Once you have met Lisa Parks, you cannot help but love her.  She has a fun, bubbly personality and loves what any lady loves: shopping for bargains!  She is great with children and loves teaching them.  Most importantly though is her love for people and the care she shows them.

Lisa is originally from Bayou La Batre and her southern accent proves she was born and raised in South Alabama.  She just recently celebrated her four year anniversary to her husband, Nic Parks, and they have an adorable 15-month-old baby girl, Camilla.  She is a huge New Orleans Saints fan, and even dresses her daughter in the Saints’ cheerleading outfit. 

She grew up in church and attended Vacation Bible School (VBS) every year as a child.  Once she was too old to attend VBS, she started helping teach the classes.  As a teenager, it was at First Baptist Church in Bayou La Batre, that she became a Leader in Training (LIT), helped teach the kids and went to summer camp with them.  From the time she was a kid herself, she helped with other children.

Lisa is now the children’s director at Friendship Baptist Church in Bon Secour.  She first started teaching these children in Sunday School at the young age of 18.  She fell in love with the kids, and because she enjoyed teaching so much, she went on to earn her Associates degree in Elementary Education from Faulkner State Community College.  At the time she received her degree however, teaching careers were looking slim.  She continued to teach at the church and eventually became the children’s director.

As children’s director, in addition to teaching,  Lisa plans the activities for the children.  The children’s program mainly started with one little girl who came for Vacation Bible School and started coming to the church regularly after that.  She then told her friends and family all about the church, and the other children in her neighborhood started wanting to come too.  The church started running a van to pick up the children so they would be able to come.  Since she has been teaching at the church, the children’s program has over quadrupled in size.

The church started feeding the children supper on Wednesday nights before class would start with the help of caring volunteers.  They have the most children on Wednesday nights and this means the van sometimes must run multiple times to bring them all.  Of course more volunteers help with running the van to pick up children and take them home after their class.

Each year the church puts on a program at the end of Vacation Bible School that the children do for their families.  They also do a Christmas program that the families come to as well.  By reaching out to the kids, she is able to reach the families.  Most of the children that come regularly to the church started coming to Vacation Bible School because someone had invited them.  For most of them, that was the first time they had ever stepped foot in a church.

She makes things fun for the kids in her classroom.  She interacts with them in a way they can understand.  She loves watching them learn and grow.   When the kids first came to the church, they didn’t know anything about church or Jesus.  Over time, and through her teaching, the children learned so much that they can now tell entire Bible stories, including the details that children would not normally be able to understand.  When she asks them a question, their hands will shoot up, knowing the answer.

She puts on special events like Vacation Bible School in the summer, the Fall Festival and an Easter Egg Hunt each year for all of the community’s children at no charge to their families.  She also sends the girls to summer camp at Camp Baldwin in Elberta.  She even worked for Camp Baldwin for five years, which offers learning opportunities and fun summer activities to the children.  It was a lot of fun for her to work there and a great place to interact with more kids.  To be able to send the church’s girls to the summer camp, she sacrificed her time to arrange fundraisers so their families would not have to pay anything for them to go.  One such fundraiser was right up her alley: a yard sale!

She asked the members of the church to donate things so she could have a church-wide yard sale and to raise money to help send the girls to summer camp.  She wanted to help out with the cost of the camp for the girls, but because she was faithful and giving of herself and her time, she was able to do more than just help out.  In the 2010 yard sale, she raised over $1200 which was enough to send all their girls to the camp without costing their families a penny.  She was very excited!

The yard sale did not go together by itself though.  “We have a great team,” said Lisa.  “The activities we do for the children would not be possible without the volunteers’ help and support.”  She, along with those other volunteers, collected, organized and priced everything that went into the yard sale.  There were so many items donated that there were items left over after the garage sale that had not been purchased.  These were then donated to a different organization for another good cause.

The church is having another yard sale soon to send more girls to summer camp this year.  It was so successful the last time, she is hoping it will be even more successful this time.  The goal is to raise enough funds that the girls’ families will not have to pay anything.  Any donations would be helpful.  In 2010, she set up the yard sale in the front of the church in the parking lot.  This time, she is going to have it in their recreational building behind the church.  She said it will be easier to set it up inside over time than to carry everything out to the parking lot before daylight to set it up like they did the last time.  It takes a while to set up all those donations!

Lisa not only sacrifices her time and energy to help the children of the community, she also uses money out of her own pocket to help out.  Since she is always looking for deals, she ends up buying books and supplies for her classroom.  “Shop the dollar aisle and the Waterfront Rescue Mission,” is her advice to anyone looking to save some money.  To others who want to give to the community but do not have the money to donate she says, “You can always give, but that doesn’t always mean money.”  She suggests giving of your time and talents to help out the community if you cannot afford to donate money.  If anyone is looking for an opportunity to volunteer, she says that ministries like the one she does could always use volunteers.

Lisa credits God and what He has done in her life for the reason that she wants to give to the community and minister to the kids.  She is always looking for exciting new ways to minister to more children in the community.  Her greatest satisfaction comes from seeing the children learn and grow in Jesus Christ and accept Him as their personal Lord and Savior.

Lisa Parks proves that although one person may not be able to help the multitudes, one person can make a difference and impact the lives of many.  By reaching out to the youngest members of the small community she lives and serves in, she is able to show love and care to entire families and in turn, to an entire community.  Love is contagious and by showing love to our children, she is teaching a generation, who is our future, how to care.  Perhaps one day it can reach the whole world because of what one person took the time to selflessly do.