The voice starts from deep within Patricia Van Pelt-Watkins. It rumbles from her belly and through her mouth until it fills the halls of the Ambassadors For Christ Church.
“If you need help. If you’re feeling low, come on up,” she screams into the microphone, punctuating each sentence with a fist in the air. “I want to pray for those who need strength.”
Fifty fervent believers lift themselves from their seats, surround Watkins and sway to her rhythmic voice. A woman standing alone begins to sob. Watkins threads her way through the crowd, pulls the woman close and whispers, “God is with you.”
As Watkins delivers the spirit through her voice, Geraldine Phillips wends through the flock supporting those who seem ready to fall and embracing those who cry out. She delivers the spirit through her touch.
It seems an unlikely role for the two women, who one week earlier lost their teenage daughters in a plane collision over Lake Michigan. But it symbolizes their deeply held beliefs that sharing their faith heals all wounds.
“We’ve come through this because we have the peace of God in our hearts,” explains Phillips, praise conductor at the evangelical church on Chicago’s South Side. “Now, God has called on us to help others find that peace.”
“Our strength comes from on high,” says Van Pelt-Watkins, assistant pastor at the 500-member church and, along with Phillips, one of its founding members.
“It’s God that’s keeping us alive and it’s God that’s working through us.”
Taiciana Phillips and Sheba Van Pelt, both 17 and best friends, died July 19 when the single-engine Cessna they were riding in crashed into a Beechcraft Bonanza near Meigs Field. Also killed in the crash were Donnetta Ladd, a 32-year-old minister in training at the church, and four other people aboard the two planes.
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The deaths of Van Pelt, Phillips and Ladd shook Ambassadors For Christ Church to its foundation.
Van Pelt and Phillips were popular members of the church, and cornerstones of its youth ministry. The two led youth missions to the Bahamas to preach the Gospel, and they spent Saturdays preaching on city buses and trains. They sang in the youth choir, acted in church-sponsored plays and tutored kids through an out-reach program.
Ladd, a feisty tile layer who rode a Honda motorcycle and trained Rottweilers, served as an inspirational leader to the youth group. Though she had moved from Michigan only four years earlier, she’d become a favorite companion to many of the church’s young adults. She delivered her first sermon to the youth group the day before the plane crash.
Minutes after the tragedy was made public, members of the congregation streamed into the church at 7859 S. Ashland Ave.
There stood Patricia Van Pelt-Watkins and Geraldine Phillips, who’d come to help comfort–and find solace–amid a plethora of mourners.
Days later, during a joint funeral service, the two women helped lead the congregation in a service filled with joyous praise.
One week later, still tired and exhausted, they led their congregation in an inspired regular Sunday service.
“They’ve been nothing less than an inspiration to all of us,” says Rev. Joseph Sanford, head pastor and himself a pillar who has eased the congregation through many a troubled time. “Their hearts are heavy but they are very strong and they have faith.”
Phillips and Watkins admit that they have not always had the faith of Abraham. They’ve strengthened their convictions through years of adversity and times of prosperity.
“If this had happened 10 years ago, I would have been devastated and would not have been able to go on,” says Watkins. “But through time, I’ve established a relationship with God. He’s worked on my heart and brought me to the point where I can feel peace with his decision to take my daughter.”
Watkins and Phillips say they’ve never questioned that decision.
While aviation officials spent days combing through wreckage searching for the cause of the accident, Phillips and Watkins never sought to place blame. They never asked why. And they never felt angry.
Instead, they gave thanks.
“People tell me, `God has cut your heart out,’ ” Watkins says. “But I feel like Sheba has belonged to God all the time. He lent her to me for a season and now he needs her back. How can I be angry with that?”
Watkins and Phillips say that their greatest peace derives from their belief that Sheba and Taiciana transcended to a far better place.
By all accounts, the two teens were soldiers of Jesus Christ. Friends speak of their devotion to God and their unwavering efforts to lead a Christian life.
“God has not left me comfortless because I know they are with him now,” Phillips says. “Jesus had need of them. But I feel they are here with me. They are in the sun, the wind, the trees. They are in everything because they are inside us now.”