Enduring Freedom Ministries celebrates 10 years

Jul. 1—SHUMWAY — Enduring Freedom Ministries recently celebrated its 10th anniversary with a special guest performing for the fourth time in the Five and Two restaurant.

Enduring Freedom Ministries Director Vickie Kight brought back Elvis Tribute Artist Riley Jenkins of Paris, Tennessee, a EFM favorite to help celebrate the anniversary at the headquarters located in the former Shumway Grade School.

The school was purchase by Emil Lagerhausen and his wife Melissa Lagerhausen when the building when up for auction on Sept. 10, 2010. Emil Lagerhausen was a former school board member and wanted to purchase the building to keep its ownership in the local community.

Kight was looking for a location to start a food pantry, running Enduring Freedom Ministries from her home office, when she received a tip from the local postmaster there was a vacant old school building in town owned by the Lagerhausens.

Lagerhausen says he came home from work one day and his wife told him how a woman in a Fed-Ex truck stopped by the house and talked to his son, Andrew, about using the school building for a food pantry.

"Eventually, this lady named Vickie showed up about three weeks later and found me to talk about a food pantry," Lagerhausen said. "I thought: Is she a nut case or is she for real?"

Kight said at first they only used the school's circle drive of the grade school to distribute groceries before they grew to 25 families.

"People would pull in, they would roll down their window, we'd pray from them and they would fill out the paperwork," Kight said. "We'd put their groceries in the trunk and on the way they'd go."

After four months of distributing food from the circle drive, the Lagerhausens let the ministry use the school cafeteria.

"There were huge tractor tires and other supplies stored in the old cafeteria," she said. "We had to clear all of that out before we could use it...and it was a job, but we did it, little by little."

EFM then started using the classrooms of the former grade school for distribution breakdown rooms, storage and clothing as the ministries grew.

"Lagerhausen is a German word for warehouse," Emil Lagerhausen noted.

"And this is definitely a warehouse," Kight added.

A pick-up truck crashed and ran through the cafeteria wall of the building in October of 2014. Rather than fixing the hole in the side of the building where the pick-up truck made its entry, a pole barn was erected as an addition to building with the floor being the existing former grade school playground.

"When they got bids to fix the wall, they found out it was going to be just as much to fix the wall as it was to add the pole barn to the building," Kight said.

The pole barn was dedicated in memory of Fred A. Lagerhausen, father of Emil Lagerhausen, who served in the United States Army Seventh Division, Thirty-first Infantry Regiment serving in the Korean War. Lagerhausen participated in Operation Smack.

EFM found a good use for the school lockers in the old grade school when they started locker blessings in Dec. of 2015. Volunteers stuff the lockers full of toys, books and blankets for children who wouldn't have a Christmas otherwise.

They opened a soup kitchen in June 30, 2018 that is open on food distribution days. The meals were cooked in a small kitchen once used by the school.

"The kitchen was so tiny you couldn't even fit a refrigerator in there," Kight said. "When COVID hit and people were lined up to the highway (food distribution day), she (Volunteer Chief Cook Tammy Leslie) served 500 meals out of that little kitchen. We were giving them to-go boxes 15-20 at a time. She served a lot of meals out of that tiny little kitchen that day."

In 2019, the grade school was donated to Enduring Freedom Ministries by Emil and Melissa Lagerhausen. A cross was erected in the lawn in April of 2019 by Bill and Carol Mantel of Christian Cross Ministries from Cambridge, Minnesota. The EFM cross was the 222 cross Bill Mantel had erected since starting the project with a cross in Mora, Minnestota.

Work on the unfinished pole barn began with the addition of concrete floors and special area for a new kitchen area at one end of the building in late 2020. Kenny Robbins used the building upgrade for his Eagle Scout community service project as a Beecher City Boys Scouts Troop 176.

EFM started making improvements through donations of labor and materials from M.B.I. Construction, Sherwin-Williams and CCI Redi-Mix Concrete, all of Effingham.

He helped workers prepare the ground under the pole barn by chipping out the old asphalt playground and helped finish the new concrete replacement floor.

Also helping with the pole barn improvement project were several volunteers. Pyramid Marble and Bob's Discount Improvement Center donated countertops, Bob's Discount Improvement Center also donated kitchen cabinets, Community of Christ Church of Effingham and Probst Refrigeration and Heating donated a range hood and stove. A refrigerator was donated by Wolff Dairy in Altamont, with dry wall and painting donated by RMS Home Repair and Remodeling, and John Boos & Co. donated butcher block countertops and all of the stainless steel in the new kitchen to include a new sink.

Kight said, "We couldn't put the new kitchen in until we got new flooring put in. We really outgrew our old kitchen, so this is a much needed addition. It is just too small," Kight said.

She said the new kitchen finished in March of last year is three times larger than the original kitchen.

Today, the former kitchen now serves as a part-time barber shop.

"The barber shop. I never saw that coming," she said about the new barber shop that opened five months ago. "We have that old kitchen emptied out basically and a friend came to me that was a licensed beautician and she said, "You'll have to call me to cut some peoples hair and the next thing you know..."

The barber shop is open during their weekday grocery distribution the first two Tuesdays of the month from 4 to 6 p.m. and the second and third Wednesdays of the month from noon to 2 p.m. She said students from the Effingham Academy of Cosmetology are giving free hair cuts. The barber shop is closed on their monthly weekend distribution on the last Saturday of the month.

Kight said Enduring Freedom Ministries is currently in need of children's shoes and clothing right now.

Enduring Freedom Ministries actually started their their ministries 15 years ago before they began the Shumway food pantry, clothing pantry and soup kitchen in the former grade school. EFM travels to the scene of natural disasters with their ministries and continue to respond when they are available.

Kight said they travelled to Mayfield, Kentucky after the Tornado that stuck in Dec. of last year and brought their ministries to Joplin, Missouri after their devastating tornado.

With all of the expansions since the beginning, Kight isn't sure where they'll be in another 10 years. Today, she said the EFM has grown from 25 families in the beginning to serving 1,200 to 1,500 people a month.

"We'll just keep doing ... what the Lord has us do," Kight said.

Charles Mills can be reached at charles.mills@effinghamdailynews.com or by phone at 618-510-9226 or 217-347-7151 ext. 300126.