A Stillwell farewell

~ Couple Is being transferred after serving six years in Cape Girardeau

Majors Ben and Beth Stillwell have been with the Salvation Army for 28 years and spent the last six running the Cape Girardeau operation. The couple is being transferred to Marshalltown, Iowa. June 23 is their last Sunday service.

The Salvation Army in Cape Girardeau includes worship and community centers, along with social service efforts. Ronnie and Bridgette Amick are moving from Moline, Ill., to manage the center.

The Stillwells have been stationed in Cape Girardeau longer than is typical for Salvation Army officers. The average time officers spend in one location is three years, seven months.

"It's not like some churches where you go and you preach and they like you and say, 'Stay here,'" Ben Stillwell said. "You're sent. The military aspect is very real with moves."

The couple said they feel fortunate to be have been stationed in Cape longer.

"It's just God doing his work," Beth Stillwell said. "Our work wasn't done here."

Both are Midwesterners, but Cape Girardeau is the farthest south either has ever lived.

"There's really something to southern hospitality, and we've experienced it -- very positive, very real," Ben Stillwell said. "The community is very concerned, passionate, caring."

He'll miss the cooperative effort Cape offers. Church groups and not-for-profit organizations work in tandem and when one has a problem, everyone is quick to help one another.

"It is probably the way it's supposed to work everywhere, but it doesn't," he said. "We've been officers for 28 years, and it doesn't always work this well."

As teenagers, both Stillwells were coerced into attending church. Ben's step-grandmother had two rules: go to school to graduate and go to church. So he went. The church was the Salvation Army.

"I'm not proud of my past, but in Thessalonians, it talks about how old things are passed away and behold that everything becomes new," he said. "The Lord forgave me, and I do not understand why he called me. I believe that I had been called by Scripture, by music, by the Lord, that I was to be a Salvation Army officer."

Beth Stillwell is a fifth-generation Salvationist.

"I was drug to church," she said. "Anytime a Salvation Army door was open, we were there. As a teenager, I rebelled against it." But at the end of high school, she said God specifically called her.

"I never dreamt I'd be one," she said. "It's to see people's lives change little by little. There are ups and downs, but it's been rewarding."

She said they become attached to the people, because they've seen the changes happening in the lives of the people they've helped.

"We had a young man we helped one Christmas," she said. "The next year, he brought back a jar full of pennies. He wanted to say thank you, and I still have that jar. It's just a reminder of what we're all about."

Beth Stillwell summed up the mission of the Salvation Army in three words: soup, soap and salvation.

"We want to clean people up, we want to feed people, and we want to present the gospel to them," she said.

And the Stillwells will continue to assist in doing just that once they get to Marshalltown.

"There's no doubt Cape Girardeau is a great city; everybody working together to meet the needs," Ben Stillwell said. "I've enjoyed being here. It's been challenging and rewarding."

botto@semissourian.com