In my business, you never know when the next big story is going to appear.
Sometimes, they walk in the front door of the office in the form of a person or people with information about an achievement, event, project or something else of interest.
One day last week, two walked in the door within no more than an hour-and-a-half of one another. And after speaking with the people sharing the information about each of the situations, I was fairly amazed by some of the similarities.
Both pertained to soon-to-begin charitable projects, both involved people from Licking and both were being undertaken by people whose main motivation was helping a specific group of other people. I followed up on each of these fascinating “quests,” and there are articles in this week’s Houston Herald about both.
But perhaps the most interesting similarity is one I came across in face-to-face conversations with key players in each situation: I heard a version of the phrase, “this will only happen if God wants it to.”
PROVIDING A BOOST
First through the door was Licking resident Mike Brannan. He and his wife, Kim, gained a host of experience with the foster care system while residing in Colorado.
As the couple cared for 39 different young people who came and went from their home during a five-year period, Brannan became keenly aware of something that troubled his soul and bothered his innermost sense of right and wrong. He couldn’t abide seeing many young people who became too old to remain in the foster system (or “aged out,” as it’s called) end up without a viable direction or purpose as they were figuratively shown the door.
Brannan kept the idea in his heart that he would someday do something about it. The notion of creating a facility (or “camp”) for aged-out foster youth rolled around in his mind to the point where he envisioned building a complex to cater to them that would offer everything from housing to education.
It would give them a place to learn how to move on in life.
Being Kansas City natives, he and Kim often came down Ozarks way for recreation in the early stages of their years together. They loved the area, and Brannan ultimately grew to realize this is where the project would manifest.
Being more a doer as than a talker, Brannan’s dream is becoming more real by the day, as he has opened a store in Licking to raise funds for his venture and he plans to this spring cut trees and move dirt on a 40-acre tract west of town that was purchased specifically for its potential as a site for the facility.
If God has this in His plans, Brannan hopes the first foster graduates can move in sometime in 2017.
LIVE AND LET LIVE
Abortion is a subject with no gray area – it’s either a no-brainer that it’s not OK or a no-brainer that it is.
A group of people who believe it’s not OK have begun a drive toward helping some local pregnant women (and girls) face the crucial decision about what to do next. Their efforts will result in the mid-April opening of the Pregnancy Resource Center (PRC) on Pine Street in downtown Houston.
According to Licking resident George Hooker, president of the PRC’s board, the facility will offer clients “access to all the options and resources available that don’t include abortion.” The list of services the facility will provide ranges from various forms of counseling to education, material assistance and even financial assistance.
For the PRC to work, a significant number of volunteers will need to combine their efforts to tend to an as yet unknown volume of clientele. And it’s going to need its own financial assistance in the form of donations and funding from multiple sources, some as yet unknown.
PRC executive director Debra Stockard said similar facilities in Mountain Grove and Rolla work with numerous clients who (not surprisingly) live in Texas County.
Hooker called the task, “daunting.”
If God has a Houston-based PRC in His plans, I figure it stands to become become a very busy place.
It’s getting more and more rare these days to see people walk a walk more than talk a talk, but last week I came across some who are doing just that and I honestly admired each one of them for plowing straight into the strong headwinds of highly ambitious projects. And if God has ordained their walks to continue, updates on both quests will surely appear in this paper again at some point.
All I can say to them is best wishes and God’s will be done.
Doug Davison is a writer, photographer and newsroom assistant for the Houston Herald. Email: ddavison@houstonherald.com.
