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Handing out HOPE JOY
| Friday, Mar 31 2006 5:30 PM
Last Updated: Friday, Mar 31 2006 5:34 PM
She offers them a Bible, and whether or not they accept, she bids them farewell with God's blessing.
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Her voice barely leaves her lips. Her demeanor is a mix of shyness and purpose.
Emily Evans, 12, believes God called her to give out Bibles to the less fortunate. This year, Emily has distributed nearly 40 to people arriving for free groceries and secondhand clothes at the Hope Center on Manor Street.
Her parents, Evan and Paula Evans, and minister, the Rev. Rob Songer, say Emily wasn't pushed to do this. No one is stoking the fire in her heart to give.
Songer, pastor at Olive Knolls Church of the Nazarene, said the innocence of children makes them great vehicles for God's work.
"God said, 'Do it,' and she did it," Songer said.
The cynicism of adults often drowns out God's whispers. Emily's innocence was a benefit, he said. "She did not overanalyze."
Seeing the suffering in the eyes of people on the brink of destitution has touched the Chipman Junior High seventh-grader, who typically wears gaucho pants, glinting earrings and ribbons in her shoulder-length hair.
"It was sad to know there are people like that," she said after giving out a couple of Bibles at the Hope Center in February. "They seemed so hopeless. But when they left, there was joy in them. They had a sparkle in their eyes."
If Emily sounds older than her years, it's because she's not your typical 12-year-old.
And yet, in other ways, she is oh, so typical.
During a family hike in the hills behind their northeast Bakersfield home, Emily, wearing gauchos and sandals, ran up a rutted trail ahead of the group in a burst of youthful exuberance.
She told a reporter how she and her dad planted poppies in the hills in December, then related the biblical parable of some seeds falling on rocky soil and some on good soil. She said Revelation, a New Testament book filled with abstruse imagery, was her favorite, next to Matthew, Luke, Mark and Romans.
Once back home, she and her 10-year-old brother, Franklin, did flips on their backyard trampoline.
Emily accepted Jesus as her savior at age 4, Paula Evans said. She was baptized at age 8.
During those years, Evan Evans often asked his daughter if God was speaking to her. "No," was always her reply.
That changed last year. Paula Evans recalled hearing Emily's Bible-giving plan during a car ride in November. Evan Evans learned of it during the poppy planting.
Putting the plan into action, Emily and her mother spoke with Dennis Mitchell, director of the Hope Center and an Olive Knolls member, about distributing Bibles.
Coincidentally, the person normally giving out Bibles was sidelined through December and January after falling out of a tree.
But a problem arose: The Hope Center was nearly out of Bibles.
Mother and daughter spoke with Songer about this, and at Olive Knolls' My Big Fat Christmas Party, the pastor called Emily onto a podium and asked the 900 in attendance for Bible donations.
Almost 400 Bibles were distributed at the Hope Center over the next few weeks. All were nearly gone by February. Emily pasted inside the Bibles she gave away the verse John 1:12 -- "I am God's child."
"One person went down, and God raised up someone else -- a kid," Songer said. "That was encouragement to us. God uses all types of people."
Emily is a busy girl. She attends gymnastics class, plays soccer, and studies violin and piano. She's been in the Missionettes (like a Christian Girl Scouts) at Canyon Hills Assembly of God and is part of the church's Ozone, a teen ministry for sixth- to eighth-graders.
She's also a great student, according to her sixth-grade Thorner Elementary teacher, Gigi Maurer.
"She's shy, and that surprises me," Maurer said. "But when she cares about something, the shyness drops off. She has a little stubborn streak and that spurs her on."
Paula Evans said sometimes she tells Emily to just be a kid, "and she does, she jumps on the trampoline and plays in the hills.
"But sometimes," she said, "I think Emily is the parent and I'm the child."