The Mayors’ prayer breakfast was held at Calvary Episcopal on November 21, and was hosted by the Sumter Area Ministerial Association. Mayor Lee Kinnamon, Mayor Brandon Gross, and Mayor Joey Recker were all in attendance.

Sheriff Eric Bryant said the blessing. Pastor Geri Nelson thanked the Calvary Parish Life Community who worked to put on the event.

Pastor Richard Nelson, the pastor at Calvary, addressed those gathered. “We checked around, and nobody can remember if there’s every been a mayor’s prayer breakfast before in Sumter County.” Nelson spoke of the significance of the event. “We think it’s important that we get together as a community and as communities in the County, and we get to know one another and share some time together so that our community draws closer together and we can do things together for the benefit of our community.”

The keynote speaker was the Reverend and author Dr. Beatrice Berry, speaking on the power of loving our neighbor.

Berry told how she used to come every Christmas to go to President Jimmy Carter’s Sunday School. She talked about enjoying going through Andersonville on the way there. “I love going to Andersonville, even though for many people it’s a sadness . . . but for me, just standing there and recognizing how many people were willing, or were even pulled into, doing this thing to end that horrible institution of slavery. And because we don’t want to talk about it, we don’t see all of those folks along the way that were the abolitionists at a time when it wasn’t popular to be. When we hide from the ugly truth, we miss those beautiful truths as well.”

Berry talked about the importance of accepting others even with their differences, and seeing them as souls. She also talked about the importance of belonging. “Belonging is the opposite of fitting in. It says I get to be me, you get to be you, and together we become so much more. And I don’t have to change a thing about me, because being with you changes me. Being with you makes me want to be better.”

She told of experiencing change in her own family. “My mom was an amazing woman. That’s not the one I grew up with. The one I grew up with was mean. She turned into the most beautiful loving earth mother on this planet. We too often get stuck where a person was. We don’t allow them to evolve. The same forgiveness they need is the same forgiveness we need.”

Berry told how her mother gave her one last gift before she passed away. “I know what to give you. When you go speak to speak to others who do more for everybody than they do for themselves, I want you to share it.” She told how her mother stated that she would take all of the generational baggage with her that was passed down through her family.

Berry gave a quote from one of her books. “My children of Grace, you have to start this family over. It’s on to you to set things straight. Ya’ll done traded one slavery for another when you turned your back on love. You ain’t free to do what you want to do, you free to do what you supposed to do.”

Berry also sang a song about how peace starts at home, drawing applause.

Gross gave his reactions to the prayer breakfast. “I hope it continues to be an annual event, and I really enjoyed it.”

Recker also responded. “I really appreciate SAMA doing this, the first one, and it just couldn’t have been any better.” He gave his reaction to the keynote speaker. “I was inspired, and I look forward to taking the things I heard here and using them, not only as a mayor, but just as a person.”

Kinnamon also gave his reactions. “I was deeply moved by our guest speaker’s remarks. She is an ordained deacon within the Episcopal Church, which is of course my faith tradition. I’m a parishioner here at Calvary Episcopal Church. I’m aware of her but had never had an opportunity to hear her in person.”

He summed up the message that inspired him. “Her message of peace beginning at home and home being us, that we have to begin peace within our own hearts and the disunity that we’re experiencing now in the Country can only be healed through our own loving kindness to our neighbors.”