Libby and Walt Handford


      “I think there is a great need for magazines for Christian women. I think that modern Christian women need a lot of encouragement. They are assaulted on every side by a worldly viewpoint that makes it very hard to keep focused on what is really important.” 
      Elizabeth ‘Libby’ Rice Handford explained the reason why she and her five sisters continued, after their mother’s passing in 1989, in publishing The Joyful Woman magazine, which their family founded in 1978. She and her sisters ceased publication in 2004, but continue with Joyful Christian Ministries on the internet at www.joyfulchristianministries.com. "I think there is a great hunger in Christian women to know the Lord intimately and to see His presence in their homes and in their lives," she said. 
      She follows the advice in Titus 2 for older women, she said. “I’m supposed to help teach the younger women how to love their husbands and how to love the Lord. That’s kind of my mission in life.” 
      She and her husband of 58 years, the Rev. Dr. Walter Handford, raised seven adopted children. “Those early years were sometimes very lonely,” she said. “Walt was an evangelist and out of town a lot. I had a real hunger.” 
      Women are told, she said, that keeping a home and rearing children are not important, so they need encouragement. “There is no doubt that most homes are not going to survive these days without a two-income family,” she added. “Women who work outside the home are under great pressure, as well, and so I think they need encouragement.” 
      With Handford’s 79 years of wisdom, she has written several books for women, teenagers, and children, as well as Bible studies profiling women in the Bible. Her books for teens stress the importance of abstinence until marriage. Her book for wives entitled Me? Obey Him? sold 600,000 copies. Her latest book, The Way Back, is meant to help older people realize that it is never too late to serve the Lord. 
      Handford graduated from Wheaton College in Wheaton, Illinois with a degree in English. “I had always wanted to be a writer and had written all of my life,” she said. 
      Writing was ‘in her blood’, as her father, the late evangelist Dr. John R. Rice, authored more than 200 books and booklets and also edited The Sword of the Lord newspaper for 46 years, from 1934 until his death in 1980. “The pressures of that ministry were enormous,” said Handford, “preparing copy for deadlines and making great personal sacrifices to meet the costs of printing and mailing.” Her mother assisted in the ministry by selling advertising space and sharing her home with those who worked for their newspaper. The home was also used as an office, with the dining room holding the addressing and mailing equipment, and the foyer used as a Christian bookstore. 
      “I saw the value of the written word, by watching Daddy write,” Handford said. “It was very good training for me, because he was a stickler for telling the exact truth and nothing but the truth and for being sure of the facts before he ever printed anything.
      “I had a wonderful heritage,” she said of her parents, who were married in 1921. “They were both Texans, and the first thing they ever talked about when they met at college was that they both had to leave their horses at home. 
      “My mother was a remarkable woman,” she said of Lloys Cooke Rice, who passed away in 1989, a month shy of her 95th birthday. 
      Her father pastored several churches, but, as an evangelist in the 1940’s, 1950’s, and early 1960’s, he conducted revivals in cities nationwide. In later years, he taught in Bible conferences, she said. “He saw that Christians needed teaching, not just revival emphasis but the strong lifestyle of good character and commitment to the Lord,” she said. 
      Her husband, also a minister, pastored at Southside Baptist Church in Greenville, South Carolina for three decades until his retirement in 1996. The Handfords are still members at Southside, where Walt serves as a lay elder. 
      “I absolutely loved being a preacher’s wife,” said Handford, who enjoyed teaching a Sunday School class for women at her church. 
      “I had seen how happy Mother and Daddy were, and they had put in us a desire to serve the Lord. The home was strict, but very loving. Sometimes, I felt pushed, but I know that Daddy wanted us to be ready to serve the Lord. So, we took piano lessons and ballet lessons and voice lessons. I knew at an early age that I wanted to spend my life serving the Lord, that I wanted to marry a preacher, and that I wanted lots of kids. I got exactly what I asked the Lord for, and I loved every minute of it. 
      “We would make a visit to the hospital to see a newborn baby and then go to the funeral home to take care of someone’s death. The emotional ride is very hard, but there is always the joy of being able to bless whoever you’re with and give them hope for whatever they need. I loved it, and I didn’t have any complaints about it. Once in awhile, when it got too hard, I’d say, ‘Walt, get your work done, so I can kidnap you.’ And we’d drive to the mountains and have some rest and relaxation time. We always loved the ministry, and we wouldn’t have wanted to spend our lives any other way.” 
      With the church, the Handfords in 1967 established Southside Christian School, where she served as Principal. “We saw the need for good, scripture-based education, that lets Christianity permeate how you view history, politics, and everything else,” she said. 
      The Handfords not only changed for the better the lives of the children in their school, but they also changed the direction of the lives of those they took in as foster children, including children referred to them by adoption agencies, teenagers who had run away from home because they were not getting along with their parents, and a girl who lived with them while her parents served as missionaries in Bolivia. 
      The Handfords regularly hear from several of their former foster children, who are now grown. 
      They recently received a letter from a former foster daughter, whom they took in as a 16-year-old girl. “She worked at a pizza place, and her boss came to our church,” Handford recalled. “He said, ‘Libby, I have a 16-year-old girl who has been beaten up by her mother. Do you know any place she could stay that would be safe?’ I said, ‘I’ll take her.’ “She was a freshman in high school and had been in eight different schools that year. Her mother was a prostitute. She slept on a couch in the front hall and watched the men come in and out all night long. It was a terrible situation. “I told her, ‘I’m going to teach you three things. You’re going to get your G.E.D. You’re going to learn how to drive, and I’m going to see that you get your license. And I’m going to tell you about the Lord Jesus.’ “She did come to know the Lord. She went into the Army and worked on helicopter maintenance on a landing gear. She married a man from the Army, and they live in Oklahoma and have three sons. “She just finished her graduate degree. The letter she sent to us included an invitation to her graduation. Her note said, ‘This all happened because you saw a poor lost soul and had compassion on her.’ 
      “I think that the Lord made the home to be a haven for people,” Handford continued. “Mother and Daddy set a good example for us about it. 
      “We helped when there was a need. We didn’t say, ‘Let’s have foster children.’ We said, ‘That child sure needs help.’ So that was the way we did it.” 
      Through their adopted children, the Handfords are enjoying 18 grandchildren as well as two new great grandchildren (Katelyn Elizabeth, born in April, 2005, and Haley Elizabeth, born in April, 2006). 
      Family is important to the Handfords. They drive to Chattanooga regularly to visit her four remaining sisters, Mary, Jessie, Joanna, and Joy. The oldest sister, Grace, passed away at the age of 58 from breast cancer. 
      All of the Handford children, except one son, live in the Greenville area, so they are able to visit with them often. “We love it here, in Greenville,” said Handford. “It’s a beautiful place to raise kids. There is no place better for conservatives. The ocean is three hours away. The mountains are an hour away. There are good people here.” 
      In addition to writing, Handford keeps busy in retirement by studying genealogy, archeology, and Anglo-Saxon literature; traveling to Africa, Europe, and Israel; and playing the piano. Though the Handfords no longer own their own plane, at one point, they did fly, after obtaining their pilot’s licenses after the age of 50. 
      Her most important interest is in studying the Scripture. “I like Psalm 84,” she said. “We’re pilgrims here. We’re not settling here. This is not where I want to be. My great grandmother lived in Missouri and emigrated to Texas. Her husband was away in the Confederate Army, and she and her ten-year-old daughter drove wagons in a wagon train to Texas. The idea of Psalm 84 is that people set their heart on a pilgrimage to go to the house of God. I have eternity on my mind. I want to be where God is.”





      Link: www.joyfulchristianministries.com
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