Frankie Childers, age 96, lost her vision as the result of macular degeneration, so she isn’t able to read her Bible anymore. But that’s OK because “she remembers it in her heart,” says Frankie’s daughter, Fran Mauney.
Frankie, a resident of The Gardens at Eastside, has spent her life immersed in Scripture. She taught Sunday school classes at First Baptist of Gaffney for two decades and put Bible verses on the mirrors in her home to remind her children of their faith.
Two years ago, Frankie and Fran decided that it might be nice to share Frankie’s insights with the wider world.
“We said, ‘Let’s put it on Facebook just for fun,’” Frankie recalled. “We were amazed at the response we had.”
The result is “Frankie’s Encouraging Words,” a weekly video that began as a Facebook Live stream, but now, because of COVID-19 social distancing, is a video call between Fran and Frankie that’s uploaded to Fran’s Facebook page each Wednesday.
It’s gained quite a following; Fran says 500-700 people watch it each week on Facebook, and the audience is even larger when she occasionally posts one of the videos to her LinkedIn page.
“We call it ‘Frankie’s Encouraging Words’ because we wanted to encourage people to look up and put God first,” Frankie said.
The videos typically are a dialogue between Frankie and Fran, as they discuss a particular Bible passage and how it applies to contemporary life. The videos have become something of a ministry for the mother and daughter.
Frankie, a retired elementary school teacher who moved to The Gardens at Eastside two years ago, occasionally shares a story from her life. In one recent video, she recounted an incident in which she was driving the wrong way on the highway when a young man stopped his car, took off his shirt and flagged her down to let her know she was driving toward oncoming traffic.
“That’s an example of how the Lord takes care of us,” Frankie said in concluding the story.
Frankie’s favorite Bible verse, “This is the day the Lord has made, let us rejoice and be glad in it,” from the book of Psalms, usually finds its way into the video because, Frankie said, “it’s the verse I keep in my mind.”
