Joel 2 Missions a dream come true to pastor, victims
Katherine Mansfield
Residents of Joel 2 Missions home in Fayette County will dine and worship together inside the spacious cafeteria. Community is important for healing, said Pastor Paula Millsaps.
Katherine Mansfield
Former classrooms have been transformed into spacious suites, where families can live together safely on Joel to Missions campus. Relics of the building’s past life live in quirky details, like chalkboard walls or water fountains in the suites.
Katherine Mansfield
Pastor Paula Millsaps exudes peace. She answered a call from God and moved from Wilmington, North Carolina, to southwestern Pennsylvania nearly four years ago to found Joel 2 Missions, a domestic violence shelter that offers refuge, hope and healing. Millsaps was ordained in 2017, has a master’s degree and recently earned her doctorate in education.
Katherine Mansfield
Evening worship services wouldn’t be complete without coffee, which guests to Joel 2 Missions East Millsboro campus are welcome to help themselves to before church on Friday evenings. The elementary school-turned-domestic violence shelter and safe haven maintains funky features like tiled walls and water fountains throughout.
Katherine Mansfield
Local churches, businesses and individuals have generously donated time, funds and supplies to transform the former Central Elementary School into the future Joel 2 Missions home.
Katherine Mansfield
The entrance to Joel 2 Missions is colorfully calming. Millsaps said a prophetic artist created the tilework art piece, which depicts the elementary school layout.
Katherine Mansfield
When Pastor Paula Millsaps’s daughter, Baizia, gifted this painting, Millsaps said she had the perfect home for her daughter’s artwork. The piece greets folks near the entrance of Joel 2 Missions home in East Millsboro.
Katherine Mansfield
Classrooms have been transformed into suites on Joel 2 Missions campus, which will open to women and children this fall. The ministry is still accepting donations of new mattresses, box springs and bunk bed frames for future residents.
Katherine Mansfield
With the community’s generosity and assistance, Joel 2 Missions will open to residents this fall.
Katherine Mansfield
The former Central Elementary School is being renovated, and soon will house women and children seeking safety from abusive homes, or women escaping the sex trafficking industry.
Katherine Mansfield
Led by Pastor Paula Millsaps, who is herself a domestic violence survivor, Joel 2 Missions house will open its doors to women and children seeking safety and healing this fall.
Katherine Mansfield
Joel 2 Missions home sits on eight-and-a-half acres of lush green land. A former elementary school, this domestic violence shelter led by Pastor Paula Millsaps will provide women and children an opportunity to heal, to learn and to grow.
Courtesy Paula Millsaps
Courtesy Paula Millsaps
When Joel 2 Missions home opens this fall, families will move into former classrooms that have been converted into cheerful, spacious suites. Suites are named in honor of the generous donors who made this dream possible for Pastor Paula Millsaps and all those who seek refuge at the mission.
Courtesy Paula Millsaps
Joel 2 Missions suites pay homage to their classroom days with funky flooring and chalkboard walls. Single women will live two per room, while families will live together on the campus.
Take the country road lined on either side by blooming trees far enough, and you’ll find yourself at the foot of a short drive that cuts through fields of lush, green grass, runs past a vibrant mural and leads to the glass front doors of Joel 2 Mission, a domestic violence shelter slated to open in East Millsboro, Fayette County this fall.
For women and children living in abusive homes, the building is a godsend. For Pastor Paula Millsaps, opening the Joel 2 Missions shelter is a dream come true.
“I was invited up here to preach at the Christian Center Church in Belle Vernon (in 2016) … and fell in love with the area. And then in 2017, I came back for a second visit, and that’s when I found this building,” Millsaps said, in a voice tinged with a southern drawl, as she stood in the shelter’s kitchen on a recent weekday.
Millsaps, born and raised in Wilmington, North Carolina, and ordained in 2017, lit up as she recounted how this building came to her in a vision.
“What was crazy about this building – I walked into it, and all I could do was cry because I literally had dreams about this building for 10 years. Only I saw it done. I saw it with women and children in it. So when we found it, I was just overwhelmed.”
Like its founder, the Joel 2 Missions campus has been reborn. The building that will soon house women and families seeking refuge was once Central Elementary School; the once-broken woman who purchased the old school in 2016 is whole again – and wholly determined to offer safety and healing to others.
“I am a survivor of domestic violence. I am also a survivor of childhood sexual abuse,” said Millsaps, who has spent nearly a decade administering deliverance, counseling and inner healing. “What I’ve found is a lot of people experience stages of abuse. If they’re abused as children, then unknowingly they make choices to be with people who are also abusive when they go into relationships.”
When Millsaps left her ex-husband, she said she was thrust into the working world.
“I didn’t take time to heal myself. I had to just go straight to work and start putting food on the table, taking care of kids,” she said. “When I came back to the Lord, I began to dream about a place where we could support and build a community around women who were trying to do the same thing. I kept saying, Lord, we should have a place where we can do this faster. It shouldn’t take 15 years to get to a place where you’re ready to go back to school and complete your life.
Joel 2 Missions is that place.
When it opens this fall – or January 2023, at the latest – J2M will house between 80 and 100 women and children, including families fleeing domestic violence at home, single women leaving an abusive partnership and women escaping the sex trafficking industry (Fayette County has the second-highest rate of sex trafficking rate in Pennsylvania).
Many domestic violence shelters limit how many people can live in one room. Victims with more than three children must choose which kids enter the shelter and which kids are left at home with the abuser, relatives or friends.
“We want to … keep the family unit together,” said Millsaps.
Donors and volunteers have transformed Central Elementary into a sanctuary where families and single women alike will feel at home and at peace. Former classrooms sponsored by generous donors have been repurposed into airy, 1,000-square-foot suites residents may call “home” for up to five years. There is no charge for the first year of residency, Millsaps said, because she wants women and children to focus on being whole again.
“The first year, we concentrate on healing the individual and healing the children and healing the family unit,” she said. “What’s the gold inside them? What did God create them for? What’s their purpose? How do we dig that gold out from all the debris that’s been piled on top of it? Then make a plan for them going forward for how to walk in that purpose.”
Several J2M volunteers hold masters of education (Millsaps herself recently earned a doctorate of education and Christian leadership). For safety and healing purposes, children living on campus will be homeschooled. Residents will dine together in the large cafeteria to foster community and trust, and Millsaps said pastors will lead church services in that space on Sundays.
When women are ready, they can pursue a college degree, earn a trade certificate or begin working. Millsaps said no matter what their dreams, she and the J2M volunteers will be with their residents every step of the way.
“Whatever they need to do to walk in their purpose, we want them to have a supportive community while they do that,” said Millsaps.
Already, Millsaps is receiving calls from women ready to move into J2M and find peace on the idyllic, eight-and-a-half acre campus situated in the fresh country air. The non-profit also receives calls from similar organizations whose beds are full.
“COVID increased domestic violence 30% – and those are just our initial numbers,” Millsaps said. “The organizations around us that do housing want us to be open because they don’t have beds available. I have domestic violence centers from North Carolina calling me, saying, ‘Do you have room?’ They’re full. And I bet you’d find the same thing in every state.”
She’s eager to throw open the double doors of Joel 2 Missions house and welcome families inside the charming, safe space, which pays homage to its schoolhouse days through colorful tiling and rows of lockers.
Millsaps plans to plant an organic garden on the property, where women and children can learn and heal while growing their own food. She dreams that someday, residents will sell crops to generate income for J2M, which she hopes will be self-sustaining.
Millsaps would also like to expand the refuge’s offerings to men in need and take the mission worldwide.
“This has the potential for being our pilot building. My vision is to see these worldwide,” she said.
But first things first: Millsaps is seeking volunteers to finish renovating the building in East Millsboro.
The community has been tremendous, Millsaps said, noting churches, businesses and families in and beyond Fayette County have donated supplies, time and money to transform the school into a home.
“That was always the vision, for everyone in the region to kind of do their part, and then make the whole work. It’s really exciting to see that starting to happen,” Millsaps said.
Folks are encouraged to take a virtual tour of the space online and follow the ministry on Facebook at facebook.com/Joel2Missions.
Joel 2 Missions is accepting donations of new mattresses, box springs and bunk bed frames and graciously accepts monetary donations year-round through Facebook and the non-profit’s website, joel2missions.org.
You may also text the word GIVE to 855-338-1054.
“It’s not for me to do all by myself. I want to multiply the gospel,” said Millsaps. “A lot of people see the need, and they want to help, but they can’t really empathize. I literally have been through all of it. I went through years of drug addiction … all sorts of different things that come out of the abuse. Kind of lived it all. I think, not that God causes those things, because he doesn’t … but he definitely uses them for good. He’s used everything that’s happened to me for good. My vision: for women and children from now until as long as we have on this earth to come through and be healed and re-established in their lives, and on the right path.”