May 21^st, 2023 is a date that we will always remember. For it was on that day that Atlanta Reformed Presbyterian Church bade a sad farewell to Miss Amy Work.  She had been a faithful servant for our ministry, being a Sunday School teacher, a mentor for God’s Girls Group, a counselor, the church treasurer, and, perhaps more than anything else, a friend.  After more than a dozen years of service in this challenging mission field, she had decided to move to the Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, area, in order to be closer to family.

Plans had been made ahead of time to create a farewell ceremony and lasting memorial which would express our love and gratitude to Miss Amy.  The memorial would be a street sign, pointing to the walkway leading from the road to the steps of the church building.  A “practice sign” was created and tested on the wall for size and location.  Then an actual street sign was purchased from a vendor.

                         

                     

During Sunday School time on the day of its unveiling, while Miss Amy was teaching her class, Pastor Frank attached the sign to the wall and he and I hung the curtain, comprising an old valance on a vegetable plant pole, over it.

Following the service, everyone was invited onto the porch for a group photo, after which a meal would be served.  Everyone obeyed the instruction, including an unsuspecting Miss Amy, who was thereupon ushered to the curtain and invited to pull it back.  The expressions on her face told of her roller-coaster experience during the event—surprise, delight, laughter, tears.

                       

                                               

Pastor Frank then read the following letter:

May 21, 2023

Miss Amy Work

Dear Miss Amy:

In the summer of 2010, you had a deep, unfulfilled desire to be doing something for the Lord and His kingdom.  You prayed that He would open an opportunity for you to be able to make a difference—and very shortly thereafter, He led you to a small group that was gathering every Lord’s Day afternoon on the steps of the old St. Mark AME Church for a Bible study.  You soon became a fixture in Atlanta Presbyterian Fellowship, and before long, you were using your skills to teach the children who would come to those steps.

For thirteen years, you have sacrificially served, and today, in honor of that service, we dedicate the Miss Amy Walk.  I am reminded of a couple of female British missionaries of yesteryear: an Irish Amy, Miss Amy Carmichael, who went to India; and also Miss Mary Slessor, a Scot, who journeyed into the jungles of Nigeria, West Africa.  For generations, young people have been inspired by reading about their adventuresome exploits, and they are still memorialized by means of monuments as well as street and place names and institutions.  We trust that someday your life’s story will be written.  In the meantime, we have a simple memorial—this sign declaring that this is “Miss Amy Walk NW.”

Fifty years, a hundred years, five hundred years from now, families will come up this walkway and up the steps.  And boys and girls will ask their parents, “Who was Miss Amy?”  The dads and moms will answer, “She was a lady—a brave, courageous, intelligent, talented, articulate, godly woman who selflessly poured herself into the lives of the children of this neighborhood.”  Should the Lord tarry, in the Year of our Lord 2525, those who are then alive will recount how this area at one time was greatly impoverished and crime-ridden, but now, due to the sowing of the seed of the gospel by you and others, has been transformed, so that it is prospering, and young people are growing up in the Lord’s house, and there is no more outcry in the streets.

Two blocks from here is a park, where one can see some of the gods of this world, including a couple of statues dedicated to religious figures—churchmen who were not godly or faithful.  They have their statues—that is their reward.  But when the Lord returns, those statues will be burned up on that great Day of Judgment.  At the same time, this walkway and this sign will also be destroyed.  But unlike the judgment awaiting heretics and hypocrites, you, as one who has both talked the talk and walked the walk, will have an eternal inheritance based upon Christ’s imputed righteousness, and your name will forever be blessed, as King Jesus says to you, “Well done, good and faithful servant: enter thou into the joy of the Lord.”

                                                            With tremendous respect, and tender affection,                                                                                        Frank J. Smith, Ph.D., D.D.                                                                                                                     Pastor 

        

                                             

Miss Amy later told Pastor Frank that she had been determined to hold in her emotions, but that he with his letter had ruined that!

There were also tears of emotion among the members, attenders, and friends of the church on the porch who witnessed the ceremony.  I had anticipated this and was prepared for it with two boxes of Kleenex that I passed around!  We then gathered for the promised group photo followed by the meal.                                     

We thank the Lord for the gift He gave us in the person of this tough but sweet young lady.  We thank her for her sacrificial service.  And we look forward to meeting the one whom the Lord is going to bring our way to fill her shoes. (Any volunteers?)

                                                          Bearing witness at the local park

On April 1^st, 2023, a statue of one of the gods of this world (as mentioned in Pastor’s letter to Miss Amy) was unveiled at the park that is two blocks from Atlanta Reformed Presbyterian Church.  As a counter witness during that event, our church set up a Prayer Table and also distributed flyers that proclaimed: “World Peace comes only through Jesus Christ the Prince of Peace,” and which included an invitation:                                                                                                                                                                                    “Come and worship Him with us every Lord’s Day.”

                                            Pictured here is a native Kenyan, Eric Osewe,                                               a faithful attender of ARPC who helped man the table.