Refresh: 2015 Spring Luncheon

By Holly Kestenis Staff Writer

ST. PETERSBURG –The St. Petersburg Country Club, located at 2000 Country Club Way S., St Petersburg, offered their hospitality to True Light Missionary Baptist Church as their Women’s Ministry presented: Refreshed: 2015 Spring Luncheon.

Women from churches all over Pinellas caught the Holy Spirit as they took a walk through Psalm 23, perhaps better known to some as the Psalm of David.

LaDonna Butler of True Light Missionary Baptist Church wanted to clean out some of her spiritual junk and to feel personally refreshed. So when she and fellow sister Coretha Davis got to talking, the wheels quickly starting moving and in no time the Refreshed Spring Luncheon was born.

“We didn’t want it to be the same old stuff,” said Butler who is known in her circle as the Energizer Bunny for taking an idea and running with it.

“Ladies we are somebody,” she said dictating that women set the tone for their homes and are in need of feeling refreshed so that their families can feel that way too. “God made us special.”

One after another women took to the microphone extolling the word of God. Desiree Sherman is a praise and worship leader at Holy Christian Church.

“Anybody thirsty for something new,” she asked listing the virtues and trials of David according to the Bible. She preached of David’s transparency when it came to his faults and urged others to follow in his footsteps in their own personal lives.

“You gotta recognize where you are,” said Sherman. “You have to be in touch with your reality.”

Bethel Community Church’s Samantha Wilson touched on the central message of the Psalm, the Lord is my Sheppard.

“God can be trusted,” she said. “There is not one situation that you can’t handle with God.”

Jalessa Holt of Truth, Faith, and Deliverance Church knows this all too well. She urges others to find refuge in the word of God and emphasizes there is a security in knowing that you are being looked after.

“We have things that get us all frustrated,” said Holt who knows what it’s like to feel beaten down at the end of the day. “The kids acting up, husband getting on your nerves, coworkers,” she said, “but we have to remember that we have nothing to worry about.”

Bridget Watts with Gateway Community Church wants women to get fit for Christ so that they are ready to answer the call when the time comes.

“I don’t want to be someone that says, ‘I can’t do it because my knees hurt, my back hurts, I’m out of breath,’” said Watts who preached that being cognizant of what goes into your body is a way of honoring the Lord as life is a gift and bad eating habits can destroy that gift before our task here on Earth is complete. “I want to make sure that I have it in me to do what God has it in me to do.”

The spirit of refreshing one’s soul continued with Cynthia Chance of WINGS Fellowship Church. She livened up the luncheon with talk of equality stating that it doesn’t matter the color of your skin or your nationality, that a shadow is a shadow, which makes us all the same. She touched on the need to shed our lives of past anxieties and look toward the future.

“There may be things in our life that cause us to regress and not progress,” Chance said. But, “if we are honest there may be some dead stuff in our life that we need to bury.”

Chance took on Psalm 23:4: “Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me.”

The verse, as she interprets it ensures that our address is not on a dead end street, but in fact just a small stop in our journey through life. As she spoke, the women in attendance heard her words of inspiration and realized although the ground may be rough at times, the valleys narrow, there will also be times when the ground is smooth or they are standing on a mountaintop.

“Sometimes we lose hope and think we’re going to be in the valley forever. Don’t worry, God is leading you out,” said Chance.

Rhonda Jackson of True Light Missionary Baptist Church shed light on women and their nature of trying to do it all.

“We came here today because we were too tired to continue to do it on our own,” she said. Women and mothers, she argued, do things before anyone else. Women get up before anyone else to prepare for the day and to help others.

“It’s no wonder we’re here right now saying, ‘God refresh me,’” said Jackson who feels women are trying to do a job that only God can do himself. She wants us to get to a place in our lives where we can just sit down.

“We have to get out of our mindset,” she continued stating that women find it hard to not be doing something. “We have to change the way we think.”

The 2015 Spring Luncheon was a hit amongst the gatherers with Karen Davis-Pritchett of Faith Church closing out the mini sermons. Butler thanked everyone for hearing the call, especially the presenters for their time. Gifts were handed out and Butler overwhelmed with the spirit of God, vowed that next year’s get together will be even more spectacular.