Arcadia couple buoyed by church family, stranger

Arcadia (FBW)—Charles and Marilyn Ranger moved from Chicago to Arcadia in 1972 for Florida’s warm weather, and 32 years later, Florida weather took their home. They now tell anyone who will listen about a Heavenly Father Who provided what they needed after Hurricane Charley, through a loving church family and a stranger’s generosity.

When the couple moved from Illinois with their children, Charles worked as a policeman and struggled with “a drinking problem,” he said. A 1994 telecast from Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church in Fort Lauderdale led him to a life-changing encounter with Jesus. He responded to the telecast by ordering a book and starting to attend a small, non-denominational church.

“I was saved after two weeks, and I was delivered from my drinking problem,” Ranger told Florida Baptist Witness.

Two years later, the family joined Liberty Community Church, a Southern Baptist congregation close to their home. The church met, at that time, in a “store-front location,” but according to Ranger, “had a lot of love.” John Ranger, now retired, teaches a men’s Bible study on Monday evenings, and serves as a church trustee, a position in which he says he has to “worry about the little things, like burned out light bulbs.” Liberty Community Church has since built a sturdy building, a fact the Rangers especially appreciated during Hurricane Charley.

During the storm, the Rangers sought shelter in their church building. Although the church lost only trees, the Rangers—like several other church families—lost their home.

“I can honestly say that we did not shed a tear over our house, because it’s just stuff; but being homeless did feel strange,” Ranger said. “When you get with your brothers and sisters in Christ, though, it doesn’t hurt so bad.”

Just days after the storm, a delegation of relief workers from the Coral Ridge church was helping in his neighborhood. As they worked with Ranger to clean his yard, he told them of his conversion through their church’s television ministry.

Several weeks later an interview with the couple was broadcast nationally on the Coral Ridge Sunday telecast. It aired while John and Marilyn Ranger were in Sunday School at Liberty Community Church. During the interview, Marilyn Ranger, a registrar for a blood bank, told of their having to choose between paying for property insurance or medicines, and choosing the medicine. She said they had no fear for the future, because they were “leaving it in God’s hands.”

A businessman in Columbus, Ga., was watching the telecast. Several weeks later, Patrick McKee contacted the Rangers with the offer of a new mobile home. For free.

“I was suspicious at first, but I do believe in miracles,” Ranger said.

As the Rangers became better acquainted with McKee, their respect for their benefactor grew. John Ranger describes him as “an awesome person, really in touch with Jesus.”

In the business of changing lives

Patrick McKee told Florida Baptist Witness he was not always the Christian man he is today. For most of the last decade, McKee, a member of Cornerstone Church of God, was a “driven man,” he said, working 80 hours per week and virtually abandoning his wife, son and daughter. When he was diagnosed with kidney cancer at the age of 45 in 1997, he said God “brought me to my knees.”

“I went from being driven to being given to God,” McKee said.

His new commitment was the beginning of a personal restoration. What was diagnosed as kidney cancer turned out to be kidney stones, and he is quick to credit his Heavenly Father not only for his return to health, but also for the return of his wife, family and business success.

“I operate now by faith,” he proclaimed.

The owner of Mobile Home Park Services in Columbus, Ga., McKee helps minimum wage earners own their own mobile homes in seven years. He explained that he sells the homes at cost so that he can fill mobile home communities, and he often buys neglected lots to restore them to surroundings of which the residents can be proud. The company’s income comes from lot rental.

The once-local business has expanded to several southeast states. As his business has grown exponentially, so has McKee’s generosity. He gives away 75 percent of his income. The Oregon native sponsors a family counseling center in his company office and occasionally donates mobile homes to needy families like the Rangers.

“I am in the business now of changing people’s lives,” he said. “I know what God can do, and everybody needs to know what I know.”

McKee’s personal testimony will be featured on the Coral Ridge Hour March 5 and 6.

Free home creates witnessing opportunities

Not long after McKee’s and the Rangers’ first conversation, he asked them to contact Horton Industries in Eatonton, Ga., to tell the manfacturer what colors they wanted in their new home. The mobile home was “put on line” Jan. 3, and delivered to their lot in Arcadia Jan. 13, exactly five months after Hurricane Charley. McKee flew to southwest Florida in a chartered plane to make sure it was “set” properly.

The new, 14'x70' mobile home is not only built under new building codes to withstand strong winds, the home is much bigger than their old home that was built in 1972. It has two bathrooms and three bedrooms—one more of each than in the home Hurricane Charley demolished.

Although the couple is still living in the camper-trailer provided by FEMA, Ranger told Florida Baptist Witness he expected the county-contracted electrician “any minute” to hook up the power for their new home.

The grateful couple is quick to share their testimony of God’s provision after the hurricane, of the “fine things the Lord has done for us,” but they use the story of their free home to get attention so they can share Jesus with unsaved friends and neighbors.

“When I tell our story, it doesn’t matter how big they are, or how tough they are, they want to hear,” Ranger said. “Then I can tell them about Jesus.”