By Morgan Mizell

The Natchez Democrat

NATCHEZ — The Rev. Linda Fox said she knows God uses anything, even the worst parts of people’s lives as a tool for His ministry.

Fox recently moved from Tylertown United Methodist Church to start her ministry at Grace United Methodist Church in Natchez.

The Canton native had been preaching at Tylertown since she answered the call to preach in 2013.

But Fox’s call to the ministry came more than two decades earlier in a time when she was dealing with her past.

“God called me into the ministry during a crazy time in my life,” she said.

Fox openly discusses being a victim of childhood sexual abuse and said she is evidence that God can take something as devastating as molestation to help others.

“After I got my bachelor’s degree (at Mississippi College), I went to Delta State to get a master’s degree in agency counseling,” Fox said. “It was there, with the help of the counseling department head, I dealt with the anger of my abuse.”

“I was 27 years old (then). It was the first time I had ever told anyone about what happened,” Fox said.

She then moved to Kentucky, where she graduated from Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville and spent more than two decades working in Louisville and southern Indiana as a youth minister.

During her time in Kentucky, Fox, and some other abuse survivors started a group called S.O.A.R., Survivors of Abuse Restored.

“We had women who were in their seventies participating in the groups because they had never told anyone what happened,” Fox said. “But God took the worst thing that ever happened to me and made it a ministry, and it was the most amazing thing. I love to see the change in the participants from the start to the end. It is really great.”

Having been in the Louisville, Ky., and southern Indiana area for more than 20 years, Fox said she was somewhat unsure of what was going on when she felt God telling her to come back to Mississippi in 2012.

“My whole life, friends and work, was in Louisville, and I did not understand why God wanted me to come back home,” she said. “But I came back and moved in with my mother and father because I could not find a job.”

Roughly one year after returning to her hometown, her father died.

“I knew God called me home to spend that time with my Dad,” she said. “I would have never had that much time with him had I not come home.”

Soon after Fox said she began to feel the call to preach, and she considered swapping her ordination to the Methodist Church. Three days after inquiring what she would need to do, she got a call to lead the Methodist Church in Tylertown.

“I asked them if they were sure, and they said, ‘Yes,’” Fox said. “So, I got into the Methodist Church in three days, and I knew that was God’s work because it usually does not work that fast.”

She said the Tylertown congregation helped her grow in Methodism.  She is taking the last of four classes she had to take to become a provisional elder. She hopes to complete all of the work needed to become a full connection elder and be ordained in 2020.

While she said leaving her first church was bittersweet, she is excited to see what God has in store for her at Grace United Methodist.

“I don’t know what God is calling me to do here, but I do hope we get the children’s ministry and young adult ministry going strong again,” she said. “I would love that.”

Fox said she is happy to know the members of Grace already have a strong connection to the surrounding community.

“I am so excited the church has a connection with the Humane Society and does a blessing of the pets here,” she said. “I am also glad they assist with the food pantry at Pilgrim Baptist Church, as well as other outreach.”

Fox said she looks forward to getting more involved with the community and learning more about Natchez.

“I hope to become involved here with women who are in jail and prison,” Fox said. “I don’t have any specific plans just yet for the church, but I want to be all here and do what I can.”

Fox said she hopes to be in Natchez for a while.

“Moving is not fun, and there must have been 20 people in the driveway here ready to help when I got to Natchez,” Fox said. “I have just felt so encouraged and supported, since day one.”