By Ray Boltz

 My wife, Kim, and I, missionaries to Guyana, South America and now Batesville, founded Lighthouse of Hope, a children’s home ministry. We are sent out of Baptist Missions to Forgotten Peoples in Jacksonville, Fla., and our home sending church is Southside Baptist Church in Tampa.

The local church we joined since being here is Bethany Independent Baptist Church in Courtland under Pastor Tim Ellis.

We have started a childrens’ home in Guyana, but after encountering working Visa problems to live in that country, we were led to work with a national pastor there to help this ministry keep running when we are absent.

In the meantime, through prayer, we believe God led us to Batesville as a stateside residence to live and to bring some boys in to care for and meet their emotional, physical, educational and spiritual needs.

We want to work with ages 12 years and younger, before they become juvenile delinquents, alcohol or drug users.

We believe if these problems can be solved at an earlier age, the teenaged years on into adulthood can be a success for both child and their family members.

Lighthouse of Hope is a family ministry reaching families. We are graduates of Salt Lake Baptist College, and have been working with abandoned, orphaned, neglected and/or abused children through foster care for four years starting in 1998, and then onto Children’s Home ministries since 2002.

What we want to do in our Batesville home is in honor of our two teenaged sons we adopted as toddlers through their foster care days. In addition to these sons, we have four grown biological children who have a great love of working with children in the same type of capacity as we, their parents, largely due to being raised in that Christian type of setting.

They caught our vision. Our grown children are all a part of the Lighthouse of Hope Ministry in one way or another.

By the grace of God, our family has helped restore many families who have had broken, stressful situations in regard to their children over the years just by helping the family “crisis” before it became a recognized statistic by state workers supported by taxpayers’ money.
We care for the child and reach the family unit at the same time.

This ministry is all donation and faith-based and financially supported by churches and individuals across the United States. It receives no governmental funding of any kind nor does it hire staff other than family. It’s a family ministry reaching families.

The home we are currently leasing, but intend to purchase, is on Red Bud Drive. It stands in need of rezoning and we wish to seek that with conditions. We would truly like the Batesville community to be a part in helping us make a difference in the lives of broken children. Together we can make a difference and we can give God all the glory!

But we want the community to know that should we ever need to relocate for one reason or another, we want a condition in the rezoning issue, for it to return to its original zoning.