My Cause !
"MY STORY"
"The Great Sign In Heaven"
About the Eclips On Sept. 26. 2017
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My Community
Looking at our city from South Shore KY and across the US GRANT BRIDGE.
Scioto County
Portsmouth, Ohio 45662
I was born and raised here, 5/9/1948. I was gone from home two times for a length of time. Once when I was 16 when I joined the Job Core in Carterville, ILL. and in 1968 I left to serve my country during the Vietnam War. There was one more time when I went to Germany in 2011 for three weeks.
I love my community for three reasons; one because my family lives here, too; my church and three; I feel like the Lord put me here to serve the public, which I have done since coming home after my honorable discharge from the Air Force in 1971.
There is a lot of good people who live in our community that care and it shows through the work they do to help others. Like everywhere, there are those who are in it for themselves and there are those in it because they care.
I'm not building my website to brag on myself, the Lord will give me my reward when He comes, and the way it looks, it won't belong. We were taught in the military that one of the biggest weapons of war is rummer and propaganda. Someone can tell something bad on a person, true or not, and before you know it, it is all over town. If you tell something good it will spread, but not quite as fast. I have found it to be true everywhere I went in our country.
{James 3:8 - But the tongue can no man tame; it is an unruly evil, full of deadly poison. } Why people talk about things they know nothing about is beyond me. It has ruined a lot of good people and programs in our community. I don't like it, but that's the way it is.
At the same time, our tong can cause good things to happen. I hope that perhaps after I have gone home someday, that someone will check out my website and be inspired to live with a cause. Perhaps if they see what my cause has been all these years, they too will join Living With A Cause and have the heart to help others.
We all have to die someday, we will go by the grave or if the Lord comes first, we will be caught away. {Hebrews 9:27 And as it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment:} In Ecclesiastes 9:10 it says Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might; for there is no work, nor device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom, in the grave, whither thou goest. We must work and Live With A Cause while we can.
We have a beautiful community that we can all be proud of. Our riverfront is beautiful and there is so much to see and things to do, except for the children. Over the years just about everything has been closed down to keep the young people off the streets. We have done all we know how to do to support our community, our children and help the needy, but it wasn't enough. Nothing in life is easy that is worth fighting for.
They say a picture is worth a thousand words. The pictures on my website tell my story. These listed below are programs, organization and things we did to improve the quality of life for children, adults, veterans and the elderly in our community. We are not to brag and boast, but the Lord told us not to hide our light. Matthew 5:16 Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven.
1 Upon my return home after four years of service in the United States Air Force for my country from 68 to 71, I became Scoutmaster of my old troop as a child, Troop #1.
2. later I became Director of the Big Brother program in our area and I started the first Big Sister program in our area.
3. We found that children having problems and needing someone in their lives who had both parents couldn't join, so I started a program that could help called the Apostolic Boys & Girls Club, which we changed later to Kids For Christ Foundation.
4. We started Kid Minded Day to recognize both adults and the youth for accomplishments they made in the area.
5. We held summer camps and yearly Christmas programs for the needy.
6. We started Veterans Helping Veterans & Others to help veterans and their families in need.
Me, John D. Foster, Sr. - P. Mike Gifford - Pastor of New Life Worship Center.
We have worked with and have been involved with some of the greatest people on earth over the years that has endorsed, supported and stood behind us and our work. There has been ministers, attorneys, judges, business people, Congressmen, Senators, a movie star named Roy Rogers, who was a childhood friend of my dad, as well as others that I am proud to have been associated with. I have planned and conducted twelve and twenty-four-hour telethons and radio broadcast raising money for local children we have worked with. We have worked with school teachers, the Juvenile Court system, Children Services, the police and sheriff department, our mayors and others over the years. I have spoken at schools, churches, ladies groups and others. I have attended Seminars, classes, and meetings pertaining to not only local but across the country.
We have taken in foreign exchange students for a year at a time. I worked in the Ohio Prisons, West Portsmouth, and Portsmouth school districts as a school bus driver, which I was for more than 15 years combined. I was a sub driver, then a full-time driver and I became a handicapped driver for children who were hearing impaired, with M.S. and children with short life spans.
I plaid Santa Clause for them, in schools, nursing homes and give out toys and gifts to them all. We taught children in Sunday School, Sunday School Superintendent, drove the church bus, held summer camps and Christmas programs for veterans and the needy. We knocked on their doors to invite people to church and held Bible studies in homes. We have even seen that children got dressed for Sunday School while their parent/s or boyfriends lay drunk from the night before.
I remember one time when we were forced to call for help one Sunday when small children were climbing out the upstairs window onto their porch roof. Below them was a concrete wall. We knocked and knocked on the door and yelled, trying to get their parents to answer. They never did answer until after the police came and got them out of bed.
I have seen first hand how children have been abused, neglected and sexually abused in their homes. I have been to their funerals after they have taken their own lives by hanging themselves, shooting themselves and from overdosing because they could no longer cope. I have gone into their homes with a friend of mine who was an employee of children services to remove them from some life-threatening situations. Sad to say, he had a heart attack and passed away. I always said he died from a broken heart from seeing children suffer in his work.
We can't count the number of young people we have had the privilege to baptize in the precious name of Jesus Christ. We've baptized them in the creek, lake and in the baptistery at the church. I was able to baptize my son, my dad before he passed away, my granddaughter, one of my foreign exchange student's, his mom and dad.
Over the years I was able to baptize numbers of young people at my wife's and I summer camps in the name of Jesus Christ. Some of these children are preachers and pastors of other churches.
While serving in the military I worked with children who lost parents in Vietnam and children who were forced to sleep in an outside building while mom and sister sold themselves to sex partners in their home. I have visited them at the hospital in near death situation due to neglect at home and accidents. I have stood by their hospital beds and prayed with them. I can recall this one young man who slid down a sliding board in a schoolyard on his stomach with his arms stretched out to catch himself when he hit bottom. He broke both his rest. I went to visit him a few times at the hospital and fed as he laid in bed not able to feed himself. I have visited children homes, foster homes, the jail and my wife and I traveled across the country looking for shelter for children.
My wife and I have taken in homeless families with children, taken children under our wings, so to speak, given them food, clothing and helped them find the help they needed. We have provided for visiting evangelist and their families while they held revivals at our church. Our children have made great sacrifices and shared their toys with other children while they were in our home.
The Lord has been so good to me. He sent me a helpmate that stayed by my side through the military and after as we worked together for the Lord in our ministries.
During one of our telethon's, we let people know we were looking for a place out of town where we could take the children for meetings, camping and get them off the streets in town for a few hours each week. A gentleman called in and said he had a big barn with little more than an acre that we could rent for $1.00 for 15 years to start. We fixed up the old bar made a ball field for the children to play and they had a ball on that old farm. We had summer camp on it and invited other churches to join us. We named the farm after our good friend, Roy Rogers, who use to advertise for us free of charge.
This has been our cause thus far in life. It has been a real battle over the years, but it has been worth it all. I have always said that God doesn't give a person a burden to do something and leave them hanging. I have done, seen and witnessed a lot of things in my lifetime. Some bad and some good, but as the song goes, all the good things have outweighed the bad things, I can't complain. I have had a wonderful and fulfilling life and I owe it all to Jesus. I have had some close calls, but Jesus was there to help me through the fire.