DON HEBERT
There is a particular kind of grief that doesn’t stay still. It moves, it searches, it looks for somewhere to go. For Autumn Nelon, it found its way into a suitcase packed with toothbrushes, yo-yos, crayons, nail polish, Bibles, and baby wipes, then boarded a plane bound for Malawi.
This month, Autumn flew to Africa on a mission trip that her family had long dreamed of taking together. The Nelons, that beloved pillar of Southern Gospel music, had talked about going. They had hoped to go as a family, the way the Nelons did most things, shoulder to shoulder, in harmony. But on Friday, July 26th, 2024, that future was taken from them in an instant. Jason and Kelly Nelon Clark, Amber and Nathan Kistler, their assistant Melodi Hodges, pilot Larry Haynie, and his wife Melissa were all killed in a tragic plane crash while en route to join the Gaither Homecoming Cruise to Alaska. The Gospel music world went quiet in a way it rarely does.
And yet, here is Autumn, making the trip anyway.
She spent the past month doing what people who come from Gospel families know how to do when the world falls apart: she got to work. She fundraised. She bought supplies. She asked, and people gave. Toothbrushes and balls for the children. Coloring books and markers. Yo-yos, because joy matters. Diapers and wipes, because need is practical before it is anything else. Bibles, because that is the bedrock of everything the Nelons ever stood for.
It is hard not to see the weight of what she is carrying over there, and not just in the luggage. The mission trip The Nelons hoped to take together is now the mission trip Autumn is completing for them, and perhaps with them, in whatever way love persists after loss.
The Southern Gospel community, which rallied around the Nelon family in the devastating aftermath of the crash, is now rallying again. Prayers are going up across congregations and fan communities alike, asking that God uses Autumn in a mighty way on the red soil of Malawi, among the new friends she is only just beginning to meet.
There is a moment, somewhere in Malawi, where a child might pick up a yo-yo that a grieving young woman bought with money strangers gave her, in memory of a family that sang about heaven their whole lives. That child will not know any of this. They will just know the yo-yo, and the person who brought it, and the smile that crosses her face when they play.
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