Mama Lois at Grace House

I figure that 11 years is too long to wait to do a follow-up story about one of the most dynamic and caring women I’ve met here in Birmingham.

Her name is Lois Coleman… but most call her Mama Lois. She started Grace House, a special home for young girls, in 1992.

I met Mama Lois when I first visited Grace House in 1992. She told me then that her mission was to touch the lives of young girls and be a positive influence in their lives. I remember twin girls named Ree and Ray and how they were a handful for Mama Lois.

Ii saw these kids on the street and i saw some of them unkempt and untrained and showed no kind of social manners at all,” Mama Lois said. “And, I began working with kids and organized a club called the Cultivators Club.“

Now, that’s a club a farm boy can understand.  Like at this backyard Bible school,  the Cultivators Club worked the minds of young girls, taught them self-worth, taught them how to act, and as old- fashioned as it sounds, taught them to be proper young ladies.

It is her faith that drives Mama Lois.

“It is so meaningful to me to see other lives develop and come to know Jesus in a personal way,“ Mama Lois said.

A portrait of Mama Lois at Grace House shows her with Bible in hand. It’s not staged; it’s very natural for her. She believes strength and wisdom for living are found in that book.

“We have devotions, they’re in scripture memory and I try to deal with the total person, and we equate our time here with the girls as packing an eternal suitcase for them putting things into these suitcases so that if they are here a day or a here a year, if they leave after one day they take something away that they’ve learned,” Mama Lois said.

An eternal suitcase… that’s what Mama Lois is packing for the 24 girls that live at Grace House today, and the hundreds who have lived here since 1992. Grace House relies on supporters like you, some are regular givers; others give once in a while. 

Right now, they need money for school uniforms for the girls that will start school in a few weeks.  They need mentors…. women who will share their experience and knowledge with young girls…. women like many of you. It’s important work for us all.

“And, our parents have the most important job of anybody here because they’re training our girls and if we can’t train our teenagers today then we’ve lost them,“ Mama Lois said.

Mama Lois is still going strong, but she thinks about tomorrow… and the day after that.

“My prayer is now before he calls me home that he will handpick the people that he would choose to keep the vision going.“