Being a part of OneGenAway has privileged me to talk to some very dedicated and focused people who desire to walk out their “ministry” by helping their neighbors and just being that “living sacrifice” we see in Romans 12. Brenda Bryson of Huntsville, AL is such a person. I wanted to find out just what make someone become such a dedicated person.
Brenda was born in San Francisco, CA. However, she lived in various places through her childhood because her father was in the military. She sees Mississippi and California as the places her family has mostly settled over the years. As a young girl of 14, Brenda accepted Christ. However, over the next few years, she did not really walk out her faith. These years she describes as the years she ran from God. At age 25, she stopped running. Brenda met and married John Bryson, a man of faith. By then, she was living in Nashville, TN. John was a deacon at their church. Over the next few years they had five children. Today these children are all raised and she has been blessed with her first grandchild.
During her time in Nashville, Brenda began to volunteer at the Community Center. She felt called by God to minister to inner city children. She was concerned about cooking for and feeding them. This was expanded to include clothing them and being an example of her faith before these children. She got involved in being a Girl Scout leader and often the projects, she and the girls would work on, were mission projects in their community.
In 1999, John and Brenda moved their family to Huntsville, AL. By 2002, they were active members of Victory Outreach Church ministries joining the vision of Pastor Sledge. Although her heart was in missions, another person was already fulfilling that role at Victory. Brenda took on the hospitality and helps ministry in the church. She served as the new member coordinator and pastor's assistant. If you get to know Brenda, you know she did these with gracious enthusiasm and a willingness to help in any way possible.
She proclaims that God opened the door to missions in January of 2011. The former person in missions stepped down. She went to Pastor Sledge and let him know that she had a passion for missions and would be willng to take on that role. After he and his dedicated wife prayed about it, they knew Brenda was the right one to take on the Missions role in the ministry. How right they were!!
In midsummer, OneGenAway received a call from a passionate and focused lady with a delightfully positive enthusiasm expressing her desire to get her church involved in the September 24 initiative to feed one million people across the US in one day. “How can we help?' she wanted to know. I referred her to Pastor Chris Whitney, our founder and director and the rest is history!! Brenda had already been helping her neighbors during the tornado devastation earlier in the spring in Alabama. During that time she had formed some good working relationships with city and community officials, other churches, and local businesses. Building upon these, she once again entreated them to help her feed her neighbors. When Pastor Whitney and his wife Elaine went to meet with them, they found these folks had already printed out our manual and each had a copy to guide them through the steps to set up a mobile pantry. The city offered a sizable monetary donation to fund the project. Kroger and Halsey offered to donate the food, which amounted to 3 truckoads. Volunteers from numerous churches, Target, Kroger, the Boy Scouts, and local inmates at the correctional facility numbering in all over 150 came out to get the work done. City and county officials lent their support as well. When the day was done, 2385 families representing 6510 ;people were fed. This included many families that were unable to come to the mobile pantry that had volunteers deliver their food to their homes.
Brenda does not stop there. She says, “I have a passion for people to find their God-given destiny and for them to know who they are in God”. Her vision is to incrase the food pantries, mobile pantries and then concentrate more on children's needs, empowering them to become God's missionaries. She strongly believes that kids are the best missionaries to other kids Her community has many latchkey children. She wants to start a ministry that is concerned with dinner and academics for these children. She plans to tap in to the resources in the various local univeristies recruiting college honor students to mentor these kids while she takes on making sure they are fed. This is to include meals and supplies for the weekend as well.
It is people like Brenda Bryson that we are so excited to meet in OneGenAway. People answering the call to minister to their neighbors, extending themselves beyond the doors of their churches and stepping out into the community. Huntsville, AL is blessed to have Brenda act as part of Victory Outreach Church minstries. Her service to her church and her neighbors is having a far outreaching impact beyond her neighbors, to the city of Huntsville, then her state. Her vision is to contiune to extend these programs even internationally through missions. We are privileged to know her and are so thankful she became part of OneGenAway.
Monday, November 21, 2011 at 09:59PM