Lighthouse Mission celebrating 30 years

CLOVIS — The city of Clovis may be landlocked, but that doesn't mean it has no need for a lighthouse.

For 30 years, The Lighthouse Mission has provided food and shelter for the poor and the needy, funded entirely by private donations.

The organization started when brothers Richard and Randy Gomez were taking part in Bible study with a small group of family and friends.

After reading a verse in the book of Matthew about providing food and shelter to the needy, the brothers and their families decided to put those words into action.

"I think it was the Scriptures that we read were very personal, that when we help people, it's like helping the Lord, so we felt really that if we want to be real nice to the Lord, we'd help people," Richard Gomez said of the inspiration to begin the mission.

They started out of a small house rented for $25 a month.

"We tried to do everything out of that house," Richard Gomez said. "We gave away clothes, we slept people in that house, we fed people in that house, not knowing that at that time it was not legal ... we found that out later."

Now with years of experience under its belt, The Lighthouse Mission has an approved kitchen by the state and complies with the regulations that come along with being a 501(c)3 non-profit organization.

Though Randy is no longer involved with The Lighthouse Mission, Richard remains executive director and a number of his family members are on staff including his wife Geri and their daughter Angela.

Geri said she does not view The Lighthouse Mission as a family operation, but rather "a community operation."

"... (W)here we have family on staff, we couldn't do it without the community, we just couldn't," she said.

"We have so many people's support that it's amazing the community has been so awesome to us for 30 years."

Today the Lighthouse Mission provides a number of different services to the community including daily meals from the soup kitchen, a clothing bank, a homeless shelter and recovery programs for men and women suffering from drug addiction.

Geri relayed the story of a woman living on Social Security who had to take in her three grandchildren after their mother was incarcerated, so The Lighthouse Mission helped provide her with clothes and carseats for the kids.

"That's just one story, there are a million, but how dark would people's lives be without the mission and the light that it brings?" Geri said.

"When we first started out helping people, we didn't start out to do it full-time or have a ministry, what we did is, we would help out our neighbors.

"When we started out, we didn't even know what a rescue mission was, we just knew that God loved us and he changed our lives and so we wanted to help hurting people."

To commemorate the past 30 years of service to the community, The Lighthouse Mission has planned "The Great Celebration" as Geri called it, for 2 p.m. on Oct. 29.

The event will celebrate the impact The Lighthouse Mission has made in the community for the past 30 years and will look at how the organization has stayed true to its mission statement for three decades.

"It's going to be fun, we're going to have a great time," Geri said.