A friendship that developed during a mission trip to Pennsylvania recently was renewed when Chris Garrison, left, helped Neal Smith build a wheelchair ramp for his stepfather in Simpsonville. Smith is a pastor in Alabama, and Garrison pastors Union Baptist Church, Laurens.It is a 23-foot-long wheelchair ramp that connects a driveway to a back door at a Simpsonville home, but the route that led to building it wound through three states and grew out of a relationship forged in a common missions experience.
When construction on the ramp was finished last week, two pastors – one from Alabama, the other from South Carolina – shook hands and drove off in different directions. Neal Smith headed home to Rosalie, Ala., where he serves as pastor of Rosalie Baptist Church, and Chris Garrison took the shorter drive to Laurens, where he is pastor of Union Baptist Church.
Both men have South Carolina roots – Smith spent 15 years in the Simpsonville area, and Garrison is a Greenwood native – but it wasn’t until Garrison took a mission trip to Marysville, Pa., in 2003 that the two met. Smith was a church planter with the North American Mission Board, and Garrison, along with a group from Abbeville (now Lakelands) Association, worked with him during mission trips in 2003 and 2004.
When Smith learned recently that his stepfather, Bill Cole, would have to have a leg amputated, he called Garrison, who offered his help.
“I sense it as kind of a calling,” said Garrison, who has a background in construction and would like to get a construction team organized at Union Baptist, where he has served since 2005.
Smith said it would have been difficult to get the ramp built without his friend’s help. He also thanked the men from Union Baptist Church who helped, as well as Dixie Lumber Company of Easley and their wholesale supplier, Hutting Building Products of Greenville, for donating materials for the project.