Local group shows you should never give up hope

Sept. 17--A local non-profit is declaring war on hopelessness. Somerset Foundation/Heart's Cry is hosting the "Art of War" conference to give anyone and everyone the spiritual tools they need to enter a battle against whatever personal crisis they are facing.

The faith-based conference will be held Saturday, Nov. 4, from 9 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. at the Somerset Christian School on Grand Central Boulevard.

Tickets cost $10 and are available from the Heritage Book Store, or can be bough online by visiting http://eventbrite.com/ and clicking on the link for the conference.

Heart's Cry founder Virginia Dick said ticket prices were being kept low so as to cover the costs of the conference, with no intent to make a profit from the sales. Tickets include a box lunch.

This isn't the first conference set up by the organization, but Dick said the focus this year has shifted a bit.

"What we decided to do this year is an all-out conference for the community, rather than just a women's conference," she said. "We're calling it 'The Art of War.' because its going to have a threefold basis."

Those three parts are:

--The natural battle that people see physically around them, such as the War on Drugs or dealing with disasters like hurricanes Harvey and Irma.

--Spiritual warfare, or the battles being fought on the spiritual plain.

--The battles within our own minds, where people lose hope and fall into anger and disillusionment.

"It's where we get beaten down as the victim," Dick said of the third point. "What we want to do is just reassure people that we have a choice as to how we react to the things around us, and we can either be a solution to the problem or we continue to be a part of the problem. That positive outlook, that energy and that warrior spirit is what gets us through this."

The main speakers for the event consist of three Somerset natives and one out-of-towner. Locals Jody Keck, Dakota Meece and Chad Hunt are scheduled, while North Carolina pastor Dale Sellers is also on the card.

Praise and worship will be provided by Scott and Leslie Pastore, with special presentations by Clifton Drew and Elsa Brown.

As an organization Heart's Cry often functions as a go-between, connecting individuals with other non-profits and services as needed.

"We make the connection," Dick said. "If we don't know, we find it. ... It's an outreach in and of itself, but it's also a coming together to give that hope and a future.

"When you come out of situations -- abusive situations, jail, and things like that -- the worse thing you can grab hold of is the hopelessness. But unless there's somebody there willing to share that hope with you, it's hard to find."

While the group has focused primarily on women, Dick said Heart's Cry doesn't limit itself and will assist men as needed. As an example, Dick said she and others recently were able to find transportation for a local man who needed to get to a halfway house in Lexington

Another recent action was to help a lady in an abusive situation who had no local ties or family close. "We grabbed hold of that situation and removed her from that, then walked along side her to where she's in a safe place now."

In times past, Heart's Cry has held jail ministries to speak to women and offer them help once they got out, and conducted "clothing ministries," where they would find clothing for women who were being released back into society with nothing but the clothes on their backs.

"When they come out of the jail they actually have nothing except basically what they went in there with. So a lot of them, when they come out, just need the basics. They need clothing, shoes, things like that. We would try to get them that -- get them connected to housing.

"A lot of the women when they came out, if they didn't have that connection, they would end up going back to the same atmosphere that they came out of, and then that would create that recidivism, where they ended up right back where they started from in six moths or a year."

For more information about Heart's Cry or the conference, contact Dick at 606-305-1137.

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