Christian Service Center benefits people in need

From left, the Rev. Wayne Wood, Gaye Wood, Sharon Sanders, Katherine Owens and Kathie Mitchell are volunteers at the Christian Service Center in the Pineville community. The center donates proceeds from its thrift store to various nonprofit organizations that assist people in need.
From left, the Rev. Wayne Wood, Gaye Wood, Sharon Sanders, Katherine Owens and Kathie Mitchell are volunteers at the Christian Service Center in the Pineville community. The center donates proceeds from its thrift store to various nonprofit organizations that assist people in need.

Thirty-one years ago, the Christian Service Center began sharing garden produce with the Calico Rock/Pineville community. Soon after that, volunteers opened a thrift store that today benefits people in need and makes donations to charitable organizations. This December, Joseph Rota deeded the building in Pineville to the center in memory of his wife, Barbara.

“In 1983, Rev. Charles Faith planted a truck garden,” the Rev. Wayne Wood said. Wayne and his wife, Gaye, have volunteered with the center for many years. “Charles raised a little of everything: tomatoes, cucumbers, squash, green beans. Then he went door to door, bringing his surplus to people he knew needed the food.”

Faith was pastor of the Calico Rock Cumberland Presbyterian Church.

“He was really against people in the church having yard sales,” Wayne said. “He thought we should share our abundance with people in need. That has been the theme of the thrift store ever since.”

Howard Wayland let the church use his empty store in Pineville rent-free.

“We offered vegetables from the store,” Gaye said. “Then Charles started bringing in clothing that church members had donated.”

Katherine Owens has been a volunteer with the center since the 1980s.

“The ones I remember running the thrift store from the beginning were Dorothy Killian and Eloise Clinton from Pineville CP Church and Montine Skidmore from Trimble Campground CP Church (Dolph),” she said. “Joann Hudson from Calico Rock came soon after. They used the money to help needy families in the community.”

The store was open Wednesdays and Saturdays, and that schedule continues today.

“A few years ago, we started making a monthly donation to the Ministerial Alliance and let them determine who to help,” Gaye said.

In 2001, Natalie Fletcher was working for Dillard’s Department Store in Memphis. She knew about the center from her grandparents Dean and Peggy Hudson, who were active in the Calico Rock CP Church.

“When Dillard’s had items they couldn’t sell, they threw them away,” Wayne said. “Natalie worked it out with her superiors to give the excess to the center.”

Merchandise from Dillard’s for sale at the center brought many new customers to the store.

“For three years, they sent us clothing, housewares, bedding, towels, dishes,” Owens said, “and some Billy Basses.”

“Dillard’s wanted a report of what we did with the money from their items,” Gaye said. “We donated it to the Choctaw Presbytery in Oklahoma.”

The CP church has had a mission to the Choctaw since the early 1800s.

“In the 1960s, Rev. Faith was a missionary to the Choctaw for four years,” Gaye said.

When Fletcher was transferred from the store, she could no longer get the excess merchandise for the center, but new customers kept on coming in. Now the center has extra money to fund local charities and church missions. For the past several years, the center has sent monthly donations to the Calico Rock Food Room, Safe Passage Inc. domestic violence programs, the Alpha House homeless shelter and the Christian Clinic in Mountain Home and the Cumberland Presbyterian Children’s Home in Denton, Texas.

On Feb. 26, 2008, a woman veered her car off the highway, which bounced in and out of a ditch and became airborne. The car crashed through the front wall of the thrift store and went out through the back wall. The driver was not seriously injured.

“Not 15 minutes earlier, I had left the spot where she hit,” Owens said. “When someone called me, I didn’t know what we would do. The building was so damaged, we couldn’t use it. There was broken glass everywhere. We had to throw out almost everything.”

On March 3 following the accident, volunteers held a meeting to find a place to reopen the thrift store.

“Soon after, Wilma Washington offered us her empty building across the street rent free,” Owens said. “She was a member at Calico Rock and a volunteer at the store.”

The building had originally been the Pineville Fire Department and City Hall.

“We let people know we needed merchandise,” she said. “They began donating better items than we had in the other store. My sister Joyce [Klein] and I were the directors then. She bought some racks. We had carpenters build shelves and racks.”

The new store had a ribbon-cutting grand opening on March 29, 2008.

Joe and Barbara Rota bought the building in 2010.

“They came into the store one day and introduced themselves,” Owens said. “They offered us the building rent free until they could move here from Colorado.”

Joe Rota had worked for a mining company in Nevada and Colorado.

“My wife said I had dragged her to every high, dry, cold, windy place in the West,” he said. “She wanted to live someplace with four seasons, warm and wet, water and trees. About five years ago, we bought a place near Pineville. Barbara was a wildlife artist. We bought the store so she could open a business to sell her work.”

The Rotas moved to Pineville in June 2014.

“My wife passed away soon after,” Rota said. “We had seen the good things the center does for the community. They offered to purchase the building, but I felt the best thing to do was to donate the building.”

In 2010, the center opened an endowment fund through the Cumberland Presbyterian Foundation.

“Students who attend our local CP churches and have completed one semester of college can apply for a scholarship,” Gaye said. “Each year, we distribute the interest among those that apply.”

Volunteers at the center come from CP churches at Calico Rock, Pineville, Trimble Campground, Rodney and Mount Olive. About 25 regular volunteers put in more than 2,000 hours per year. The current directors are Owens, Sharon Sanders and Kathie Mitchell. Gaye Wood was director from 2000 to 2007.

“The oddest item we ever had donated was a stuffed rattlesnake,” Sanders said, “but we sold it.”

“A girl rode her bicycle here one day,” Owens said. “When she left, someone had stolen it. So the next Sunday, I told my church family what had happened. They took up a collection, and Joyce and I bought the girl a new bike. She was so appreciative because she had saved her own money to buy the bicycle.”

The Christian Service Center is on Arkansas 177 just west of Arkansas 223 in Pineville. Store hours are 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Wednesdays and Saturdays. For information, contact Katherine Owens at (870) 297-3752.

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