Lynn Lockwood recently spent about four months 3,000 miles from his Oregon home, helping to give an Itta Bena church a new home of its own.
Lockwood and his wife, Charlotte, led a volunteer group of retirees who put up much of a new building for Saints Rest Church of God in Christ on U.S. 82. They were sent by the Mobile Missionary Assistance Program (MMAP), a California-based organization that helps nonprofits with construction projects.
They weren’t able to finish the building because of weather-related delays, so others will handle the rest of the work. But Lockwood said they enjoyed their stay.
“People have been real friendly, real enjoyable,” he said. “For my wife and I, this is our seventh winter in Mississippi, and this is the sixth church that we’ve worked on here.”
Lockwood, who has worked on 69 projects in 15 years with MMAP, said the retirees have enough money to live on. So, he added, “If you don’t need more than what you’ve got, then why not do something for someone else?”
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The Rev. Samuel Sago, pastor of Saints Rest, had thought for some time about raising money to build a new building larger than the church’s current site on College Street.
In May 2013, he presented a plan to build up a fund for the project. On the fourth Sunday of each month, the church would hold its “Super Sunday Sacrifice” and accept contributions. The goal was to be able to put back $5,000 each month, and “for the most part, that happened,” he said.
“The Lord blessed us greatly to be able to do that, and things began to fall into place,” Sago said.
The first phase of the project includes the lobby, sanctuary, choir space, baptismal pool, restrooms and some offices. Sago said the sanctuary will seat about 500 people, and he hopes to be holding services there by June.
Sago hand-drew the plans for the new building and gave them to architect Al Gamble, CEO of Atlanta-based AV Church Design and Development. Fowler Construction of Greenville is the contractor. The church applied to MMAP to do the work and eventually was notified that the application had been accepted.
The church also received a boost from minister Willie McCaskill, who helped get the foundation in and charged only for materials. “He said the Lord had put it on his heart to donate the labor,” Sago said.
Sago, pastor at Saints Rest since May 2003, said the goal is to complete the offices and classrooms in a second phase, add fellowship space in a third phase and eventually add a family life center. He is optimistic that this can be done.
He and his wife, Barbara, are committed to building the ministry at Saints Rest and “won’t be leaving any time soon,” he said.
“Not only are we investing in the ministry, but the ministry is an investment in the community,” he said.
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MMAP was founded in 1978 and is based in Calimesa, California. Its teams are composed of husband-and-wife couples. Lockwood said six couples worked on the Itta Bena project in November, then eight couples in January and seven in February. The work wrapped up this week.
MMAP offers the labor for free, although it does ask that the churches pay the utility costs for the volunteers staying on site in their RVs. The organization provides building materials and plans and handles the permits; the volunteers bring the tools.
The slab also is supposed to be poured before a MMAP group starts work, but weather delayed that part of the Saints Rest project, too. Lockwood said the weather cost the workers four or five weeks overall – the most he has seen in any project.
In fact, he said, this was the first project that one of his teams hasn’t been able to complete in the allotted time. “Normally we would be doing finish work at this point,” he said Tuesday.
Lockwood said MMAP needs more volunteers. It has about 85 active couples now but could easily use 200 for the amount of project requests it receives, he said.
Those wanting to take part must be retired Christian husband-and-wife couples who have their own RVs to live in. They must pay their transportation costs to and from the sites and provide their own medical insurance. They also must commit to three projects in a year, either consecutive or spread out over the year. The teams work four seven-hour days each week.
The couples working at Saints Rest came from a variety of places, including Minnesota, California, Texas, Colorado, Indiana, North Carolina and Oregon. Lockwood, a retired shop teacher, said they brought a number of skills.
“There’s always someone in the group that knows how to do something and can teach the rest of us,” he said.
Lockwood said the churches are grateful for what MMAP does, and the volunteers enjoy soaking up the local culture where they stay. “It’s not like being a tourist when we show up to work like this,” he said. “People treat us like part of the community.”
He and his wife will spend March with family and will begin their next project in April in northern California. Doing this kind of work gets in the blood, he said.
“It’s really an exceptional way to spend retirement,” he said. “In the Bible, it doesn’t talk about retirement. God planned us to be busy our whole life.
“In April, I’ll be 75, and I’m hoping to get another 10 years in of this,” he said. “As long as I can drive that truck and pull that RV and be physically able to handle materials, I plan on doing it.”
More information about MMAP may be found online at www.mmap.org.
• Contact David Monroe at 581-7236 or dmonroe@gwcommonwealth.com.
