Works in Faith

About a year and a half ago Jason Smith and wife Kimberly made a life-changing decision, to step out in faith and dedicate their lives to helping others.

They created Works in Faith Inc., offering people in need home repairs at little or no cost, but they soon learned there are a lot of other needs out there.

Jason Smith was doing home repairs and saw a lot of people who just couldn't pay the amount of money handymen make, explained Kimberly Smith.

He rushed out of the house Monday to help a woman who needed her tub stopper repaired. It was someone he had recently done other work for.

"He would slowly start doing it, decreasing his rates until the point where he would just go and help somebody, and they started bartering with him, or gave him things," she explained.

"He came home one day and said that God put it in his heart to do this for people for His glory."

Smith provides labor to people, and they supply the materials, or whatever they can afford to pay. Sometimes they can't afford to pay at all. They have relied on donations or his personal income to make up the difference.

"It's not necessarily for the people that we do it," she said. "It's more to be stewards for what God has given us; using our gifts and abilities for Him."

She had the business mind for the family and researched non-profits to see if they could get some funding. There were grants out there.

She submitted everything in September 2009 and got approved Dec. 1, 2009, she said. They were very surprised at how quickly it went through the approval process.

From there they selected a board of directors.

They have applied for a grant but have not yet been approved or denied.

Stepping out in faith was not a comfortable decision. How will we survive?

"His answer was through faith," she said.

"Reality arrived and it was a lesson for me," she said. "When we put our faith and trust in God to provide for us, it's worked. We may not have; we can't go out to eat; we don't go shopping for clothes; we don't buy our kids anything; we have no cable; we cut everything down, but we have food on our table."

He's making enough on some handyman jobs to make ends meet. She's learned how to do more with less.

She can feed the family of four, for $250 a month, she said.

In the meantime they have seven families they are helping.

"We have what we need," she said. "We have a house, we have food. These families don't have much. And we are not helping people who are not helping themselves. We're not helping those who are sitting around taking advantage of a situation.

"We pray about it. We interview them. We kind of try to figure out. We have six pregnant teens one of them we wouldn't help because she wasn't doing what she was supposed to do. As soon as she starting getting back in school we started helping her again.

"Our goal is to help them through giving them a Christ-like example," she said. "To try to witness to them; to try to show them God's grace and mercy in what we're doing. We thought it was just home repairs, but it's not anymore."

Recently they began getting more calls for help. They realized that somehow their Works in Faith Inc. telephone number got into the telephone directory under the social organizations list.

In the last three weeks they've received many calls because people saw Works in Faith and didn't know it's about home repairs. From help with Christmas presents to a call from someone who felt suicidal, they just did what they could.

They're grateful to be able to use their talents to help people in need as they can.

To offer help or donations, call (863) 382-4332, or write Works in Faith at P.O. Box 809, Sebring, Fla. 33871.