VENDOR SPOTLIGHT

KENNETH TURNS IMPOSSIBILITIES TO OPPORTUNITIES

BY HANNAH HERNER

It’s clear that Contributor vendor Kenneth L. has experience preaching. Like a preacher does from biblical stories, Kenneth seeks to draw meaning from his life experiences as he shares them. And the cadence with which he tells these stories grabs the listener’s attention. Kenneth came back to The Contributor for the second time about a month ago.

He was on staff at Nashville Cowboy Church, and when its pastor died and the ministry folded, he found himself in need of some extra income to cover his expenses. “God has just blessed me and enriched me. I've met a lot of wonderful people that I call customers, they become friends,” he says. “God has given me great opportunities every day brilliantly disguised as impossible situations.” It’s no surprise that Kenneth has found success selling the paper. He used to sell pay phones in the ‘80s and was successful in selling fashion jewelry at trade shows around the country after that. He attended Bible college and he and a friend even started a homeless ministry in Houston, Texas. They started taking people in, and helping them get the resources they needed. Soon the city offered them an old public housing complex to expand the program, which they called Footprints in the Sand.

“We got to noticing that 90 percent of the people living on the street in Houston had mental issues. And they weren't alcoholics or drug addicts, but they had serious mental problems,” Kenneth says. Born in Arkansas and raised in North Texas, Kenneth suffered abuse as a child from the man he was raised by, and didn’t get to meet his biological father until he was an adult. As an effect of the abuse, he spent time incarcerated and dealt with bipolar disorder. Being abused by a man who resented raising another man’s child, Kenneth went out of his way to help raise children that weren’t his. He was active in Billy Graham’s Youth for Christ and fostered youth who crossed his path. “I studied metaphysics. And metaphysics teaches that, if we change the way we look at things, the things we look at will change. And it's true. It's really all in our perspective,” he says. “When it comes to human behavior, how we respond to things is the important thing. The content of our lives is not important. What matters is how we feel about it.” At 66, he said his most proud accomplishments are his biblical research and relationship with Jesus.

“If we look for the good in people, we’ll find it, or I learned that if I look for the bad, I'll find it. So when Jesus said, Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. I was dumbfounded at first because I was thinking, how can you see an invisible God? Well, it depends on your perspective. Because today I find God in almost everything in my life.” Kenneth stays in Hendersonville with a friend these days. “People say I have an attractive smile, so I say I’m selling smiles, not just papers,” he says. As a child, his dog was his best friend. His hopes for the future are to get a mobile home and raise a puppy.