A Light in the Valley

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Mavon’s dad knew he was dying. He didn’t want to leave them here on the farm—Mavon, her brother, and mother, but he was ready to be with Jesus, and he reminded them from his deathbed: 

“We’ll just be separated for a short time, and soon, we’ll be together again.”

There was something else—

“He told us to go to church and to keep the little church doors open,” Mavon said. “I loved those words, and I will never forget them.”

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Her name was Mavon Keith and the little church was Vesta Baptist. Today, it kneels on Highway 217, just after it crosses Hall Creek and before the intersection which is Vesta’s only one. Tucked like a quilt around the church lies a patchwork of yellow pastureland that runs to the far trees. It’s this little church where Mavon was brought each Sunday by her parents, Homer and Jonnie. It’s here where Homer served as a deacon. It’s here, where at 64 years, Jonnie was celebrated because she’d never been a church member anywhere else.

Mavon was a tall girl with dark curls whose real name was Doris (but who didn’t like it). She was her daddy’s farm girl and knew how to work—milking, planting, hauling and slicing food from the garden, and helping with the haying at summer’s end, when the Southern heat was thick as honey. She may have worn a printed skirt and collar, but Mavon could work like one of the boys. 

When Mavon married Harlan Grissom in 1952, she continued to work on her parent’s farm while he was stationed in California. After he came home and their two girls were old enough for school, Mavon moved her work to his family’s business—Charleston Processing & Locker Plant, where she wrapped meats during the week. Tuesday was “slaughter day,” and while Harlan killed cattle out back, Mavon brought her sewing machine to the front office and made clothes for their two girls. She could sew, knit, quilt, cook, can, garden, and mend a tear in anything. She was as honest as she was stubborn, so when she told her daddy she’d keep the church doors open, Mavon meant it.

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It was a church that had begun in a schoolhouse. When the school shut down in August of 1889, the congregation had moved their services into the woods. Now in the 1980’s—one hundred years later—it was growing into its new brick building, and church attendance was as steady as a creek in spring. 

There were Mr. and Mrs. Stanton, who lived on the mountain north of Vesta and drove a wagon to church. Mrs. Lively was a Sunday school teacher who walked there alone. Lucy Craft was known to always be praying for her unsaved family members. Mr. T.A. Parker did carpentry work needed around the building, Alford McGee sang in the quartet, and Woodrow Rogers loved to play ball with the young folks and invite them to church on Sunday. 

There were cookouts and Christmas plays, Vacation Bible Schools and brush arbor meetings—and in the bustle of it all was Mrs. Mavon, who hosted young couples for picnics and planned VBS events that lasted two weeks. The skills she’d needed on the farm and as a mother now served her church well. When the quiet of autumn settled in, Mavon and her husband had the pastor over for dinner on Sunday afternoons for roast beef, corn and potatoes from the garden, and butter from their cows. The pastor would spend the Lord’s Day in that fashion, visiting members’ homes around the countryside until it was time to return for Sunday evening service. 

By then, Vesta Baptist had grown to fit its building and its new sign on the highway, which read: Vesta Baptist Church: A Light In The Valley. 

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But in the 1990’s, that light was nearly blown out. Faithful church members were growing old and dying—and Mavon’s husband, Harlan, was one of them. He’d been on his tractor one Sunday morning when he suddenly passed away. Mavon found him on her way out the door for church.

The church pews emptied. The brass bell echoed down a quiet highway. On Sunday morning, eight folks showed up, rooted there like faithful flowers in a graveyard. And sometimes, Mrs. Mavon (in her pearls) was the only one to show up. She had come back, and she would continue coming, even if she sat alone in the sanctuary and read her Bible for an hour before going home. 

Most Sundays, there were three others in the Sunday school class besides Mavon—Jim, Ann, and Mary Tate. When their pastor retired and the new preacher only lasted six months, the members called a business meeting. 

“We knew we had to do somethin’, otherwise, the doors would have to close,” Jim said. 

Maybe it was time, they wondered—time to lock the doors, silence the bell, let the storm winds blow over. But that’s when Mrs. Mavon spoke up.

“Five people are enough to keep the doors open,” she said, with all the fortitude of a farmer’s daughter who intended to keep her word. 

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Summer faded and made the trees in the valley blush. Winter melted into spring, and spring greened into an Arkansas summer, and the church in the valley kept its doors open. Mrs. Mavon was there every Sunday to see that the bell was rung and that services went on, week upon week, year upon year, decade upon decade. 

Still, they were lucky to get fifteen people past the doors on a Sunday morning. But they were fifteen people who’d been ushered inside and welcomed home. Mrs. Mavon and the other members stood like the servants in Jesus’s parable, who kept the lamp burning and the door unlocked, and who worked hard in the meantime. When she’d seen the numbers dropping, Mavon started calling folks who’d left, asking them to return to Vesta—folks like Don Sosebee, the cattle farmer. Those folks hadn’t just come back, but had rallied around Mavon when her husband passed away and she needed them most.

They came back, and they’re still coming.

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Today, Don teaches the Sunday School at Vesta Baptist, and the tables are nearly full. His wife, Bo, leads hymns in the little sanctuary with the stained glass pictures. Jim is there, too, teaching a boys’ class. Before Easter Sunday service each year, the church ladies cook a breakfast for the community, and this past April, 100 people came. Vesta Church sets up a booth at the Lavaca Berry Festival, and there will be one at the Charleston Farmers Market in fall. There are hymn sings, community meals, and conferences. 

The little church in the valley, at home among the grazing cows in the neighboring fields, opens its doors each Sunday morning to worship a King of Love. And sitting near the back, as quiet and constant as the sunrise itself, is Mrs. Mavon—the farmer’s daughter who kept her promise.

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“Stay dressed for action and keep your lamps burning, and be like men who are waiting for their master to come home from the wedding feast, so that they may open the door to him when he comes and knocks. Blessed are those servants whom the master finds awake when he comes.”

~ Luke 12:35-37

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