How does God speak to you? What’s your greatest joy? Don’t you just feel alive when you’re outdoors? How much RAM do you need for your CPU? How do you cut down a tree? Have you seen this YouTube video? Want a Mountain Dew? Have you tried Voltage? How do you hang out with Jesus? Can you show me how to change out brake pads? Do you need help with anything? What do you like to do for fun? How do you build a chicken coop? What is that equipment used for? What’s your favorite BBQ? What is the best, most durable, lightest weight tent? How can I pray for you? Have you ever tried quinoa? How did you show love in a creative way today? Want to go to Belize? Tell me about your food delivery peeps.
Many of you know this questioner and you have been on the answering side of his long list of questions. Jon Womack never runs out of questions. He’s an expert at knowing how to engage anyone, anywhere, with intentional, creative and conversational questions. God has given him an amazing gift, a heart that desires to really know the people that cross his path. He’s a fun adventurer, inclusive to all, a pursuer of relationships, funny, and an excellent listener. Womack sees the good in people and often God uses him to remind them.
If you have met Jon Womack, you remember him. He is a genuine guy, transparent with his imperfections, full of laughter and holding loosely to everything. “What’s mine is yours” is a theme of Grace Klein Community and a lifestyle trait of Jon. He’s involved, whether you notice him or not.
Jon and his family started delivering food with Grace Klein Community years ago. They specialize in relationships over the food. He knows his families, calls them, has them over for dinner, repairs their computers, listens to their heartbreak, fries fish for them and shares joke books. One of his food delivery friends died a few years back and the family asked Jon to officiate her funeral. Why? Because of his outrageous love. Jesus seeps out and people notice. Everyone is drawn to the Jesus in Jon.
Jon also leads the Belize global outreach through Grace Klein Community. Many men have served alongside Jon in villages, schools and with locals. He connects people, cares for people and uses his gifts to serve people. He has deep friendships with Belizean locals and gives daily for their needs, whether he is in the United States or in Belize. He may kill us if we share too much, so just know, he is a giver.
Recently, almost forty people from the community came together to show Womack the love by surprising him with a donation to help feed students lunch at a small village school, Zion Park Elementary in Belize. The goal was $10,000 and $5,300 was given in two weeks. A plaque was given to Jon and Melissa so they could remember that we all love Belize because God and the Womacks love Belize. A community loves what one another loves. They were totally shocked by the outpouring of love you all gave to help children have a meal at school. Many of them only eat at school some days, so your gift is sustaining these kiddos.
Jon was able to share the surprise with the school principal and his excitement of so many in community joining together to care for the children. He was explaining to the principal how we were short on the overall goal to provide a year’s lunches for the kids, but trusted this money would help a bit. Then, they realized that he had calculated the money exchange backwards, so the community has actually raised enough to feed the kids for two years, instead of half of one year. How crazy is that?!! God knew what the school needed and has provided in an overwhelming way for them.
How do we explain the impact that Womack has made on the people of Grace Klein Community? Words cannot capture the ways he has served. Hosting the annual Oak Mountain camping week, teaching friends how to kayak, taking others fishing, having countless friends over for prayer and fellowship, hosting prayer nights, cleaning computers, setting up computer labs, calling people, asking questions and listening, loving missionaries, praying for hundreds of people, sharing books, chopping wood, moving furniture, helping pay bills, staying up late, getting up early, giving financially, investing in many community children, teaching, donating stuff and more stuff, working behind the scenes at community events, talking to everyone, moving food boxes, cleaning up trash, boarding up doors, visiting friends in the hospital, involving new friends, harvesting veggies, more computer work, more questions, on and on.
Living a life of gratitude is contagious. He’s the one who says yes to baseball games, last minute campouts, coffee, concerts, a plate of barbecue, packing for mission trips, worship nights and walks at the park. Life is to be lived for Jesus and he’s got one life and he is using it all up for Jesus. Who doesn’t want Womack around? Hanging with Womack is hanging with the inquisitive, hilarious, loving, generous, listening character traits of Jesus. He’s demonstrating what abundant life with Jesus can be and, in his living, he is teaching people how to fully live.
Be encouraged that together we are better. Meet Jon and have the courage to answer his questions. God will use him to show you more about yourself, the way God has uniquely made you and what you contribute to life in community.
“What good is it, my brothers, if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can that faith save him? If a brother or sister is poorly clothed and lacking in daily food, and one of you says to them, “Go in peace, be warmed and filled,” without giving them the things needed for the body, what good is that? So also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead.”
– James 2:14-17