We had an idyllic childhood. I can’t think of how Mom and Dad could have made it any better.  I remember many hours playing in the playhouse and sandbox Dad built for us.  My first bike was a pink strawberry Shortcake bike with training wheels and a basket up front.  We loved to roller skate down our driveway, giving mom quite a few scrapes and cuts to clean up since it was so steep (cut into the backside of a mountain).  We had a green 1968 VW bug which I loved, and a VW bus which we dubbed “The Brown Cow.”  We grew up without television, so by an early age we were all avid readers and very imaginative children.  Cori thought up the most fabulous games, like grocery store in the garage, dolly hair salon in the laundry room, and catalog store on the stairs.  She would design Bible story plays that we would put on every year for Grandma when she came up from Florida for Christmas, the most memorable one being the year I played Jezebel to Cori’s Elijah the Prophet.  Cori was always in there with us, never treating us like we were bothersome. That’s something that I always appreciated about her as we were growing up!  What great fun we had, playing Sunshine family, Lincoln logs and dollhouse.  We had Mandie dolls, Carebears mom sewed for us, and split all the good Strawberry Shortcake dolls among the three of us.   The only thing I regret during this time is that one day when I was five or six, I took Cori’s beautiful tea set out to play and broke half of it; that was the beginning of some very hard feelings!

By that time Daniel had come along.  While mom homeschooled us, he would play in the playroom, corralled in but always squeezing out.  I remember the year I seven, when Dad called from the bookstore to say that Keith Green had been killed in a plane crash.  I laid on the floor beside the stereo speaker, listening to the radio announcement and crying my heart out.  Cori was learning to cook by now; we had microwave brownies at least four times a week, bless her heart!  I remember the first time I cooked anything in our new microwave.  Dad had asked me to heat up his coffee for 15, so I punched in fifteen minutes.  About three minutes into it, I started to smell something awful.  The cup was melting! :)  Dad laughed and laughed; it was funny, even though I did not want to admit it!  As a child, I invented what I called a “peach” instead of a kiss.  It was a kind of open-mouthed pop on the cheek.  I was a very loving and tender-hearted child.  Mom always said that I was the softie in the family.

At this point, Dad owned a Christian bookstore, The Grapevine. It was located in the local shopping center with Loveman’s A & M Toy Store, CWF, and Kay Castle, my favorite ice cream parlor.  I used to love going down and sneaking sugar lumps from the coffee stand in the back.  We were introduced to Precious Moments figurines and all the current Christian music of the day, Keith Green, Barry MacGuire, Don Franscisco, the Praise singers, and Dallas Holms.  Our favorite kiddie listening was countless hours of Psalty records and Agapeland records.  I remember the last week before we sold our bookstore, I spent an entire day there, and Dad let me pick out at least a half dozen things from the shelves.

We attended a home church when I was little, meeting in different homes, always rotating.  The ladies were  awesome cooks, and mom was learning to cook from them…double benefits!  :)  I remember the Gills (Uncle Buck & Aunt Nancy), the Bowmans (Mr. Bob gave us candy), the Gibbs, the Jennings, the Queens, the Coopers ( I loved their daughter Stephanie), and the Carrols.  Cay Carrol was my favorite teenage girl in all the world at that time.  She was our babysitter, and we loved her dearly.   Later on there were more families, but they were the ones I remember the most.  The ministry of the fellowship started primarily as a ministry to young guys coming out of the hippie movement/drug culture.  Most of them were strung out on LSD and had their brains fried.  I remember several of them vividly, Fred Williamson, my best friends for many years, Jimmy Cash who gave me my first kiss on my fifth birthday (we both shared September the 14th), Mike Roach, Monk, Waller Tabb (who was baptized on a cold November day), and Larry and Hoyt Condra who always made us laugh.  Several of the guys wrote Scripture songs that I still love today; I remember following Fred as he careened around the living room with his guitar, strumming and singing at the top of his voice. As the fellowship grew, we had several out-of-town speakers and ministers come speak.  One was Chris Johnson, who was the first person I had ever seen eat catsup on his scrambled eggs!  He was also the first Bible teacher mom and dad had heard speak on the headcovering for believing ladies.  Then there was Charlie Brown; we visited his farm later on and enjoyed our first ever horse rides.

Sarah was born in 1982.  Mom and Dad had decided to have a home birth, so it was just the two of them, since there were no midwives in Tennessee at the time.  Mom thought all during her pregnancy that the baby was a boy, so we had picked the name John Paul for the arrival (it is still one of her nick names!).  Surprise, surprise!!!  Sarah Naomi was born on January 14, 1982, and we were holding her a few moments afterwards.  J  What a squashed red thing she was!  And she slept a lot!  Many of the ladies and gents from our fellowship came and stayed with us during the months mom was pregnant.  I remember Betty Carrol’s Apple Brown Betty, which we proudly named after her!  Aunt Nancy always let us help her in the kitchen, and I remember when the Jennings came to wish Mom and baby well, Duane hoisted me onto his shoulders and I had to duck to get through the door.

After we had left the fellowship, we stayed at home for several years.  It was during this time that I grew to love the sacrament of communion.  It became very sacred and meaningful to me; I was eight years old at the time.  We came to know Mennonite Bishop Paul and Mary Landis of Rod & Staff publishers in Crockett, Kentucky, and traveled up to stay with them for a short while.  Mom and Dad were actually thinking about moving there, but they knew that because we were outsiders, we would never really be accepted.  After that we met the McIntyre’s in Dalton, Georgia.  We made several trips down to visit them over the next several years.  I loved Mrs. Pat who later died tragically; she was great cook, and we still make several of her recipes.  They had a son Daniel that was my only “outside friend” during that time.

The company that Dad worked for at the time, Concrete Forms, was beginning to go bankrupt.  Since dad was a main crew foreman, his job was one of the first to be eliminated.  Then our across the street neighbor took it upon herself to sell our house for us!  It had been on the market for a long while and suddenly, we were without job and home.  So the decision was made to move to Florida with my paternal grandma.  Mom did NOT want to do this, since she could imagine dad hunting and fishing all day and never being home! 

So, we moved to Pensacola, which has been our home now for almsot tweny years.  Actually, it was very hard on us for the first several years.  We became so poor that we even had to sell our cars just to buy food.  We joined Liberty Church and moved to Lillian, Alabama.  The Wednesday night cell group that met at Richard and Nita Parker’s house became a haven for us.  Many times they would buy us groceries to help make ends meet.  Dad could not find any work because he was “over-educated.”  He began to do remodeling and carpentry work, but it was hard going at the beginning.  Then the power company let a transformer go bad, and it began shorting out all our major appliances.  We lived on Peg’s Lane, right next to Peg’s horses and donkey.  She was deceased, but her husband kept them for many years afterwards.  We loved to feed them carrots and listen to Applejack, the donkey, bray backwards.  We ran wild in Lillian.  It was a safe place for us to get accustomed to our new life.  I learned to cook full meals, sewed my first dress, and met many future missionary friends through our associations at Liberty.  

Early in my teens, my sisters and I began to get involved in the children's ministries at Liberty.  First I worked in the Sunday AM nursery for several years.  I was falsely accused by an sad, crippled, old-maid who reported that I played too roughly with the eighteen-month olds, so I was warned, watched, and scrutinized for a time.  After that I worked in the infant section, and loved changing diapers.  Nancy O’Brien was the nursery director, and she really like me, so I have favor in high places! J  We three older Jones girls began to lead worship for the Wednesday evening children's church and taught second grade boys' Sunday School for several years.  We loved Stand and Pat Stewart, the best children’s ministers that we ever worked under.  They were creative and funny and serious when they needed to be.  Mrs. Betty Longino was in charge of the children’s ministry at that time.  She wasn’t sure how to handle us Jones girls, being so young (I was thirteen when I started).  I did all the bulletin boards in the children’s building, and that was a first creative outlet for me!  I joined Liberty as a member the year I was thirteen; I went through the membership classes and proudly became the only teenage member out of my class.  I know Pastor John was shaking his head. J  After Liberty had a painful split the following year, the events of which I will never forget, our family left for a brief respite from strife.  We worked for eight months with an inner-city ministry associated with Liberty, Inner City Ministries of Pensacola, holding Bible clubs, literacy classes, and outreach into government welfare projects.  I had my first crush on a nice boy that I met there. J  I also went on Weight Watchers for the first time and was very successful in losing weight! 

After that we went back to Liberty for a time, and we girls volunteered for all the children’s ministries that went on, even more so when Liberty got a new pastor that we didn’t like.  When it became too unbearable for Mom and Dad top stay, we spend several months at Cornerstone Church.  We wanted to find a family-oriented church where we could become integrally a part.  We found Charity Chapel, pastured by Michael Collins, one of the sweetest guys I have ever known.  At age fourteen, I studied for and became a certified sponsor in the Missionettes program at.  I taught the K-2nd grade Daisies class for two years.  My family became very involved in the leadership of the Missionettes Club, seeing a growth in membership from 15 girls to 75 during the time we were there.  We expanded into a new education wing and added classes as we needed them.  From ages 14 to 20 I was also a leader/teacher in the AWANA Club at the Campus Church of Pensacola Christian College.  My duties during that time were to be in charge of three little girls, listening to their Scripture memory, sometimes teaching them their verses, and teaching stories during Counsel Time.  I remember my first time to teach a Bible story; there were 150 or so people and my knees were literally knocking under my skirt!  J  I also volunteered when they had special events, such as the Olympics and the Grand Prix.  Those were really fun days. 

Cori had become a student at Pensacola Christian College during this time, so I was able to play my violin in the PCC Symphony Orchestra.  Both of us had begun to teach several violin students.  In 1991 we went to our first Basic Seminar by IBLP.  Then our friends, the Thompsons, introduced us to ATIA, the Advanced Training Institute of America.  In my sophomore year of high school, my family joined the ATIA homeschool program.  Cori and I were asked early on to be Family Consultants in our tri-county area.  We were also able to travel to Chicago (Oak Brook) several times to volunteer our services in their shipping department.  I graduated from high school in 1994 with a 3.95 GPA.   After graduating, my parents decided that they did not want me to go to college at that time.  My sister Cori and I started a sewing business, making headcoverings and patterns for ladies all over the country.  Then Gentle Spirit magazine ran an ad unbeknownst to us, and our cottage industry bloomed and blossomed into a full catalogue business.  We were soon processing between twenty-five and fifty orders a week, so we were very busy for a long while.  We expanded our line of caps and scarves, Cori designing the, and me drawing pictures and designing patterns.  She did all the computer and business, while I did the sewing of custom-made veils.  In 1993 Mom had a stroke (or what the doctors deemed was either a stroke or brain tumor).  It all started when she stood up one morning to kiss Dad goodbye and passed out in his arms.  It was so scary!  Slowly after that she lost function of the right side of her body: slurred speech, confined to a wheelchair, and loss of writing abilities.  We had her anointed with oil and prayed for by the church elders, believing that God would heal her.  In time she regained all of her losses back, but we changed out diet after that.  Kathy Thomson sold om her first grain mill and Bosch Kitchen machine.  Our life was changed forever!  Mom and Dad were soon asked by the regional distributor to start selling these machines in the area.  They also started bringing in bulk grain during this time.  We called our business EduCare Natural Foods and ran it out of a room in our house.  We began teaching monthly nutrition and bread baking classes and ended up having hundreds and thousands of local folks come through our kitchen, learning how to make nutritious whole grain breads, why it was good for them and where to get their baking supplies!

Then I added to my repertoire and became a nanny at age eighteen.  The Gygax family were a Navy family, stationed in Pensacola for two years, during which time I did what I loved to do: teach.  Bob, Mary Kate, Ben, Sara Beth were so adorable. I really loved those kids; they became like a second family, since their ages picked up where ours left off. I taught Mary Kate sewing classes, then crocheting, quilting, and cross-stitching. My sister Tricia and I served as their nannies during the pregnancy of the fifth Gygax baby, Bram. Shortly after that, they moved to north Alabama, and I orchestrated our home for several months while Cori was in Dallas on staff at The Dallas Training Center.  Then I moved to Indianapolis, Indiana at the end of January 1996. 

And so the Indy saga began!  My sister, Tricia, has always had a calling to teenagers; I preferred working with younger kids.  So when she decided that she wanted to work in a juvenile rehabilitation center, my parents sent me along with her according to Jesus' instructions to the disciples as they went forth into ministry.  I did not want to go.  I had no interest in teenagers, especially troubled ones.  I now see that the year I spent at the Indianapolis Training Center was one of the most formative training times I have ever experienced.  My sister and I were well respected at ITC; therefore, we were chosen as the first trainers out of our group, Equip II, to be placed with a court appointed juvenile offender.  I spent five months with fourteen year-old Ka-Nova, having several other co-trainers after Tricia was selected to be a lead-trainer of another juvenile.  She was a black girl from Detroit Michigan.  She had a white mother who had insisted that the judge place her at ITC for  molestation, drug abuse, and prostitution.  We worked closely with probation officers, often visiting court and observing judicial proceedings.  After Ka-Nova left ITC; she disappeared and is now on the missing persons listing.  I began to feel a burden for teenagers while working at ITC, seeing so many of them turn to God in their time of need, even though they had hard lives and many obstacles to overcome.  I also experienced the devastation of sin and the ravaged lives that it left in its wake.  I received fourteen year-old Michelle from Wisconsin next.  She was certainly a challenge for me; she has been raised by a family who was deep into a cult, I received her after another trainer had begun her rehabilitation; from counseling sessions with the Center's counselor, Pastor Rueben Fields, I learned that she was given over to lust, had used being a good girl as a camouflage, and had demonic interference.  During a Scripture devotion one night, I encountered a demonic manifestation.  I did not cast the demons out, since the girl had given ground to Satan purposefully and was not willing to give up her pet sins.  There were five demons; I talked to them a while and by the power of Jesus in me was quite calm.  After I graduated from the one-year (1996) Equip program, I came back home, settling into a much quieter life for a time. I went back to work with my sisters in the sewing business, which by then was growing very fast.  Looking back on that year, I realize that it was one of the most formative years in my ministry training.  I am much the same person now that I was after that year at ITC than I was before.  The ministry skills, the training to stand for what is right, the training in boldness (not being afraid to speak out), learning how to counsel from the Word like Pastor Fields, and learning how to deal with hard situations (an especially difficult assistant leader, a court-appointed roommate who tried to commit suicide)- these things taught me so much in preparation for what I do now. 

In the fall of 1997, my mother was no longer able to continue tutoring several students whom she was teaching how to read.  She asked me if I would like to try it.  I said yes.  And so I began tutoring; the first year I had five students, and the second I had eight.  By the time I was 24, I had fifteen students.  Some were one-hour tutoring lessons, and some were day students.  I was teaching everything from phonics and reading to handwriting, English grammar, basic mathematics, pre-algebra, Algebra I, and more.  Some of my students were home schooled, and some were from local public and private schools.  I am able to do quite a bit of discipleship during my tutoring lessons.  I constantly ask the Lord for opportunities to share His truth.

Then a friend of my mother's became ill with a brain tumor.  She and her husband had previously started a 617 private school covering for home schoolers and were not going to be able to continue its oversight due to her illness.  Would we be interested?  My parents had been approached by the Chairman of the Florida Coalition of Christian Private Schools Association (FCCPSA) back in the early nineties about started such a school in the Florida panhandle area, but they had decided that raising five children and getting them educated was enough to keep them busy.  When the opportunity came a second time, we accepted.  A 617 non-profit school is a non-public school that works with home educating families to legitimize their program; it is one of three ways of home schooling legally in Florida.  Assuming the leadership of the Christian Institute of Arts & Sciences, we quickly legitimized the school, raising the standards for enrollment and graduation.  We incorporated with the department of state; we filed for sales-tax exemption and federal tax exemption and received them.  We also completed an audit and were reviewed by an accrediting board.   We received accreditation by FCCPSA in May of 2001.  As my role at CIAS changed, I started out as the Secretary & Records Clerk, and am now the Vice-Principal.  When we assumed responsibility for the school, we had twenty students enrolled; we now have 130 students enrolled in grades K-12.  Out of the twelve graduates last year, nine earned college scholarships, and eleven went on to college or university studies.  Many of our students dual-enroll at local community colleges and earn associates degrees while earning high school credits.  We orchestrate classes, meetings, socials, and graduation exercises.  I am in charge of the Records Office, and serve as a high school academic counselor. We also hold tutoring lessons on Monday through Thursday, during which time I have six to seven students per day; I also teach a seven-unit home economics course to high school girls.  I hold office hours on Friday, and I work part-time on the weekends at my family's bakery, the Bread of Life Bake Shop.  A bakery?  Let me tell you how that started.

In 1998 EduCare was getting too big to stay in the house, so Mom began to look for store space elsewhere, and the Lord led us to Osceola Plaza, right down the street from our house!  We were there a year before the Y2K scare hit the nation.  Needless to say, we spent a health-breaking year, unloading countless semi-truckloads of grains and supplies and stocking and servicing the panhandle area.  I don’t think we kids ever foresaw how much EduCare would grow back in those early days.   In 2000, we turned a corner and invested our capital in bakery equipment.  Thus the Bread of Life Bake Shop was born!  I am the inflexible person in the family, and always resist new things.  I was having a hard time accepting this change, knowing that much of the responsibility would fall on my shoulders in the areas of baking and cake making.  One night while Cori and I were working late, I opened a Twila Paris CD and on the inside cover was a verse that spoke right to the both of us. “

We are now in our fifth year as a full-line bakery. Dad does all the bread baking and does the specialty breads, muffins, and rolls.  Our top selling goodies are our signature all-natural nutrition cookies, macadamia white chocolate cookies, morning glory muffins, Cranberry Pecan Bread, Cinnamon Swirl Bread, German Stollen Bread, Mississippi Mud and Heath brownies, and petit fours.  It takes all six of us (Dad, us four girls, and employee Marisa) baking to keep up with the demand and supply.  We four Jones girls work at odd hours- early in the morning, late at night, and on the weekends.  Cori & I have been especially busy with wedding cakes.  If I do say so myself, we do some of the most fabulous cakes in town!  Cori does all the planning, finding all the supplies and does all the gorgeous decorating for which we are becoming famous in the area.  I do the cake preparation, icing, setup engineering, and floral arrangements.  Due to meticulous planning and the Lord’s blessing, we have never had a delivery disaster!  Over the 2004 New Year, we remodeled the bakery, adding Old World Italian tile flooring, painting the walls a warm golden yellow, and adding a new display case.  Running the bakery has caused many hard times in our family, I have to say. With all of us working there, at times it gets heated and sparks fly- many fights and arguments, much stress and health problems.  But overall it is worth it; I wouldn’t want to be doing anything else!  When you know you are in the middle of God’s will, resting in that takes the long-term frustration and bitterness out of difficult situations.  There are some days that I come home and I can’t step another step or move another limb.  The work is so exhausting but the Lord bears me up (especially when I am taking my vitamins and eating well!).

My brother Daniel is an EMT with Escambia County and is a volunteer fireman at the Ferry Pass Station 7.  He attends Jefferson Davis Community College and lives across town.  He is not walking with the Lord right now, something which is very painful to our tight-knit family.  Please pray that God’s will be done in Daniel’s life!

     Here are some Scripture verses that have become meaningful over this past year, even as God gives fresh manna every day, verses that have guided my life and helped me to guard my heart and stay vigilant as a Christian.

My life has been blessed.  I know it.  I look around at others and thank God for the life He has given to me.  Someday, I want to marry and have a family of my own.  But that time will come in His time.  In the meantime, I am going to be content, stay busy, work hard, and love the family He has given me at present!

I am a softie, but at the same time inflexible and stubborn.  My spiritual gifts are exhortation and mercy, my ministry gift is teaching.  I am melancholic/sanguine- quite a confused mixture.  At times I am the most optimistic person in the family, at others I am the most hesitant to concede.  My love languages are encouraging words (giving) and quality time (receiving).

My life verse is Psalm 24:7,”One thing I have asked the Lord, and that I may seek.  That I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the day s of my life, to behold the beauty of the Lord, and to inquire in His temple.”  My favorite pastime is reading the Word; I crave it so much!   It is my sustenance for living! My favorite translations are the Living Bible, the New King James, and J. B. Phillip’s New Testament.  My favorite devotional writers are Oswald Chambers, Amy Carmichael, Elisabeth Elliot, and Elizabeth George.  My name means “Expression of Worship” so I am most often found singing or listening to the radio or one of my favorite CD’s.  It is my life purpose:  to worship God and enjoy Him forever!