ATLANTA (ABP) — Eleanor and Stu Dodson named their motor home Ebenezer and dedicated it to God. Then they hit the road to follow a new calling.
Choosing to live their retirement years in a missions capacity, the Dodsons took a road trip to Fort Erie, Ontario, and Matthew House, a home for refugees migrating to Canada. Finding a need and helping to fill it is part of what the couple said they want to do, and it was exactly how they ended up in Canada.
Active members of First Baptist Church in Richmond, Va., the Dodsons first learned of the refugees in Canada through a partnership between the Richmond and Toronto Baptist Associations of the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship. They soon met Marc and Kim Wyatt, field personnel serving in Toronto. As the Dodsons listened to them talk about their work, they got an idea of how they might help.
“We were going to Minneapolis to do a vacation Bible school for a Liberian church, and we thought since we were that far north we could help out in Canada as well,” Eleanor Dodson said.
So the Wyatts sent the Dodsons a list of opportunities, and as they read it, they said they knew God was leading them to Matthew House.
Running a residential refugee ministry is a full-time job, and vacations for directors are hard to come by. The Dodsons decided they could help by giving Matthew House directors, Shirley and Jim McNair, a much-needed vacation. The Dodsons quickly learned how to run the house, and since their training, they twice have been to Fort Erie, volunteering from two to three weeks each visit.
The Dodsons describe Matthew House as a “heart ministry.” Stu Dodson said he remembers during this last visit when he helped a shy, 15-year old boy from Colombia fix his bike. A machinist by trade, wrestling with the gears and chain came naturally to Dodson. And as the boy watched and helped, the two began to form a relationship. Migrating as a refugee without his parents, the boy began to see Dodson as a father figure. Later, the Dodsons were there to hear that the boy's mother had won asylum and was on her way to meet him.
Eleanor Dodson's favorite memory is of a woman from Ghana who asked to see their motor home. As a six-year old child, the woman was given away and forced into servitude as reconciliation for something her parents had done. Twenty-five years later, she escaped and began a long journey that eventually brought her to Matthew House.
After hearing her story, Eleanor Dodson said, she told the woman, “Your faith is so strong. You know, I love you, and Jesus loves you too.”
Eleanor said the woman started to cry. Then she said, “Do you know that no one ever told me they loved me until I came to Matthew House? I never heard the word love in my whole life.”
For the Dodsons, conversations like that are part of what they see as their call to be the presence of Christ in their world.
“Christ loved the people, and he was there when they asked him questions,” Stu Dodson said.
“It's just about loving the people,” Eleanor Dodson said. “We give them hugs and take them into our lives every day. And you know, that's what Christ did. He went out and sought the tax collector in the sycamore tree. He did radical things the leaders didn't accept, and that's what we must do.”
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