People walk into this as a ministry, not as a job.”

CASA,” she said. God kept “pushing and pushing” her to get involved with The CALL, she said.

Witcher said she had a situation in her life that she didn’t think would end well.

“[I told God], ‘If you take care of this, I’ll do what you ask me,”’ she said. “[The situation] ended in a way I’d never dreamed. It had a good ending.”

Witcher, 64, said she can relate to some of the upheaval foster children have to go through. She grew up in Fayetteville, and her parents divorced in the 1950s. She and her younger sister lived with their grandmother, Esther Lawson, until their father remarried.

Witcher said her grandmother made all the difference in her life.

“She was my guardian angel,” Witcher said. “She’s the one who took us to church.”

Witcher didn’t meet her biological mother until years later. The woman remarried and had five more children. Witcher said she has tried to reconnect with her mother, but her mother hasn’t shown any interest in doing so.

Witcher moved to Conway to attend the University of Central Arkansas, where she majored in health education and sociology. She met her husband, Dwight, there, and they married in 1974.

She owned two tanning salons, taught weight-control classes at one time, and she volunteered at her children’s school, serving on the Parent-Teacher Organization, working to get new playground equipment and on other projects.

Her husband started his own company, Environmental Process Systems. He constructs and installs wastewater and water-treatment systems throughout Arkansas.

The couple performed 90 percent of the work to rehabilitate The CALL home, a former Second Baptist Church parsonage. It was also used by a private school at one time and was being used for storage — and a cat hangout — when The CALL got the house. Craig Connor of Conway, a CALL board member, had the idea to renovate the home, she said.

Someone donated odd pieces of flooring, some of which cover one wall in her office; donated sheet metal is on a different wall in the house, as are wooden pallets and barn wood. Witcher’s son-in-law