While some Kentuckians perhaps were viewing the influx of Hispanics with a wary eye in the 1990s, Garnett Jones placed a large sign beside the front door of her white frame house in Georgetown that read, “bienvenidos, amigos.”
“Welcome, friends.”
That welcoming spirit continues today.
In 2010, the Hispanic ministry that originally began in her home involved 18 different nationalities, including immigrants from Ethiopia, India, Jordan and Ghana and refugees from the Congo.
“Congolese refugees who come to the U.S. may have a university degree from South Africa, but they have never used an ATM or had a bank account,” Jones said.
“I take them shopping, teach them to drive and loan my car for driver’s tests.”
Jones said she first heard God’s call to missions at age 16. She and her husband, Clarence, a pastor, worked in ministries ranging from inner city to Appalachia. “I loved being a pastor’s wife,” she said.
After 36 years of marriage, Clarence died suddenly, leaving Garnett alone.
“Lord, you know me better than I know myself,” she prayed. “Please help me find something to do.”
She was not prepared for the answer. “God moved me to study Spanish at age 67.”
The following summer, Jones went on a missions trip to Ecuador. After she came home, she began working with a Hispanic ministry. The next summer, she returned to Ecuador to study Spanish with a private tutor and at a language institute. Later, she worked as a teaching assistant to Hispanics in Dry Ridge and taught English to Hondurans in Cincinnati.
The third summer Garnett went to Ecuador to work in a medical clinic, she was injured when she fell down a mountain.
“They used two tree trunks and horse blankets to make a stretcher to carry me up the mountain,” she said. Following surgery, however, she developed complications.
“A doctor said my leg was so badly injured that amputation might be the only solution.”
When the Hispanic community back in Williamstown heard about her accident, they prayed aloud over and over, “Let Garnett’s antibiotics start working.”
And her leg began to heal.
After Jones was well enough to return to Kentucky, she became a Mission Service Corps missionary. Gradually, her home in Georgetown developed into a school and social center for Hispanics.
“The Hispanic women brought their children and we studied English in the kitchen” she said.
In the evening, she taught classes for the men and women who worked outside the home.
Her home also became a place where her Hispanic friends could invite loved ones for birthday parties and other special occasions.
Eager to serve, Jones approached internationals in grocery stores or Walmart, asking whether they spoke English and inviting them to her classes.
“In 14 years, I never had an international that was not receptive,” she said.
She has found students in other unusual places. Once, while Jones was posting a notice for English classes for Hispanics, a motel owner asked her, “What agency do you work for? Who pays you?”
“I work for the Lord,” she answered. The man asked Jones to teach English to his 60-year-old wife, a Pakistani, who could not converse with anyone.
“It was so neat to see how the Hispanic women welcomed her,” Jones recalled.
She also enrolled several Chinese students the day she went to a local Chinese restaurant to post a bulletin for Hispanics.
A certified instructor for English as a Second Language, Jones teaches three evenings a week for the local school district and every Wednesday at Georgetown Baptist Church.
The Woman’s Missionary Union of Georgetown Baptist purchases materials and provides other support for the Wednesday classes.
Jones has become an advocate for internationals.
She contacts lawyers, helps with legal papers, provides information about immigration laws, attends court hearings and helps obtain visas.
“I recorded 100 questions and answers on CDs to study for citizenship,” she said.
“The internationals know enough to converse but these words are unfamiliar.” She also interprets at doctor and dentist offices and provides comfort and reassurance.
On Sunday evening, Jones teaches 14 children at Iglesia Bautista Ebenezer, a Hispanic church she helped plant that meets in the basement of Gano Baptist.
“We began the church with two people and now we have 40 to 50,” she said.
With the help of a businessman, she founded the Georgetown/Scott County Hispanic Initiative, an organization of local citizens and community leaders that addresses issues related to the Hispanic community.
Currently, she serves as president.
Jones doesn’t seem to be thinking of slowing down anytime soon.
“I don’t see anything in the Bible that we are supposed to retire,” she said.
“Jesus was compassionate about people’s needs. There are people all around us who are hurting.”
Mission Service Corps is a North American network of self-funded servants who assist state/regional Baptist conventions, local Baptist associations, and individual congregations and ministries.
(BP)
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