Marilyn Kunde Founder, President Love-Lift Ministries
Love-Lift Ministries began as a vision in the heart of a young child in the 1950’s. Marilyn grew up in the home of pastor/evangelists Ira and Rhoda Heath. Missionary evangelists were a regular part of her life and because of their influence she soon felt the strong call of God on her life to serve Him as a missionary, especially to reach the very poor around the world with the Gospel of God’s love and His power to change lives. Marilyn loved Christian music and as a teen she served in her father’s church as pianist. Entering a Christian young people’s talent contest her State-wide first place position earned her a four year scholarship at Southern California College, now Vanguard University of Southern California, in Costa Mesa – www.vanguard.edu . After she was graduated from Vanguard in 1967 with a B.A. in music, and a teaching credential, she taught elementary school and music classes at Prince of Peace Lutheran school in Costa Mesa. During her summer vacations she traveled to over thirty countries. Seeing the needs of people living in cultures other than our own gave new life to her childhood missionary vision. In 1972 she married Philip Kunde who has worked as a Child Protective Services Social Worker for Los Angeles County since 1963. Chris Mills, Vice-President of the Love-Lift Ministries, shares Philip’s vision of helping abused and neglected children. Besides serving on the board of LLM Chris is actively involved with Royal Family Kids Camp – www.rfkc.org . In 1973 Marilyn retired from school teaching and became a full-time homemaker. In 1976 she was invited to become church pianist at Newport Mesa Christian Center in Costa Mesa – www.newportmesa.org . Finding no Women’s Ministry group at NMCC Marilyn felt led to organize a missionary support and sewing group, initially made up of three women. Jewel Wood, the wife of then pastor Dr. George O. Wood at NMCC – www.georgeowood.com – suggested “Dorcas” as the name for this group, after a New Testament woman who had a ministry of sewing for the poor. Because of God’s miracle in the life of Dorcas … “many believed on the Lord.” – Acts 9: 36 to 42. Today “Dorcas” is still serving the poor so that many are being led to “believe on the Lord. The early outreach of Dorcas/NMCC was to provide Christmas gifts for the children of missionary families visiting the church during their furloughs, and also to provide Christmas for the families of Wycliffe Bible Translators who regularly attended our home church – www.wycliffeassociates.org . In time Dorcas Women’s Ministry Group earnestly desired to enlarge their vision to reach out to missions beyond our borders, and to help missionaries and indigenous pastors serve their communities by delivering the Gospel in word and in deed. An opportunity to expand the outreach of Dorcas was realized when the Dorcas sewing group was invited to join forces with the Christian Missionary Pilots of Orange County – www.christianmissionpilots.org The CMP had developed a project of flying gift-bags of personal care items and toys, during the Christmas Season, to families on American Indian Reservation churches in remote areas of Arizona, California and New Mexico, and to Christian orphanages and churches in Mexico. The pilots called their project “The Love Lift.” It soon became apparent that the need for gifts to be flown by the Pilots was more than the Dorcas Group could supply. The solution? Marilyn developed a plan; Dorcas would sew cloth bags for six categories: Boys and Girls, Teen-Boys and Teen-Girls, and Men and Women (later a category for Babies would be added). A colorful table, decorated with a Christmas motif, would be set up at Newport Mesa Christian Center just before Thanksgiving as the holiday season approached. Families, including children, would be invited to pickup a Christmas-Stocking or Gift-Bag from the Christmas display table. A uniform gift-list and a Christmas Card to sign would be included with each Gift-Bag. The Stockings or Bags would be filled by the congregation and then brought back to the church where the Dorcas Group would sort and group the Bags by categories: Children, Teens, and Adults. The Pilots would then fly these gifts to mission fields in Mexico and Southwestern American Indian churches. A Gospel booklet would be included with each delivery. The idea of giving church families an opportunity to bless needy families in a personal way, by age and gender- group of their choice, caught on. Participants were called “Love Lifters.” The first Sunday when the Love Lift table was set up at church, all the Christmas Stockings and Bags were enthusiastically taken home to fill by church families, and more were needed. The Dorcas ladies energetically went to work sewing more Stockings and Bags. Before long a project which had joined a few dedicated ladies in one church and a small group of Christian Pilots began to grow, and to grow fast. Marilyn and the Pilots began speaking in other local churches and Christian Schools in Southern California inviting them to start their own Love Lift projects. Newport Mesa Christian Center – www.newportmesa.org – became Love Lift Headquarters and the place where other local churches and schools returned their filled Stockings and Bags. As before, the filled Stockings and Bags were sorted and grouped by the Dorcas Group, and hundreds were flown by CPM pilots to mission fields. Hundreds more were delivered, as arranged by Marilyn, using land transportation. With the program growing, airplanes alone could not do the job. During these early years Marilyn and her husband, Philip, traveled with Christian Missionary Pilot John Huntley on mission-vision trips to American Indian churches in Arizona, Bishop, California to the end of Baja, and to Central Mexico. By 1992 as many as forty churches of various denominations, and 13 Christian Schools had joined with the Headquarters Church at NMCC in filling over five-thousand Christmas Stockings or Bags, valued at about twenty dollars each for a total of over one-hundred thousand dollars given by participating Love-Lifters in 1992! After a meeting with CMP, following the successful Christmas 1992 Love Lift, it was decided that it would be desirable to separate our ministries, each having a different focus of service. Today CMP continues to have a Christmas Love Lift as one of their fly-out projects among others, such as flying in doctors and dentists, and construction workers to mission fields in Mexico and Arizona. Our ministry adopted the name under which we are now incorporated: Love-Lift Ministries. Marilyn assumed the position of director. Newport-Mesa Christian Center remained as the Headquarters and “umbrella” for the ministry. The Dorcas Women’s Missionary Group also continued to meet each Tuesday at the church, sewing and crafting gifts in support of LLM. Dr James Bradford – www.jamestbradford.com – was now the pastor of NMCC, Love-Lift Headquarters. In the summer of 1994 Marilyn, her husband and son Christopher traveled 8,000 miles by motor home following missionary John Huntley for over a month visiting scores of village plazas and presenting the Gospel using puppets, music, a Spanish language film, and an indigenous pastor to offer the salvation invitation. During this trip we traveled to the jungle at the southern end of the Mexico, and were stopped once on the road for eight hours by revolutionary peasants, finally making a miraculous escape. We delivered hundreds of Love-Lift gifts to encourage village church congregations and their pastors during this exciting trip. Seeing first hand the needs of the people, and meeting Christian leaders serving in isolated areas, gave new impetus to Marilyn’s vision to do what she could to encourage Christian leaders who were ministering to needy people under harsh conditions. By 1996 the LLM program had evolved from an annual seasonal Christmas program into an all year long program. Love-Lift Ministries’ unpaid volunteers were now working every week of the year to fill Christmas Stocking and Gift-Bags from an inventory of items purchased, or donated by Love-Lifters. Financial donations, and donations of material goods, were meeting our needs, but just enough each month. Every month continues to demonstrate God’s miracles at LLM. We are reminded of the miracle of God’s daily provision of food to feed the Children of Israel in the wilderness – enough to meet each day’s needs, but never more than enough. By 2002 we were ready to make another major change. With the patient help of real estate broker, and soon to be Board Member, Loraine Webster, we searched far and wide to find a new warehouse and office facility where we could spread our wings and get ready to fly. We found just the place on MacArthur Boulevard near Calvary Chapel, Santa Ana. Acting in faith we rented the new facility, a considerable stretch in our monthly budget. The next step was to form an ad hoc committee to explore the possibility of forming an independent, non-profit organization. A board of directors volunteered from within the committee membership, and the board was approved. Marilyn was named as Founder President. |
January 2003 – Our five member Board of Directors was formed, and on January 22nd, 2003 we filed Articles of Incorporation registering the name, “Love-Lift Ministries,” as a California Public Benefit Corporation. The board met once a week, often until late at night, to complete the demanding work of creating an organizational structure and completing an application for non-profit status with authority to issue charitable donation receipts on our own. A number of knowledgeable advisors and consultants volunteered to help the board with the necessary paperwork.
March 2003 – After twenty-five years of ministry at Newport Mesa Christian Center in Costa Mesa, under the church’s “umbrella of authority,” and using the church as our facility, we began the hard work of moving out of NMCC and into our new independent facility in Santa Ana. Our trust in God gave us confidence that the government would soon approve our application for non-profit status.
Love-Lift volunteers pitched in to cleanup the offices and warehouse, and to paint the large interior. We sorted, packed and moved hundreds of boxes. Board director Chris Mills dismantled fourteen units of storage cabinets and relocated them to the new Headquarters. A patron advisor donated a computer and a significant sum of money to purchase the many shelves now lining the warehouse walls, and other Love-Lifters helped instal the shelves. Another Love-Lift family donated the office furniture.
May 2003 – On May 15th we received official recognition of our non-profit tax exempt status from the Secretary of the State of California. On May 26 Memorial Day our lovely new sign went up on our rented headquarters facility. Our large sign, “Love-Lift Ministries,” is easily seen as people pass by on the busy street of MacArthur Boulevard, near Calvary Chapel, Santa Ana. On May 28th the Federal Government, Internal Revenue Service, joined the State of California and gave official recognition of our non-profit tax exempt status. We were finally identified as a legal entity known as Love-Lift Ministries with full authority to issue receipts for Charitable Tax donations. Board chairman, Marian LaFollette, provided the new organization with a solid financial foundation giving us the confidence to move ahead with a renewed vision of what God was preparing to do in the future.
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2004 – Settled now in the new HQ – offices, workshop and warehouse – Love-Lift Ministries operates a Four Part Program, each program serving a different need, but each having the vision of encouraging and “lifting up” missionary and indigenous Christian leaders, and the people they serve, in foreign and domestic mission fields. The four parts of the Ministry are:
1.) The Christmas Stocking and Gift-Bag Program in two parts:
a.) The annual Christmas Love-Lift, beginning early in the Fall, in which participating . churches and other organizations fill stockings and bags, and send them to LLM HQ.
b.) The Christmas-All -Year- Long program in which faithful volunteers at our facility fill stockings and bags from our warehouse inventory every week of the year. Our warehouse inventory is purchased with your financial contributions, or material donations.
2.) The”Church Bag” Program which sends out larger items such as our created and sewn quilts, donated good used clothing, donated household items, larger toys etc. to help missionaries and pastors of small village churches as they minister the Gospel to their people.
3.) The Layette Program which helps young Christian mothers who have nothing with which to clothe and care for their newborn babies. The inventory for the layettes is purchased from your financial contributions, donations of baby clothing, or created by the Dorcas Ministry Group. Faithful volunteers at the Ministry workshop put the layettes together weekly. Each layette has about twenty-five items, including a plastic bath-tub which doubles as a baby-bassinet .
4.) The Dorcas Women’s Sewing Ministry Group which meets every Tuesday at our facility headquarters and workshop in Santa Ana to work on such projects as sewing unfilled stockings and bags, and crafting new gift-items such as quilts, stuffed dolls and toys, pillows, etc. The meeting is a time for fellowship, as well as a time to work.
In Conclusion:
At this time in our history LLM is hoping to significantly expand our ability to reach out beyond our historical focus on helping missions all over Mexico, and on American Indian reservations. Historically we have been able to help in places such as White Eagle Christian Academy – www.whiteeaglechristianacademy.com – or Black Buffalo Trails – www.blackbuffalo.org – and over one-hundred small Navaho churches who have no website. Foundation for His Ministry – www.FFHM.org is an outstanding ministry far down in Baja, Mexico, which began as an orphanage and still has this program, (as well as other outreaches) – see “The Children” on the Foundation’s home-page. LLM has been able to deliver hundreds of Stockings and Bags over the years to this excellent ministry. Also, hundreds of layettes (with about 25 items in each) have been delivered to help newborns at the Foundation’s nursery.
We have had an ongoing opportunity in recent years to send significantly large deliveries of the Love-Lift to the Tarahumara Indians in Chihuahua, Mexico. This group of people is one of the most impoverished and primitive of all Indian groups. They live in caves, raise their own food, face drought and freezing winters and lose many of their newborn babies to the harsh living conditions. Our layette program has been a real blessing to these babies and their needy mothers, many of them widows.
We have always welcomed opportunities to minister to missions in other countries all around the world. Among the countries where we have been able to help missionaries and indigenous Christian leaders in recent years are places such as Tanzania, Africa – www.maranathatz.org – see the “Tailoring School” on the home-page index. Love-Lift Ministries purchased the sewing machine seen in the picture, and several other sewing machines as well, so that a woman’s sewing group like our own NMCC/Dorcas Group in Costa Mesa could get started in Africa. Also, we have recently been able to help fill a shipping-container with a large Love-Lift delivery sent to another indigenous African church which is serving H.I.V/A.I.D.s children and families in the Name of the Lord.
From time-to-time windows of opportunity for service have opened up all over the world. During our history we have been able to deliver Love Lift gifts to these countries: AFRICA: Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Rwanda, and Egypt. ASIA/ PACIFIC: Philippines, Australia, Japan, South Vietnam, Thailand, Hong Cong China, New Guinea, Indonesia, India, Malaysia. LATIN AMERICA: Costa Rica, Haiti, El Salvador, Equador, Peru, Nicaragua, Panama, Mexico, Belize, Guatemala. EUROPE: Russia, Ukraine, Romania, Austria, Cypress, Greece, Belgium, Switzerland. Also: Israel, New York City, and Central Los Angeles. We are always alert to find Individuals and Groups who are traveling and with whom we can send an extra suitcase full of LLM gifts. Occasionally we have been pleased to find opportunities for larger shipments to worldwide nations.
Thanks for reading this rather long “History of Love-Lift Ministries.” If I were to tell the whole story of God’s blessings upon us, and upon the people which Love-Lifters have reached, the text and pictures would fill a good sized book. We look forward to the next period of “What comes next?” We are willing to serve as your ambassadors in His ministry as long as the Lord wants us to work. When our work is finished – and it will be finished someday – we will be happy to lay our treasures at the feet of the Master and rest in His good judgement.