Joe and Linda Ledford
By Connie Davis Bushey
Reprinted with permission of the Baptist and Reflector
 TOWNSEND — Back when they had regular jobs and regular lives in Elizabethton, Joe and Linda Ledford would escape here for vacation. Joe was Carter County bureau chief for the Johnson City Press newspaper. Linda owned and operated a beauty shop. Then they served for six years as missionaries in Canada. Now God has led them to serve as missionaries back in Tennessee in Townsend.
“It’s just beautiful, just beautiful here. The mountains are in us,” Linda said. “God has blessed us with warm weather here,” she added, noting the contrast to Canada. “It’s like being in the Bahamas.” In Canada they only saw grass for about three months each year, Joe added.
The Ledfords also are thrilled to be leading missions work in a place which draws 1.5 million visitors each year. They have lived here two years, developing relationships with residents like they learned to do in Canada. In the summer they stay particularly busy with resort ministries. The Ledfords recruit and coordinate missions groups which work mainly with campers in campgrounds, leading day camps and evening family activities.
The Ledfords coordinate about 200 missions volunteers during 10 weeks in the summer who minister in six campgrounds. This and the rest of their work is done through Chilhowee Area Ministries (CHARM) of Chilhowee Baptist Association, based in Alcoa. As Mission Service Corps missionaries they are endorsed by the North American Mission Board but raise their own support.
Of course, in their work in Tennessee they meet more people who have knowledge of the Christian faith than they did in Canada, but every once in a while they feel like they are back in Canada, where few people have an understanding of Christianity, explained Joe.
During ministry in a Townsend campground Linda gave an 8-year-old girl her first Bible.
“She thought that was the best gift in the whole world,” described Linda.
The Ledfords also will never forget their experience in Townsend of talking with a 12-year-old child who had never heard of Jesus.
They are always happy to be working with children. Though they never had children, the Ledfords became involved in missions by working with children in a government-subsidized apartment complex through Watauga Baptist Association, Elizabethton. In Canada, they started a church by working with children and then forming relationships with some of the parents. They started a Bible study for them which grew into a congregation.
“We did a similar thing to what we did in Tennessee and the next thing you know we were church planters,” said Joe.
Now that church is being led by Mark Puckett, former pastor of South Gate Baptist Church, Nashville. The church is located in Montague, Prince Edward’s Island.
That high point of seeing a congregation form prepared Joe and Linda for the next three years with few high points in Cornwall, Canada, they explained. Ministry was more difficult there, they explained.
Residents of PEI spoke English and most had at least a Protestant heritage, noted Joe.
In Cornwall, which is located near Montreal and Ontario, many of the people spoke French primarily which the Ledfords didn’t. About 80 percent of the residents were Catholic, but they perceived their faith as so personal that they wouldn’t discuss it, certainly not with an acquaintance. The Canadians in this area also were very reluctant to come to a church meeting if invited, added Linda.
So the Ledfords learned how to meet people wherever they were — grocery store, discount store, mall — and to engage them in conversation. The key was to engage them so they would ask questions of them, explained Linda.
Then the couple helped the North American Mission Board lead a pilot project, PowerPlant, in 2003. PowerPlant involves mainly students in evangelistic activities such as surveys of neighborhoods, Vacation Bible Schools, sports camps, and servant evangelism. That week the Ledfords coordinated the work of about 200 Southern Baptists in leading a block party and several other activities.
A Canadian man made a profession of faith as the result of the witness of a team member and the Ledfords though he primarily spoke French. At the end of the week he was baptized in a neighborhood swimming pool. About 100 people gathered to witness the baptism, said Joe, “which was pretty neat.”
Joe recalled talking to a young man who worked as a lifeguard at the pool. He told Joe he had heard of baptisms before but had never seen one.
After PowerPlant the Ledfords were able to start a home Bible study. They also led Bible clubs for children. Out of the Bible clubs the Ledfords met a Pakistani family who became close friends. The family is Muslim and they and the Ledfords often discussed their faiths. The Ledfords gave them a Bible before they left Cornwall. The family is still very close to the Ledfords and hopes to visit them in Tennessee.
Back in Tennessee
Since being back in their home state, the Ledfords, with help from Chilhowee Association churches, also are developing ministries to reach out to visitors and vendors attending festivals held in the area. Members of churches have served breakfast to vendors at a festival held each fall in Maryville.
“The local churches are very much involved in helping us,” said Joe. Girls in Action have helped with the campground ministry. They made fans which the Ledfords and the missions volunteers distributed to campers. The fans had a message on them about God.
The couple also are developing relationships with workers in the few businesses in Townsend and with public school teachers.
Lessons learned
The Ledfords have learned some spiritual lessons from their 10 years of ministry. They served as Mission Service Corps missionaries for two years before leaving Elizabethton.
They have learned that God will provide. Joe and Linda thank all of the individuals, families, and churches in several states who support them regularly, allowing them to minister full-time, though it is not without sacrifice.
They took to Canada only what they could fit into their Ford Taurus and lived in a motel for eight months. Then they lived in apartments. In Townsend, where apartments don’t exist and homes are very expensive because of the resort setting, the Ledfords were thrilled to receive a call from Kelly Campbell, who leads CHARM. Campbell had heard of a manufactured home for rent before it was listed. The Ledfords live there in a setting which is beautiful, said Linda.
They also have learned that God is in charge so they shouldn’t become discouraged. The NAMB and Canadian leaders asked the Ledfords to go to Cornwall and do preparatory work for starting a church there. They did what they could, but they would have liked to have done more, they agreed.
They have been led by God, they reported, who also works through people. They heard about the needs in Canada from a request from a pastor on PEI about the Ledfords which came through the Tennessee Baptist Convention.
“We definitely know we were to be there,” said Joe of their time in Canada. “We belonged,” Linda explained. Just as other Christians have experienced, “your heart is drawn to a place, people group, or missionary,” observed Joe. “We know when we’re supposed to go. We know when we’re supposed to leave,” he added. Yet they might not know the particulars for some time, he said, which can be difficult.
At one point, when they felt they should return to Tennessee, they had an opportunity in Tennessee which they “could have done,” said Joe, but they “couldn’t get a real peace about it. We didn’t want our desire to be in front of God’s.”
Then the opportunity in Townsend arose and they felt God’s peace.
They have learned to seize moments to influence someone for God or “give a witness,” described Joe. The couple also has learned to operate in the resort setting which requires a casual rather than preachy way of presenting the gospel.
When someone does this they are involved in kingdom-building, said Joe.
“Every life that is changed means that a person goes back home changed and that way it spreads,” stated Joe Ledford. | 
