Church reaches Keystone’s poorest
BY DAN HILDEBRAN
Monitor Editor
KEYSTONE HEIGHTS— Carrie Morford said that people driving through Keystone often say: “Oh, what a cute little town.”
“And that’s true,” Morford said in a video she showed to the Keystone Heights Rotary Club, “but as with most places, that isn’t the whole story.”
Morford added that although the median household income in Keystone Heights is $60,000, the income within the High Ridge Estates neighborhood is roughly half that amount.
The video was part of an update Morford gave during the Sept. 29 meeting of the Keystone Heights Rotary Club about her church: Mission of the Dirt Road, which is located directly across SR 100 from the neighborhood.
“Our mission is committed to making disciples through community development,” she said.
Morford told the Rotarians that both she and her husband Isaac were raised in Keystone Heights but moved away for college. They returned to their hometown after having their first child.
Children with potential
Morford said she had some connections to the High Ridge Estates neighborhood growing up. However, while teaching public school, she said she not only saw students from High Ridge who were in need, but also children with potential.
“There were kids coming out of that neighborhood to our school who had so much (potential),” she said. “They just needed a little something to kind of boost them up.”
Morford said her first step in reaching out to the neighborhood was a book bus, delivering books to the area.
Next came Mission of the Dirt Road. A part of the Wesleyan Missional Community, the church functions more like a community center than the traditional congregation.
She said she and her team tries to connect with residents through coffee and wi-fi internet offered at the church.
“It’s not uncommon for a government official, a social worker or another non-profit leader to stop by and ask what we are going to do about affordable housing, unaccompanied minors, transportation, jobs, health care or the lack of hope,” she said. “These conversations become catalysts to connect people and organizations.”
A different kind of church
“Just like every other church,” Morford added, “we love to have conversations about faith and spiritual needs, but we also recognize that people have very real needs that are physical, emotional, financial, or relational. We facilitate connections between people and organizations that are prepared to meet those needs.”
Morford said that in addition to giving out hygiene and cleaning supplies, loaning bicycles and assisting residents with home repairs, the church holds weekly community classes, in addition to workshops and hosting support groups.
“We have created a space to listen and learn from each other,” she said, “and that changes things. It changes us.”
The Tuesday evening community classes draw around 20 people and are centered around budgeting, gardening, tobacco cessation, parenting and becoming savvy consumers.
“We feel really good about those responses from people who have been attending,” she said. “We include a hot meal that night and childcare and everything’s free.”
Morford added that the night before the Wednesday Rotary meeting her class of 27 adults planted a container garden.
“They’re going to transplant the seeds somewhere in their yards,” she said. “We planted cabbage and kale and broccoli and cauliflower to start like a fall winter garden.”
She added that during one of the classes, Rotary Club member Shelley Gibbs taught the adults about credit recovery and other financial planning concepts.
“In addition, we hosted at least five tobacco cessation classes in cooperation with (the Area Health Education Center), a workshop on mastering anxiety, a community outreach day that had several organizations from throughout the county, and we had about 100 people attend that.”
Morford also said the church hosted a one-day retreat to give community leaders a chance to recharge after an exhausting year carrying out their missions during the pandemic.
“And we hosted a six-week parenting class with the Hanley Foundation,” she said.
Morford also described a new program she is developing in partnership with Habitat for Humanity and Mercy Support Services called Mission Revitalize.
“We will meet with a family, look at the home repairs they need, and help them with those home repairs’ she said, “but then at the same time, we’re connecting them with a financial and personal coach, so that we don’t end up right back here in a year.”
Morford said she is also developing a tool library.
“We have people in the neighborhood who would like to mow their grass,” she said, “they just don’t have access to a lawn mower, or they had a lawnmower, and it broke, and they couldn’t replace it.”
Morford said that now, the church’s Sunday meetings consist of a dinner and neighborhood walk, handing out information about the mission.
People need hope
Morford said that people in the middle class often have mistaken ideas about how residents get trapped into poverty.
“We have a tendency to think it’s laziness,” she said, “what I see are people who don’t have the relationships and don’t have the connections like I have. They don’t have a support system at all, so when a crisis hits there’s no fallback.”
She added that after encountering barrier after barrier, and suffering trauma time and time again, most people fall into despair.
“The thought that things could be different or better is really hard for them to imagine,” she said. “They have no hope.”
