A couple dozen St. Philippians attended Lowcountry Pregnancy Center’s (LPC) Annual Fundraising Banquet this past Friday evening. A couple dozen St. Philippians attended Lowcountry Pregnancy Center’s Annual Fundraising Banquet this past Friday evening.  After a delicious meal and wonderful fellowship at the St. Philip’s Home Missions sponsored tables, we sang along with the rest of the banquet attendees “Hymn of Heaven,” which prepared our hearts for the stories we were about to hear. First, we heard from a young single mother and a couple, all of whom are LPC clients. LPC has equipped these young parents with essential parenting armor: strengthened faith, encouragement, parenting classes, counseling for both mom and dad, and diapers. God is using LPC to offer hope and loving support, all in the name of Jesus, for those who visit their office with an unexpected pregnancy.   

Keynote speaker Evie West shared her testimony, which was the picture of redemption and divine intervention. She carried us through her life journey, which began in her loving Christian home but took a major detour as she made the decision, at twelve years of age, to join a gang to better survive her new school situation in southern California. At the age of sixteen, she was pregnant with her son, whose father was a gang leader and not present due to a lengthy incarceration. At age 18, she was sent off, along with her two-year-old son, to Lee University, a Christian university in Cleveland, TN.  Once she began to get her life on track, she realized there was additional “precious cargo” she had brought with her from California:  she was pregnant. God intervened when she began having thoughts about quietly ending this pregnancy, and she found herself at a Christ-centered pregnancy center, similar to LPC, that gave her the support she needed to continue with the pregnancy––and answer the desperate prayers of the couple from Ohio who adopted her second baby.

Fast-forwarding to 2023, Evie still lives in Cleveland, TN, and is a twenty-year veteran of the Cleveland City Police Department. Evie’s strong faith and life experiences have equipped her to offer the hope of restoration to the criminals she encounters.