In God's Time

A project has finally come to fruition that has been in the making for over three years at Salem United Methodist Church in Orange. It began with Salem’s previous pastor, Develous Bright and the education director Velenta “Vinnie” Mathews-Hunter. Mathews-Hunter has overseen Salem’s Vacation Bible School program over 25 years. Pastor Bright had been in love with flying since he was a kid. He wanted to have a VBS program based on flying. Through research he stumbled upon “CodeMonkey,” a program that teaches computer coding and programing for drones and robots. It wasn’t exactly what they were looking for in the VBS program but felt it would be a great learning tool for the youngsters.

Velenta-Mathews said it really wasn’t that much at the time, but the church was still doing major repairs from damage by Hurricane Laura in 2020. The repair bill was over $200,000. The church went ahead and purchased six Chromebooks in future preparation of the program.

They were still on the hunt for a VBS program concerning flight. Mathews-Hunter was looking everywhere on the internet and wasn’t having any luck, when she got a message from a friend, Shanna Fuller from Silsbee, “Read your email!”

Fuller had not only found a flight school based VBS program, but she also paid for it. The program was $300-400 and the church didn’t have the money, due to the repair bill.

“It’s ours forever and ever, now” said Mathews-Hunter. Bright even secured a flight simulator and programed it where the kids could fly over their house.

“Children earned the right to get in the simulator if they cooperated with every teacher,” said Mathews-Hunter. “It was an incentive and so when they had done well, they would get on the simulator. Some of them were really really good at it.

“It feels like the real deal. I flew over the Rainbow Bridge,” said Mathews-Hunter. “It was a real cool experience.”

Besides the repairs to the church, another reason the program wasn’t started before now, was the fact that the Wednesday night Bible study had been online only since the pandemic. They had also lost many members of the congregation, so funds were barely covering the regular bills.

Fast forward to a little over a year ago and a new pastor arrived at Salem UMC, the Rev. Emanuel D. Echols. A young 27-year-old when he arrived, one of the things he did this past year was to return to in person Bible study on Wednesday nights. He started first with a six-week course on your spiritual gifts.

“I've been waiting for that class my whole life,” said Mathews-Hunter. Once completed, they began their regular Wednesday night Bible study with a meal. “We started our first Bible study on Valentine's Day.”

For this year’s VBS program, Mathews-Hunter decided to rerun a previous program rather than buying a new one, thereby saving those funds so they could be used for CodeMonkey.

She approached the new pastor to present the program and ask for permission to move forward.

“Yeah, when can we start?” asked Echols. “Let’s go ahead and do it. We’ve got the kids. I all we gotta do is just let the parents know that we're ready to do it.”

“Why can't we ask these parents to bring their babies (to Bible study) and then I could just go poking (around in the program) with them.

Echols said that that was a great idea and that is how it began.

There was only one problem. When they purchased the program, they discovered the computers they previously purchased did not run on an operating system compatible with the program. They needed computers with Windows. They only had one computer on which it would work. They were also working on other educational needs of the children. It was discovered that most of the children didn’t know their sight words and since handwriting is no longer taught in public schools, most 4th and 5th graders signed their name like a kindergartener. There was work to be done. Since there was only one computer that could run CodeMonkey, most students worked on reading and writing skills and they got the opportunity to work just one at a time on the computer.

Mathews-Hunter was on the hunt for more computers that could run the program. She tried surplus locations, pawn shops, computer repair shops, Goodwill, Salvation Army, any place of which she could think. One morning she found herself outside of the Hard Drive on 16th Street.

“I was about to buy whatever I could buy with my own money cause my babies came were using one computer and I was letting them make one move each,” she said. “They were so excited they didn't know what to do.”

A woman she knows was also outside the shop, Maquettia Ledet. Mathews-Hunter laughed because she said Ledet hurried up to beat her inside. Ledet isn’t a member of Salem UMC, but she frequently attends events there. When the clerk started working on something for Ledet and saying it would take a few minutes, Mathews-Hunter asked if she could tell Ledet what she was working on and asked if she knew anybody that could help. Ledet responded to let her think about it a minute and she would see if she could come up with something.

Ledet said, “There's this company that people send their computers back to but I don't know what they do with them after they send them back.”

About three weeks later, Ledet called Mathews-Hunter and said, “I spoke to my supervisor and he's looking into it.” Two weeks later she's like, “He said yes but I don't know how many.” Then Mathews-Hunter said she received a message they were being dropped in the mail because they were coming from San Antonio. Eight computers arrived about 10 days ago from Endeavors, a nonprofit.

Ledet and her son, Mark, set the computers up last week and the children will have their own computer to work on Wednesday night.

“I didn't even know that Endeavors existed or I have no idea what Endeavors does. She never explained it to me she just said they were on their way.”

According to their website Endeavors works on homelessness prevention/stabilization, parenting programs, financial assistance, and mental healthcare for those in need.

Endeavors created branded mousepads especially for the kids.

CodeMonkey is for youngsters 5 to 15. Upon completion of the program at age 15 her students will be eligible to apply for a drone operators license and make money. Currently the program is only available to members of Salem UMC.

Next on Mathews-Hunter’s list…she wants to start a day care at the church.

All in God’s time.