Mississippi-Tennessee Girl
Born in Memphis, brought up mostly in North and Central Mississippi, I graduated from Oxford High School in Oxford, Mississippi and earned a bachelor’s in educational psychology from Mississippi State University in Starkville.
Over the years, I’ve been blessed with many opportunities to serve and grow, gaining experience in leadership, team building and group facilitation, management, and strategic planning. My favorite aspect of working with people is hearing their stories, especially how God can redeem the broken into such beauty.
After graduating from State, I worked in housing and student affairs at Hinds Community College in Raymond, Mississippi.
The next ten years I devoted to my highest calling, being the mother of our four children. When our youngest began 4K, I eased back into working outside the home part-time as a customer service associate (aka: bank teller) at First Citizens National Bank.
Five years later, I was called to be the executive director of Life Choices Pregnancy Medical Clinic, an organization I had the privilege of getting off the ground.
Certified in MBTI and other training models, following eight years of serving at Life Choices, I began consulting with Sparrow Solutions Group. I also helped out part-time as a teacher and advisor at Christ Classical Academy.
In January 2017, my husband and I began serving as house parents to a home filled with ten boys, ages 5 to 13, at French Camp Academy. While there, I developed their life-coaching program, where I trained staff to serve 11th and 12th grade students as life coaches.
That fall I published my first book, a young-adult novel, Running Away to Home.
Since moving to Ridgeland, Mississippi in May 2019, I have devoted myself to serving in our church where my husband and I regularly invite folks over for a meal in our home and where I lead a couple of Bible studies. My joy is caring for our three-year-old granddaughter, Charlie Grace. And on the side, I enjoy writing, consulting, and helping friends who own small businesses.
Beating the Odds
I’m a girl with a story about beating the odds. In spite of a busted up childhood and adolescence that included divorce, physical and emotional abuse, and tons of terrible choices, I’ve been blessed to be married to my best friend since 1989, and to be the mother of three incredible sons and two incredible daughters-in-law and one equally incredible and beautiful daughter who is married to our incredible son-in-law. Yes, our kids are The Incredibles!
In a time when so many families are broken and conflict is the norm, for almost 30 years I was thankful that our kids were great friends, and we all looked forward to and enjoyed spending time together. Sadly, in 2020, conflict roared its ugly head, and locusts have devoured the past few years. We plead for God to restore the ruined places where the locusts have eaten and give our family a glory story as we seek wisdom in navigating this difficult journey.
But I get ahead of myself. Learn more about Redeemed to Redeem.
He Sets the Lonely in Families…
I met Wally Bumpas on July 31, 1988, the Sunday after I moved back to Jackson, MS after teaching summer school at Starkville High, where I did my student teaching my last semester at Mississippi State. It was basically love at first sight, and he proposed on Thanksgiving Day, and we married June 17, 1989. Three and a half years later God blessed us with our oldest son, and by the time he was five, we had four children.
God called Wally to serve Him as a pastor around the time we met, so he began his Masters of Divinity at Reformed Theological Seminary in Jackson, MS, right after we married. Since then, he has served in churches in Clover, SC, DeKalb, MS, and we spent 18 years in Dyersburg, TN. We had a 2.5 year stint as houseparents in a home at French Camp Academy with ten little boys where he also taught Bible and I launched and coordinated a campus-wide life coaching program.
We’ve been amazed at God’s sweetness in 2019, when He called us back to where our love story began: just outside of Jackson, MS, when He called Wally to serve Him as an assistant pastor at Madison Heights.