they can just rest from the trauma,” said Hope Ministries Founder Judy Capps. The women work, pay their bills and go to school at Northeast Texas Community College.

“We are a hand up, not a handout. The girls have to pay a small rent and work part time. I believe the Lord honors us enough to make us work. We are worthy of work and I want them to have to buy into what they are doing,” said Capps, who shared that the vision for the ministry came from a literal dream she had one night when and her husband, Steve Capps, were out of town celebrating their 30th anniversary.

“In the dream, I saw women and children living in a place of peace,” Capps said. “I even saw the woman who became our executive director, Liz Robbins, in the dream. She is a Biblical counselor and she was teaching the girls. But, the main thing about the dream was Jesus was healing their hearts.”

Capps said the ministry is based on a verse in James, Chapter 1, which says, “Religion that God, our Father considers is pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress.”

Even though the women technically aren’t widows and the children are not orphans, she said they are women and children who have been abandoned by men and fathers and by the world.

When she came home from that trip, she immediately received a phone call from Gordon Nelms, the director of the Salvation Army’s local chapter.

“He asked me if I would consider helping a woman who was living in her car with her three children,” Capps said. “I said, ‘Yes,’ and that started this journey.”

She began helping the woman find permanent housing, cleaning up her credit and she eventually became a restaurant manager. In 2012, the real test came. Elizabeth Robbins, the woman Capps had seen in her dream teaching women, moved from Houston to Mount Pleasant. She told her husband and he agreed that it was time buy a property to further her ministry efforts. After seeing an apartment complex that was on the market and knowing immediately that its dilapidated condition was not what God had in mind, she spoke with her friend and realtor, Diana Kennedy, sharing the dream with her.

“Diana Kennedy was the key,” Capps said.

Kennedy told her about an apartment complex that a member of North Ridge Church of Christ had donated to the church that they had just listed with her agency.

“My husband and I prayed about the apartments. They were asking a lot of money for them and he said I should write the church a letter, share my dream with them and ask them to sell me the apartments for half the listed price,” Capps said. “He said, ‘Let’s just trust God and ask.’”

She did and the church agreed.

“They prayed about it and told us they felt like this was what they were supposed to do,” she said.

It wasn’t until 2014 when they received their 501(c)3 nonprofit status that Hope Ministries was officially born, but during the two years after buying the apartments, they moved a family in as each apartment was renovated and supported the families themselves and with the help of community members who wanted to help whether or not they received a tax write-off.

The ministry also receives funding through renting venue space at its community event center, The Landing, located in its main building.

“We do a lot of practical things, but we also do a lot of ministry for healing of the heart. My goal is to get them off government assistance and into a dependence on God,” Capps said.

Once their hearts are healed, she said, they start seeing themselves as they truly are, as a nurse, a counselor, a teacher, a police officer, a businesswoman, a homeowner.

“These girls are so blessed that someone would believe in them,” Capps said. “God has a destiny for them to walk in and sometimes the circumstances of life will steal that destiny if they aren’t given a chance.”

To find out more about Hope Ministries, visit their website, HopeofNET.org.

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