Published: October 07, 2009 01:58 pm      

Church holds benefit for swine flu victim

40 people gather for Southern gospel singing

By Samantha Swindler / Managing Editor

Raymond Ridge Church isn’t exactly much to look at. 

It’s located off Bee Creek Road, down a dirt roadway. There’s no signs to indicate that the metal building, about as big as a double-wide, is a house of worship. 

But the voices rising from within make no mistake — God’s love is present here. 

More than 40 people gathered inside the small church Tuesday night, singing Southern gospel songs with guitars, harmonica and tambourines, and passing a collection plate for a family battling illness. 

Raymond Ridge Church is, in fact, a former storage shed that was converted into a church in 2001 after owner Raymond Turner’s mother passed away. At the time, preachers had come to hold a prayer vigil over her death bed. When she passed, the vigil space became a permanent country church. 

“There’s no denomination,” Turner said. “God is God, that’s who we praise.”

Tuesday night’s soulful singing was part of efforts to raise money for the family of Cierra Jones, a Whitley County High School freshman battling H1N1-related pneumonia in a Tennessee hospital. 

She was diagnosed with pneumonia on Sept. 23 and remains at East Tennessee Children’s Hospital. Jones had no underlying health problems prior to getting sick, her mother told the Times-Tribune.

Friends have not been allowed to visit her. Her family has stayed with her in Tennessee, at additional expense to the family.

“We’re just here to pray to see that she gets better,” said Cierra’s cousin Amber Bowling, adding that despite rumors Cierra had passed away Tuesday, “she’s actually in the process of getting better.”