Theodosia couple built a small ministry around the question: Do you need food?

When David and Mildred Brown moved to Theodosia in March 2020 to enjoy their retirement close to the lake, they opened a little business, Park and Sell, on Highway 160 across from Lutie School. They quickly settled in as members of a nearby church, and David invited every person he saw to come to the church’s services. 

“I must have asked a hundred people,” he said Saturday. “And nobody came.” 

Frustrated, he prayed, “God, this is not working out. Tell me what to do.”

The answer came to him in a message he felt as clear as a bell. “God said, ‘Feed my people,’” said David.

So, whenever someone came to their lot to inquire about parking a vehicle or some other item there to sell, instead of inviting them to church, he asked them, “Do you need food?”

One of the first couples he asked said yes, they did. “I told them, ‘Come into my house and shop.’” In their home he and Mildred had filled some boxes with non-perishable groceries, ready to give away. 

“So that couple came in and shopped in my house,” David said. “And they ended up coming to church!” 

Now, he says, he asks everyone who comes to Park and Sell if they need food, or if they know someone who needs food. About 20 percent say yes. And many of them have ended up joining the Browns at their church.

Gifts of food and help 

The food the Browns give away comes from a variety of sources. At first they worked with Engage Church in Mountain Home, Arkansas, where they lived before moving to Ozark County. The church “had a program that worked with the state to give away food,” David said. “For a while they were giving away two to four trailerloads of food a week.”

When David, now 79, and Mildred, 69, moved to Theodosia, they continued to work with the church, picking up food in Mountain Home to be given away to people in Ozark County who needed it. They also work with the Ozark County Food Pantry, David said. “They call us when they have extra, and we pick it up to give away here.”

When Ozarks Food Harvest sponsors food giveaways at the Lutie School, the Browns pick up two boxes of food to be passed along to those in need. “And other people will call us and say they have extra, or they get ahold of us and give us stuff to give away,” 

Mildred said. They’ve worked with Norma and Arthur Fortin, owners of Wing & Fin Resort in Isabella, who have a similar outreach ministry.

Now that it’s summer, they usually include fresh vegetables from their own garden with the box full of non-perishables.

 A desire to help others

The Browns don’t sit around, waiting for people in need to come to them. They look for people to help everywhere they go – and food isn’t all they end up providing. 

David described seeing a man selling produce alongside the highway last summer. “It was about a hundred degrees that day, and he was out there in the sun,” he said. “I said, ‘How about I buy all you’ve got and you go get in the shade?’” 

The man gladly accepted the offer, but not before David had asked him that other question: “Do you need food?”

The man admitted he had three kids to feed, and he could use some help. Since then he and David have become friends, and David has invited him to cut up the tops of the trees that are being logged on his property – and sell it as firewood on the Park and Sell lot. During the winter, the man, who works with his chainsaw from a wheelchair, sold 60 stacks of wood, each about half a rick. And now he’s cutting wood again ahead of the coming winter. David helps him split and haul it up to the Park and Sell lot, where it’s offered for $50 a stack, David said. 

The Browns try to help in other ways too. They helped supply water for a family that has no electricity or water at their home. And then they offered the man in the family work. 

In Mountain Home, David had always farmed and had a big garden, and Mildred worked for and retired from Walmart. David has roots in Colorado but grew up in Ava; Mildred grew up in Mountain Grove. They came here because they love to fish, but the desire to help others has always been in them, and they believe it was divine guidance that brought them here. “God guided us in this direction,” Mildred said. “And helping others has always been something we feel we need to do. We don’t have a lot of money, so we can’t do a lot, but we do what we can.”

She credits the success of their little Helping Others ministry to David’s personality. “He’s the social person. He’s the one who is always ready to talk to people,” Mildred said. 

‘People are so good’

Their work has slowed lately because of the covid pandemic, but when they hear from someone who needs food, they leave a boxful on the person’s porch or doorstep.

“And if we hear from someone who has something to give away and we know someone who might need it, we take it,” Mildred said. “I don’t have room to store a lot of big stuff, but we do give out clothes when someone needs them. I had a lady give me a bunch of clothes lately, and I’ve about given them all away. People here are so good, both the ones we help and the ones who help us.”

The Browns now live on the property that once was the site of Willhoit’s Restaurant and Bait Shop. Those businesses are now gone, but they live in the house that was the home of the late Palmer and Murrill Willhoit. They are remodeling the house, and when David pulled off one piece of siding, he found Palmer Willhoit’s name written in spray paint on the black paper siding liner. “I’m gonna leave it there as long as I can,” he said. “I like looking at it.”

The Browns plan to continue their Helping Others ministry as long as they can. They both insist they get more than they give out of the work they do.

 “The feeling you get when you help other people is like no other feeling you could ever have,” David said.