Tribute to Helen Reid

Helen Reid served in children’s ministry at Goshen Baptist Church for more than twenty years. She was a faithful servant in room 109 ministering to the two and three year olds who would pass through that room - most affectionately called, “Helen’s room.” Helen served so many people at Goshen and in her surrounding community. I had the privilege of seeing Helen minister to her young children in her Sunday school class with kindness, creativity, and faithfulness.

Helen cared for the children who came into her room. She usually prepped her classroom before the first service with a thoughtful layout of activities that she knew would entice her often shy and suspicious young visitors. As the “first stop” in our Sunday school program classroom experience for our kids, it was Helen who knew just how to engage the young children with music, activity, and usually flannel graph! With Helen as the lead teacher (and accompanied most recently and faithfully by Nancy Hartman, Jill Androwick, and Laurel Santner) the kids learned about Jesus and His great love for them. While Helen cared for the kids, I also found out that Helen was tough! After I remarked to Helen about a bruise I saw on her arm, she nonchalantly mentioned to me that one of the kids bit her when she was trying to console them in the rocking chair during Sunday school a few weeks earlier! No matter what the situation, I always saw Helen winning over the children in her room with such tender care.

Helen was creative in her teaching. She was always excited when it came time to update the bulletin boards in her room. As the seasons would pass, Helen would ask me if I noticed the different display that she had created, once again, with her precious students in mind. Sometimes the bulletin board displayed seasonal images with appropriate verses, and sometimes she would use the board to highlight the artwork of her students. Helen was always careful to make the cotton that a student glued onto a piece of paper a beautiful and recognizable sheep!

Helen was faithful in her ministry. Helen taught in her room twelve months out of the year with only a few Sundays missed here and there. The few Sundays she did miss was usually to help someone else who was in need. It didn’t matter to Helen if she had one child or ten children in her class. Her desire to share God’s love was the priority for Helen. Helen shared with me that she had such a strong desire for the children in our church to grow up in families where God’s presence was alive. She was concerned for the younger generation and knew the importance of the parent’s influence on a child in their habit of attending and participating in the local church body. She prayed for the kids in our church. As the parent of a child who came through Helen’s Sunday school room, it was an amazing gift to our family to know that she prayed for us.

In the field of photographic imaging, a photographic mosaic is a picture that has been divided into tiled sections, each of which is replaced with another photograph that matches the target photo. When you study a photographic mosaic up close, you see all of the smaller images or snapshots, but when you take a step back, you see that all of those smaller snapshots have been put together to make a larger, more complete image. For those of us who knew Helen, the snapshots of her life revolved around meeting the needs of others. In the snapshots of Helen’s life, we would see her teaching a young child, we would see her ringing the bell for the Salvation Army, we would see her at various missionary lunches over the years. But when you put the pictures together of Helen’s photographic mosaic, Helen wouldn’t want us to see her in the bigger picture of her life. As a humble servant of her God, she would want us to see Jesus Christ Himself. For in all those snapshots where we found Helen serving, she served so that others may know Him, and know Him in the way that Helen did - as her Savior and Lord.