{"id":219,"date":"2026-04-16T15:18:57","date_gmt":"2026-04-16T15:18:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/heuristic-yonath.40-160-33-16.plesk.page\/?p=219"},"modified":"2026-04-16T15:18:57","modified_gmt":"2026-04-16T15:18:57","slug":"its-always-an-adventure-couple-brings-20-years-of-humanitarian-experience-to-lccm","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/heuristic-yonath.40-160-33-16.plesk.page\/?p=219","title":{"rendered":"‘It’s always an adventure’: Couple brings 20 years of humanitarian experience to LCCM"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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April is National Volunteer Month. We are celebrating our volunteers by telling their stories!<\/em><\/div>
Kathy and Ken Wall worked with other volunteers to fill emergency food orders on a January afternoon in the food pantry at Lebanon County Christian Ministries.While the married couple are relatively newer volunteers, they bring 20 years\u2019 experience of adventurous missionary work and dedicated volunteerism to LCCM.And since the beginning, they say God has drawn them toward working in crisis situations and humanitarian aid. So, it was a natural step when they began volunteering at LCCM, a ministry that provides emergency food, clothing and shelter, during the pandemic.\u200bTheir love of volunteerism and mission work began when Kathy went on a missions trip through their church to Haiti in 2001. Both she and Ken began fundraising each year that she planned to return to Haiti. While living in Manheim, Lancaster County, they held a yard sale, plant sale and bake sale that made over $4,000 in under five hours.\u00a0<\/div>
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While they loved the missions work in Haiti, an opportunity presented itself for the couple to do missions work in Guatemala.\u201cOur church asked if we would be interested. They said, \u2018we know you have a heart for Haiti, but would you consider going to Guatemala?\u201d\u200bThe work would be intense. They would oversee a warehouse for Orphan Resources International for three years, which meant they\u2019d have to sell their home in Manheim. It was a major commitment, but one that they knew had God\u2019s blessing.\u00a0<\/div>
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\u201cWe didn\u2019t even have our house on the market and it sold,\u201d Ken said. \u201cIt just sold and we didn\u2019t even have it listed! It was just amazing how it all worked out and everything just fell into place.\u201d Their son was just about to graduate high school, so friends offered to take care of him until he graduated so they could move and get trained in Guatamala. After his graduation, their son joined them for two years.A large part of their responsibility was purchasing food, receiving donations that came from the United States, sorting food and finally delivering it to 50 orphanages.But they always knew there was very real danger.\u201cThere was a lot of drug cartels and so forth,\u201d Ken said. \u201cWe had known other missionary friends there\u2026we knew a few people who were either shot or stabbed or robbed or something of that nature.\u201d\u200bThere were armed guards at most stores and, as a driver, Ken would have to visit areas with high crime rates.\u00a0<\/div>
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\u201cOur Guatemalan friends would ask us not to go there,\u201d Kathy said. \u201cOur response to them was if we could trust that God would protect us here (United Stats), why wouldn\u2019t he protect us there? We have to believe he will protect us everywhere we go.\u201dThe beauty of Guatemala outweighed fear.They remember stopping at one orphanage and where a teen girl with down syndrome loved swinging, but did not have access to one at the orphanage where she resided.Ken drew up the plans to create a bench swing and enlisted his friends to help pre-cut the pieces. When they arrived at the orphanage, they set the pieces on the ground as they got ready to assemble it.\u201cI had the bench part made and we sat that on the ground,\u201d he said. \u201cShe was so excited about this swing that she went over and sat on the bench while it was on the ground.\u201dKathy added, \u201cThere wasn\u2019t a dry eye in the place. It was so beautiful.\u201dThe couple eventually moved to Melbourne, Florida after their time in Guatemala ended. Their next mission was yet another God moment, Kathy said. And it all started with a pumpkin sale at their church.It was an unusually hot for autumn in Florida and the church\u2019s pumpkins were starting to rot. Instead of letting the pumpkins go to waste, they instead donated them to a monkey sanctuary.Later, there were pictures of these monkeys eating and playing on the pumpkins hanging on the church wall. As Kathy looked at the pictures, she couldn\u2019t help but notice a flyer for Daily Bread, Inc. a nonprofit that provides emergency food and shelter. She and Ken decided to volunteer in the warehouse.\u201cWhen we would go to the warehouse, we felt like we were in Guatemala,\u201d they said. \u201cThe street wasn\u2019t paved, it was full of potholes. We thought, \u2018wow, we\u2019re in Guatemala again!\u201dWhen they moved back to Pennsylvania, they decided to settle in Lebanon County.They knew they were following God\u2019s calling again when they contacted LCCM.\u200b\u201cit just seems like every time we tried to do something, it\u2019s just like God blessed it and I think that really is the lesson in life, for us. Don\u2019t be afraid to do something,\u201d Kathy said. \u201cTo set out and do something good. It\u2019s always an adventure.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

April is National Volunteer Month. We are celebrating our volunteers by telling their stories! Kathy and Ken Wall worked with other volunteers to fill emergency food orders on a January afternoon in the food pantry at Lebanon County Christian Ministries. While the married couple are relatively newer volunteers, they bring 20 years\u2019 experience of adventurous […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":220,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wds_primary_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-219","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/heuristic-yonath.40-160-33-16.plesk.page\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/219","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/heuristic-yonath.40-160-33-16.plesk.page\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/heuristic-yonath.40-160-33-16.plesk.page\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/heuristic-yonath.40-160-33-16.plesk.page\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/heuristic-yonath.40-160-33-16.plesk.page\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=219"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/heuristic-yonath.40-160-33-16.plesk.page\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/219\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/heuristic-yonath.40-160-33-16.plesk.page\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/220"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/heuristic-yonath.40-160-33-16.plesk.page\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=219"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/heuristic-yonath.40-160-33-16.plesk.page\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=219"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/heuristic-yonath.40-160-33-16.plesk.page\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=219"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}