Little Rock’s Go Near Ministry Grew Out Of Scripture

FARMINGTON — Go Near Ministry in Little Rock grew out of the scripture James 1:27, says Melody Taylor, executive director.

James 1:27 says this: “Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world.”

Taylor said the name “Go Near” comes from the God’s directive in the Bible verse “to visit” orphans and widows.

She and her husband, Lewis, were out of college, married, active in their church in Little Rock but realized they needed to get outside the walls of their church to help others.

They began serving the inner city areas in Little Rock with their children. Their daughter, then 14 at the time, asked to go on an overseas mission trip. Taylor said she saw from that trip to an orphanage in Guatamala the impact others could have on children in poverty and at the same time, saw how the mission trip affected the teenagers themselves.

She said she realized she had to go on more trips.

The Taylors believed God was leading them to go serve full-time and a friend told them about a ministry in Africa.

“There are millions of children in Africa who are orphans. There’s extreme poverty and no government help for them,” Taylor said.

The couple cashed out their retirement plans and raised the support to serve in Kenya. They stayed for about six months and then had to evacuate because of the war. They then came home to Little Rock for two years, before returning to Africa later for a second time to serve full-time in the country.

Today, they live in Little Rock but Melody Taylor leads mission trips to Kenya twice a year. These groups include men and women of all ages, high school students and college students.

Go Near Ministry, founded in 2005, has a board of directors, an attorney and accountant ( all volunteers) and the ministry is used as a vehicle to partner with programs already in place in Kenya to serve orphans, children, widows and men and women in prison, Taylor said.

The ministry is used to raise money to help send people to Kenya but money also has been used to build classrooms, purchase supplies, provide hot meals for women and children and provide training so that Kenyan men and women can learn a skill to support themselves and their families.

For example, Taylor said, Go Near partners with Pastor George Otieno to provide a training program to teach widows in the Gituamba slums how to sew.

The ministry purchases the sewing machines and materials for the women.

Another program is teaching men how to grow and harvest bamboo and sell it.

Taylor said she started the prison ministry because of the scripture from Matthew 25:36 where Jesus talks about visiting prisons.

The vision of the ministry is to empower widows, orphans, women and children by raising them out of extreme poverty.

Its goals are to advocate for the poor to community, church and school groups and to educate and mobilize people to connect and serve the poor through fundraising and volunteer mission opportunities.

Other goals are to partner with the countries and empower the poor through skill training, education and community development projects.

For more information on the ministry, visit the website, go- near. org or email Taylor at gonearministry@gmail.com.

Taylor