Meet Tay The Lighthouse Ministries, Lexington KY

(859) 259-3434

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Valerie (Tay) Henderson, Director My name is Valerie Henderson. My nickname is Tay. I was born in the housing projects in New Albany, Indiana into a family of 16 children. Life was hard for us. Our father was an alcoholic. As a dad he didn’t have too much to offer. I grew up in the shadow of brothers who grew up into lives of crime. Most of my older brothers had been incarcerated by the time they were 12. Eventually some of them moved on to serious crimes and landed in maximum security prisons. I was no different; like them, I was 12 years old the first time I was locked up. I rebelled against any kind of authority. My motto in life was to try everything at least once. By the time I was 18 I had pretty much done just that – legal, illegal, destructive and not – I had tried most everything put in front of me, but inside I was miserable.

When I was still a teenager, a friend of mine had gotten involved in a group called Teen Challenge, a Christian organization. He came back from some event sponsored by Teen Challenge and started witnessing to one of my brothers who was in jail. As a result, my brother accepted Christ and became a Christian. All of a sudden I had both of these guys, my friend and my brother, witnessing to me about their faith in Christ. After a little while, another of my brothers got saved. Then all three of them were after me. It was really God who was after me, who had been after all of us. God kept pulling at my heart, and on June 5, 1974, I cried out to God to forgive my sins and he gave me a new life.

Armed with a sense of God’s renewing love, I went to Teen Challenge in Muskegon and graduated from their program in December of that same year. There is no question that Teen Challenge helped God turn my life around. A couple years later I went back and got a job working for the Director of Teen Challenge.

That’s when my life took another amazing turn. While working at Teen Challenge I met my husband, Dan Henderson. A lot happened to us over the following years. We had five children together, which kept us both very busy. Dan had a powerful call to minister and serve. He loved going into prisons, jails and mission houses to comfort, teach God’s love and guide people whose lives had been derailed.

In the early 90's, Dan and I started going to The Salvation Army with our ministry program. At the time, we were showing movies that would entertain and send a message. A favorite was “A Thief in the Night” about the end time. Before long, we moved from working through the Salvation Army to opening our own service ministry in downtown Lexington, KY. We called our mission The Lighthouse Ministries, Inc. We began ministering to the homeless, poor, addicted and anyone that God sent our way who had a need we could fill.

In 1999 we had a milestone year when we bought a building to house Lighthouse Ministries. A renovation project got underway, which took many turns along the way and took a lot longer that we ever imagined. Just when we were making plans for the opening of The Nehemiah House, a residence for men in the life transition training program, Dan got sick.

We learned that Dan had Hepatitis, which very quickly turned into advanced liver disease. There’s so much to tell about Dan. Read about him in “Meet Big Dan.” His wonderful and amazing life ended on January 4, 2004 when he died on the operating table while going through liver transplant surgery.

On that day my world turned upside down again. Dan was gone and the ministry we had worked so hard to establish was so close to being ready. How could this be? But God was with me and kept after my heart and wouldn’t free me from the call to take over the ministry and keep it going. Dan would be proud to see the vision God gave him carried out.

I can say without reservation that God has placed in my heart a burden for those that nobody else wants. We serve a God of the second chances, as long as you have breath, there’s HOPE!