Home   Who we are    Upcoming Events    Email Directory    Contact Us    A Poem

Tracy MacKenzie is associate pastor at Henning Memorial UMC in Sulphur, Louisiana.  She led a group to GAP several times in the 1980s while she served as associate at Riverdale UMC. Here are some of her memories of those times.

July 3, 2004

Well, hello, GAPPERS!  Knowing that you would all be busy this weekend…I e-mailed this to several of you… 

First of all, hello from Louisiana… 

There I was minding my own business (at 11:00 PM CST on Friday night) and something (maybe the Holy Spirit) propelled me to get out of bed and do a computer search for Antioch UMC and the Gainesville Aid Project…and, there you were!  I read Wendell’s article in the GAP story page and I wept… 

I just wanted to write and say a word about how much GAP has impacted my life and my ministry… 

As hard for it may be for you all to believe that you are 25 years old, it is even more difficult for me to realize that it was 18 years ago ( I think that date is correct) when I first took a small group of youth from Riverdale UMC to participate in my “first” GAP.  As I drove into the middle of nowhere, I remember instantly falling in love with Danny, Lee, Ronnie, Whit, Michael, and so many others.  I was (and still am) impressed with the power and the presence of a small, little, bitty country church on the back roads of Gainesville, GA and what they (you) were able to accomplish in a few days…with a little paint, a (largely) unskilled labor force (if you can even call it that!) and whole lot of heart… 

I will be forever in debt to all of you and the many clients and youth that I encountered during the few years that I was associated with GAP.  Hanging in my office is a photo collage of one of the years that the Lake Charles District Youth journeyed to Gainesville for that year’s GAP and the Spirit of GAP award that I accepted on their behalf that year…It is safe to say that you all are still very present in my life, even though we be separated by years and miles…. 

Some of my fondest remembrances--- 

The corn field at the Hudson’s—I don’t think that I have ever been so hot and so itchy and so happy at the same time

Saving old tuna fish cans, moving a toilet bowl planter from one side of the client’s yard to the other (in full knowledge that next year’s group would be moving it right back where it had been), the client whose walls were embedded with wasp nests, the client whose grandchildren (who had watched us work all week) on the last day pitched in and helped us finish, moving about forty acres (okay so maybe that is a slight exaggeration) with a push mover, the client whose husband opened their home to minister to those dependent upon alcohol

Great food

Bad showers (except at the Hudson’s)

Lots of wonderful evenings at worship…listening to amazing stories of heart, hope and transformation…

Nights cackling under the tree arbor

Closing worship at Antioch…and, Danny’s excellent direction…. 

There are so many other things to say…Please know that should you get this before Sunday’s closing worship, I will be mentioning you in our services in the morning worship at Henning Memorial UMC as a prayer of Thanksgiving….there are lots of reasons why you have all been in my heart and on my mind recently…I wish you all the best and I thank God for your presence in my life… 

In His Service and Love,  

tracy l. mackenzie