WANDA'S TRIBUTE TO KRISTY

ANOTHER POST BY MILTON:

For new readers to this site, I am writing since Kristy's battle with a GBM brain tumor and her passing on July 21. Kristy made me a romantic so I write to share christian love stories.

I asked Wanda if she would like to write her thoughts as I finish these last few days of entres on this blog. Wanda has so graciously written a tribute to Kristy. This is amazingly incredible.

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It is with honor that I write a tribute to Kristy.    

I first met Kristy when Jim and I started attending Bartow First Assembly  in 1980.  It seemed like from the very beginning Kristy and I connected and became good friends.  Our children where the same ages, Kristy and I were the same age, we had been married the same about of time and just had a lot of things in common .  

I believe, because we were their first converts in the church in Bartow and her love for people, she had a great burden to help disciple and mentor me as she knew I was going to need guidance and direction in my new walk with the Lord.   With her kind, gentle spirit that is what she did.

My family enjoyed many times of fellowship with Kristy, Milton and the girls, going to different homes, to McDonalds and Burger King almost every Sunday night after church.  We had only been in the church for about six months and Kristy and Milton wanted to go on a trip to the mountains with the youth but could not take Julie and Jennifer.  Having no parents here to help them out, Jim and I offered to keep the girls for the week.    Kristy entrusted me with the girls even though we had only known each other for a few months.  Through this, we became family to each other.   When they returned from the trip, her gift of appreciation to me was a devotional book by CorrieTen Boom.  Again, there was her gentle, kind, spirit mentoring and helping me to grow in the Lord.

Kristy and I remained friends during their eight years as Pastor in Bartow.  She encouraged me to become involved in the church by teaching and being a leader in the ladies ministries .  She was my teacher, as I taught others.  

As church secretary she treated me very well always making sure I had what I needed to get the job done.  As of today, I have a plant in my back yard that she sent to me on Secretary’s Day to show her and Milton’s appreciation to me.  She was always thinking of others.

After they left Bartow we continued to stay in touch, seeing them at District Councils and other events.  Every time she spoke in the area I always made it a point to try to attend.  After she began writing, she always sent to me autographed copies of her books, which I still have and cherish.

Little did I know that years later, when she knew that the Lord was calling her home, that she would feel that I was the one that the Lord would call to be the help that Milton had asked for the night that she went to be with Jesus.  I know that the Lord is the one that has put Milton and me together, but I do feel that because of the way Kristy mentored me, she helped prepare me for what the Lord now has for me.   

She left a great legacy of love.