Sara Beth Fentress knew the
formula: Get a good education, find a good job, raise a family and live happily
ever after.
Little did she know what kind of
reward would be waiting if she took a different path.
“My life has never been typical,”
says Fentress, who grew up in Anderson County and is the founder of 127
Worldwide, a Christian ministry with the stated mission of “restoring hope to
widows and orphans.”
The ministry's name is a constant
reminder of its focus. It reflects the teaching of James 1:27, “Religion that
God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and
widows in their distress and to keep one's self from being polluted by the
world (NIV).”
The strikingly simple concept came
to Fentress as she was working with International Sports Federation, an
Atlanta-based ministry that uses sports to reach people around the world.
Fentress was moved when she joined a group for a trip to Kenya. While there she
saw incredible poverty.
“Some of the kids were so malnourished,”
she recalls. “They couldn't participate in the sports camp.
“The director of the orphanage and
school had invited us to do the camp. At the time, there were about 60 kids in
the school and 10 in the orphanage, but when we got there, we heard her vision
to really reach out to the whole community. We started a very grass roots
movement and we wanted to build a partnership with her.”
Since that day in 2007, the school
has grown to more than 300 children in preschool to eighth grade and 55 being
served in the orphanage. Fentress and others involved in the ministry are
convinced the increase is the result of God working through people who have
taken a hands-on approach.
“We take volunteer teams to the
school,” she says. “We help fund raise. We help dig the well or build an
orphanage. The main thing about 127 is we want to find partnerships with
people. She is Kenyan. She can reach her community better than we can.”
Anderson County native Laura Eaton
Cannon is one of many people with local ties who has been part of the ministry.
In the summer of 2009, Eaton spent two weeks working with the Tumaini Miles of
Smiles Children's Home and School in Malava, Kenya. Working with Fentress and a
group of 11 others, Cannon says her experience was an eye-opener.
“During the day, our team ran a
Vacation Bible School,” Cannon said in a message from her Facebook account. “We
would love on kids, bandage and treat any minor cuts and scrapes and have a
blast just playing games and hearing the voices of children.
“After school, our team would help
with daily chores of the children's home, like draining water from the well and
carrying it to the orphanage, which is way harder than I ever thought, and
washing dishes. We would also aid in making and carrying bricks to help build a
great house at the children's home or with anything that needed to be done.”
Cannon went to change lives, but
came back changed herself. “I went to Tumaini with a lot of prideful
expectations of what I was going to do to help them, but I quickly learned that
this trip was going to be a learning experience for me as well,” she said. “It
opened my 19-year-old eyes to a whole new perspective.”
Which is exactly what Fentress
wants to happen even while people are serving those in another country. The
ministry is currently serving in east Africa and plans to expand into Honduras
this year and eventually into Southeast Asia.
“In the Third World, there is no
welfare. Most of the governments are corrupt,” she says. “A lot of these
children don't have a chance to succeed. We want to help them to have a
chance.””
The ministry is more than just
handing out food. “We don't want to be humanitarian and meet their physical
needs without meeting their spiritual needs,” Fentress says.
The problem of empty stomachs is
one most Americans cannot understand, Fentress believes.
“We don't have an idea,” she says.
“It is like trying to understand what the Grand Canyon is like without seeing
it. You can see pictures of it. You can listen to me tell about it, but until
you have seen it, you are not going to relate.
“It is overwhelming. The problem is
overwhelming. What we decided to do is dig deep and try to make a difference.
We are really giving them a hope that their life can be better.
“You break the cycle of poverty one
child at a time.”
Fentress says that she and people
who want to be involved in the partnerships 127 Worldwide is building can have
relationships with the children they sponsor. In her case, it has gone even
farther as she is in the process of adopting two girls from Uganda, who will
live with her in her Smyrna, Tenn. home.
For Fentress, it is a workable
formula for her passion for children. Her parents, former Anderson County
school superintendent Sonny Fentress and his wife, the late Ruthie Fentress,
spent their working lives with children. “Mom and dad love people,” she says.
“For them, they used their passion for kids to educate people.”
It is no coincidence that part of
the mission of 127 is to educate people who live in the affluence of the United
States about poverty and what can be done. “Everyone kind of knows there is a
problem with poverty, but you can make a difference, whether it is a small
difference or a huge difference.
“If you make more than $40,000 a
year, you are in the top two percent in the world.”
The statistics flow easily as
Fentress shares the work of 127 Worldwide. “If you have a passion, you start
researching,” the former Anderson County High School basketball player smiles.
“If you love UK basketball, you are going to know all of the statistics.”
Knowing those statistics and being
convicted in her heart prompted Fentress to found the ministry. “So many told
me with the bad economy this was not a good time to start a non-profit,” she
says. “I felt the need and felt like God was calling me to do this. Logically,
it doesn’t make sense, but God has a plan.”
In the first 18 months of the
ministry, 127 Worldwide has raised over $250,000.
Living on donations and teaching
others about those far less fortunate is far different from the plan Fentress
saw herself taking when she was growing up or even attending Carson-Newman
College and Southwestern Seminary.
“If I were writing my story, this
is not the way I would have written it,” she says. “This was not even on the
radar. I thought I would be working in counseling, something a little more
stable and secure.”
But it would not have been making
the difference 127 is making, one child at a time.
And Cannon says the ministry makes
a difference one worker at a time, too. “The trip to Kenya was life-changing and
eye-opening for me,” she said. “I am so anxious for the day I can go back. Even
though I am far away from there, I can honestly say there is not a day that
goes by that I don’t think about it and what it taught me.”
That shows the concept is working.
“I really want to connect people,”
Fentress says. “That is my passion. I think what makes 127 different is that I
have a lot of friends in these partnerships that I trust. We build
relationships with the people.
“When people go and see, they want
to get involved.”
