N.E.W. Salvation Army officers expand outreach operations
The N.E.W Salvation Army based in Rocky Mount is seeing a lot of changes these days with new leaders, a new building and more programs for people in Nash, Edgecombe and Wilson counties.
The N.E.W. Salvation Army is located at 1000 Hunter Hill Road in Rocky Mount. The new facilities, which formerly served as a YWCA and then as home to the Rocky Mount Telegram, recently have been purchased and fitted with a chapel, offices, a social services department, a food pantry, activity rooms, a fellowship hall and an industrial kitchen.
The new building has sprung to life after COVID-19 under the direction of new leaders Capt. Claudia and Lt. Wayne Meads.
Claudia Meads has been serving with the Salvation Army for roughly 10 years. She was working with a Baptist church in her home country of Brazil and was already training to be a missionary.
One of her friends was the child of Salvation Army officer parents and introduced Meads to the organization. Meads saw in the Salvation Army a framework for service that fit her plans to serve God and others.
Wayne Meads came to the Salvation Army from a different approach. A native of Greenville, Meads had opportunities in his life to be helped by the Salvation Army in 2012 and became interested in serving as an officer. He then entered officer training at Evangeline Booth College in Atlanta.
After he went through officer training, Wayne Meads married Claudia, who had moved to the United States from Brazil and was already serving with the Salvation Army in this country. The pair of officers moved to their first command in Lexington, N.C., where they served for four years. While they were there, the couple had their first child, a son named Micah, who is now 2 years old.
In June 2021, the Meads were sent by the Salvation Army to serve at their new post in Rocky Mount. Since coming to Rocky Mount, the couple went through a season of suffering and near tragedy.
Their daughter Lilah was born in November by C-section and was healthy. However, Claudia Meads faced complications and ended up the ICU unit of the hospital suffering from severe blood loss when her baby was one week old. She nearly lost her life, and it took two more surgeries and weeks of recovery to bring her back to health and full service at the N.E.W. Salvation Army.
Despite these circumstances and the fact that the Meads have served in the area for less than a year, they have already accomplished a lot at the N.EW. Salvation Army in Rocky Mount.
One of their first challenges when they came to the Rocky Mount area in June was in finishing the remodeling of the new facilities on Hunter Hill Road. The Salvation Army church and service center in Rocky Mount had been established at a site on Paul Street in Rocky Mount for more than 61 years. In July 2018, the Salvation Army, with the help of generous board members and other donors, was able to purchase the building at 1000 Hunter Hill Road.
Since that time, the building has been undergoing tremendous upgrades and renovations to make it more suitable for the work of the Salvation Army. By the time the Meads arrived in Rocky Mount, most of the major renovations were complete. However, the finishing details and furnishing still needed to be done.
“The actual construction was pretty much done, but it was basically a blank campus,” Wayne Meads said. “The building really needed some TLC.”
Fortunately, Wayne Meads has a reputation for having a designer’s eye. With help from members of the board, the building was soon furnished and decorated. Some of the furnishings, such as pews from the old building on Paul Street, fit perfectly along the long hallways in the new facility.
The building also never had been formally dedicated when the Meads came. The COVID-19 pandemic had postponed those plans for months. So in October 2021, the building was formally named and dedicated as the Penny Barnhill Center for Worship and Service.
In December 2021, the Meads made another mark on the N.E.W. Salvation Army by bringing in record donations during the Red Kettle campaign at Christmas. An unprecedented $185,197 was raised for the Salvation Army during that time, roughly four times as much as was raised during each of the previous two Christmas seasons.
Much of that money was raised as part of a national Red Kettle Challenge held on Dec. 3, 2021. On that day, the Salvation Army accepted donations of $129,534 primarily raised by board members and their friends. This marked the second-highest donation raised by a single Salvation Army command in the entire nation on that day.
Now the Meads are taking on a new challenge in the community: increasing the number of third-graders who are reading on grade level in the community. Claudia Meads sees this as a way to expand services to youth.
“We were looking for more ways to serve kids in this community, since many of the programs already here are more geared to serving seniors. We came to learn about the Joshua’s Challenge program already operating with the Salvation Army in Elizabeth City, and we felt that something similar would work here,” she said.
The Meads already had experience working with school-age children. They had both worked with the afterschool program in the Boys and Girls Club connected with the Salvation Army in Thomasville and were excited to begin more programs serving children and improving education in Nash, Edgecombe and Wilson counties.
With the help of a supportive advisory board, the Joshua’s Challenge Literacy Program began its pilot program the first of March and is currently working with students from Benvenue Elementary School. As results of that program come in and more funding become available, the Meads hope to establish Joshua’s Challenge programs at schools in Nash, Edgecombe and Wilson counties by September.
“One of our main goals as we came here was, as COVID let us, to restart and increase programs and bring more awareness to what the Salvation Army is doing in the community,” Claudia Meads said.
In addition to programs for youth and adults and holding church services, the N.E.W. Salvation Army also helps provide a wide variety of social services including rental assistance, utilities assistance, a food pantry, a Pathway of Hope mentoring program, disaster services and help for indigent former prisoners who are reintegrating into society.
For more information about the N.E.W. Salvation Army, visit newsalvationarmy.org.
Photo by Garry Hodges.