Sharing 'love' in everything

Jan. 14—The Learning Station's founder and longtime operator handed over the reins in 2022, ending a chapter of child development, daycare and teaching that spanned five different decades. Through the years, Becky Spell Vann was the teacher and often the mother and grandmother figure, the confidant, friend and mentor to hundreds of children locally, a labor of love that began in 1989 and will endure as Becky now focuses her full dedication into another outreach close to her heart — one right next door.

The Learning Station started at the end of 1989 and, this past summer, Becky stepped away after 33 years to channel her efforts completely into Tim's Gift Love Ministry, a mission aimed at equipping those in need with medical supplies as well as facilitating a variety of other outreach that is physical, emotional and spiritual.

It all began with The Learning Station.

In 1989, Tim Spell operated All-State Insurance on Northeast Boulevard. It was next door to a skateboard shop, one complete with a half pipe in the front. Customers could barely get out of their cars to come see Tim.

One night, he told his wife Becky, "If the building ever comes for sale, we're going to buy it."

A few months later, it did. So Tim and Becky bought it.

"We bought it, not understanding exactly what it would be," said Becky. "We were going to do a teachers' store."

Becky was a teacher at the time.

"My joy and love is middle school, and at Sampson Middle School, we had a unique group of teachers," said Becky. "We did a lot of out-of-the-box teaching. We would have lock-ins and visits. We were bringing in teaching from out of the books and bringing it alive for the kids. I think that's what sparked here when I bought this building. We didn't want a teachers' store, because it would be every Saturday working for that. So we started a daycare."

Sam Hobbs helped Tim and Becky along the way, doing some of the work it took to get the facility ready to accommodate children.

That daycare began with seven children, two of which — Cameron and Clint Spell — were Becky's.

Becky's brother Billy Smith was into arcade games at the time, and was able to procure some machines. Tim and Becky used it as a drawing card to set their daycare apart, setting up several old arcade games — Pac-Man and the like — in the backroom. Becky had six teachers in classrooms back in the early years. They sat down and did homework. When students were done with their homework, or as a reward for a task well done, they would earn credits to play as part of the center's incentive program.

Becky taught for more than three decades in local public schools, retiring from Clinton City Schools back in 2004, but from 1990 to 2004, she was actually both teaching within public schools — 4th through 12th grades, but mostly with Sampson Middle School — and also running the Learning Station.

She worked at The Learning Station every summer from 1989 through this past summer. There, the students learned, both in their studies and manners. They were also taught to pray, and given an opportunity to pray.

"It is a labor of love, and He has given me joy and the help; I'm very thankful for that," said Becky. "We called it The Learning Station because I wanted something that went along with learning, and our motto is 'keeping kids on the right track.' And that's what we've done."

In the early years, Becky would check out other daycares and gauge what The Learning Station could do to to entice both children and their parents. She saw field trips were an incredible way to engage youngsters, and show them something new. Jungle Rapids in Wilmington and museums in Raleigh were stops made in those early years. And Becky went big.

In 1993, a four-day trip was organized to Washington, D.C., with 25 children and about a dozen adults — two youngsters for every one adult — on the ambitious adventure. All the sights were on the itinerary, even a night tour of the big monuments. When it came time to count down the children, to make sure all were accounted for, one was missing.

"I just froze in my tracks right there at the Jefferson Monument; I couldn't even think," Becky recalled. "I said 'God just guide me to that child' and I told all the parents to stay with the children and pray. For 22 minutes — I'll never forget those 22 minutes — I ran up the mall, the Vietnam Monument, everywhere, then I just stopped. I said 'Lord, if you'll just help me find that child, I will never leave Sampson County with those kids again.'"

Then, she saw a head of blonde hair in the distance. The fifth-grader was looking into the reflection pool at the base of the Lincoln Memorial, without a care. She called the boy's parents and told them what happened. It was fine, they said.

But Becky remembered the promise.

"God spoke to my heart," she said, "that many times in life, we are looking for treasures in other places when they are right here at home."

From then on, she took her children to local venues and businesses in Sampson, as well as rest homes and elsewhere, learning and spreading a little cheer along the way. There was so much to do, and so many lives these young people could positively impact.

"Since 1993, we have not left Sampson County, and we have been blessed," said Becky. In the 2000s, that group became known as the Sonshine Kids, for the sunshine they brought to others. "Kids have got so much love to give if we just channel it."

The Learning Station is continuing on with a new owner, Becky's granddaughter Corie Barefoot and her husband Johnathon. Corie has partnered with Katelyn O'Neal to run the day-to-day. Both grew up at The Learning Station from kindergarten.

"I know my time here is over," Becky said upon departing The Learning Station. "I will be here for Corie, I will help her, but I will not overshadow her. The Sonshine Kids will go on."

"It has truly been a family venture," said Becky.

A new adventure continues

When Tim passed away in April 2007, The Learning Station continued, but God talked to Becky's heart again.

When someone would come to rent the building next door to The Learning Station, where Tim had operated his insurance business, Becky said she got sick to her stomach. She didn't want to give it up, but what was she going to do with it?

That would soon come into focus. After Tim's fight with brain cancer, their house was filled with medical equipment. Months later, Becky was diagnosed with colon cancer, that same equipment still lingering.

When Tim was fighting, he didn't want a hospice nurse, but agreed to have one on the condition that the family knew them. Becky called up Donna Reedy, who agreed. Reedy's care was exemplary, Becky said, recalling the times Reedy even purchased items from her own pocket to help aid Tim. On the Sunday in April when Tim passed away, Reedy was there. Church was held at his bedside and an offering taken up, and Reedy accepted the Lord as her Savior.

The offering given that morning around Tim's bedside was $480 given to Reedy. She wrote two words on a sticky note: "Tim's Gift." Nine months later, Reedy came to Becky and told her of the families that had been helped as a result of that first financial seed. Over the next year, Becky joined Reedy in working to help cancer and hospice patients.

The focus was not only to provide medical items to those in need, but to also address the emotional and spiritual needs of the patients in their families.

A new mission had begun, and no other name seemed appropriate: Tim's Gift Love Ministry was born, opening its doors in 2008.

In February 2008, Becky went on a mission trip to Belize with members of her church in Topsail Island. She was about to be doing what she loved, ministering to and helping others, but she felt alone. "I just need to know that I'm loved right now," Becky thought to herself.

When the plane landed in Belize, one of the women on the plane, who was reading her Bible on the flight from Miami to Belize, pulled Becky aside and said "God spoke to my heart to tell me he loves you." That's all she needed to hear.

"I was on 'go'," said Becky. During the two-week trip, Becky helped teach in a small block building, a modest, almost run-down structure they served as a school. The regular teacher was going to be gone, and Becky volunteered to step in.

"God loved me enough that He opened the door for me to teach in a foreign country."

The class' English assignment was to write about the Good Samaritan, a parable that a true neighbor and friend is the one who shows mercy to their fellow man.

"All of those little things have been very intricate ... in what He was going to do next door," said Becky of what would be Tim's Gift. "God's given me my dream of helping foreign nations, but most of all helping people right here at home."

Tim's Gift employee Jennifer Brewer started with the business in 2015. Brewer has been an "unbelievable" addition, Becky attested.

"It's the two of us," she said. "We've been with each other going on eight years. She's been phenomenal."

Along with Becky and Jennifer, there are five volunteers who come in every single week.

"We have amazing volunteers who help keep it going," she said, "and people in the community — they've heard about it, or talked to people who have been helped. It really is clicking. It's fun, it's challenging."

Tim's Gift has held a golf tournament since it opened, in order to help raise funds. There are eight churches in Clinton that also regularly donate. Tim's Gift pays it forward to them and countless others across the community, and beyond this country's borders.

"We have people coming to us for equipment that they cannot get at Matthews (Drug), because things are short — they can't get parts," said Becky. "We have people begging for wheelchairs, rollators."

It's taken more than a decade to network with local hospices and other groups, but Tim's Gift is firmly on the map. They are in a position to help people with medical needs — not just locally, but across the world. Every month, a shipment is sent to Honduras. Twice a year, a shipment goes to Africa.

For eight years, Becky had a youth titanium wheelchair in her possession, tucked away with no purpose. Tim's Gift volunteers Kay and Gene Boyette took it to Honduras and, when they unloaded the small wheelchair, a 10-year-old girl crawled to it and climbed up into it, Becky recalled. They took a photo and sent it back to Becky.

"We hold onto things when He wants us to let go," said Becky, drawing inspiration from that lesson in her own life. She was burning the candle at both ends at The Learning Station and Tim's Gift, and it was time to let the former go to focus on the love ministry.

Tim's Gift, Inc. has a Board of Directors that includes local businessmen and women and the nonprofit 501(c)(3) is funded through private donations and grants, with those donations coming in the form of finances and medical equipment. An application process is used to determine each need and equipment availability.

But it doesn't end there.

Tim's Gift also offers emotional and spiritual support, with a prayer team available for patients and their family. Non-medical items such as fruit, vegetables, flowers, and a litany of other items are delivered to clients as they are donated or available.

Becky beams when sharing the many stories of how people pitched in with help or a donation to the love ministry — a gift of teddy bears, produce, money or any item that may no longer be of use to them but can be of much use to another — and how the ministry reached out and was able to offer aid when it was so direly needed.

She is able to rattle off the many names through the years who impacted Tim's Gift or the Sonshine Kids at The Learning Station and who were likewise impacted, how people touched her heart and how she touched theirs, swelling at pride at how their lives were able to intertwine and be made better through a simple act of caring and love.

Becky received the 2021 Distinguished Alumni Award from her alma mater Methodist University for her many efforts over the years, an accolade of which she is proud, but not at all why she and others do what they do. While she is more than willing to talk about her times with Tim as well as her second husband James Vann (who passed at the end of 2014), as well as the origins of The Learning Station and Tim's Gift, Becky eschews any attention to herself, and instead heaps praise onto others and gives Glory to God for everything.

She said it has become a village working to look after the needs of others. It has taken on a life of its own.

"It's the community that is making this happen," she stated.

"It's just been a wonderful adventure," she continued. "The greatest gift is seeing how God was giving me signs all along, when I didn't understand. When He puts the puzzle together as we get older, and we look back, I realize I've missed many blessings by not listening. I'm very thankful that the hardships I endured brought happiness to the work that I'm doing. I'd rather be doing this than sitting back twiddling my thumbs, and I want to know that it is fruitful — and it does bears fruit.

"I'm blessed beyond measure, but it's the people who have come along beside us, walking with us and volunteering," she said. "That's the kind of people we have in this community."

Visit timsgift.com to read more about the local outreach, what they have done and how you can help.

Editor Chris Berendt can be reached at 910-592-8137 ext. 2587.