SEMINOLE, Fla. (BP)–When Bill Losasso goes to the fair, he sees a lot of things most people miss — like strollers chained to the rides to keep workers’ children close by because they can’t afford child care. He notices how close the rides are to one another and knows workers must stay in that area most of the day and night, many sleeping on the ground under the rides themselves. He knows that the workers who disassemble and reassemble the taller, more intricate rides will go longer without breaks for food and sleep.
Most of all, he sees the looks of tiredness and despair on the faces of carnival workers who struggle just to get by.
Thirty years ago, Losasso was one of those workers. Now pastor of Pathways Community Church, Seminole, Fla., he joined the fair when he was 20 years old, taking a job driving a rig, though he didn’t know how to drive one.
“I was crazy then. I was a risk-taker. I just had a life without God,” Losasso said.
He said he is ashamed to admit that when he used to operate rides, he would try to maneuver them so that people’s spare change fell out.
Then Losasso received a green Bible in the mail from his mother, who was saved at age 50. It caused him to take stock of his life.
“I made a deal with God, a God I didn’t even know,” Losasso said. “I made a deal that I would read four pages of the Bible each day for five years. At first, I didn’t agree with it and didn’t understand it, but I kept reading it. I read it six times through before I became a Christian.”
Losasso had since changed jobs and moved to Dallas. He became a Christian at age 35 while attending First Baptist Church there.
Then God moved in his life again, in a way Losasso didn’t expect. He could not hear an announcement his Sunday school teacher made, so he raised his hand to inquire about it. It turned out the teacher had just asked for volunteers for a missions trip to Brazil. Amid the confusion, Losasso was signed up as a volunteer.
He agreed to go to hand out tracts and sing, but three weeks before the trip, his ministry team didn’t have a preacher.
“Guess who got volunteered,” Losasso said jokingly, yet acknowledging it was all part of God’s plan. “I suddenly knew why God had me read the Bible all those times, really searching the Word for meaning.
“When I spoke during the services, the knowledge of the Scripture just flowed. God had been preparing me to preach all those years ago.”
Losasso felt the Lord leading him into ministry so strongly that he quit a promising job in which he had been given 11 promotions in 11 years.
He started Pathways Baptist Church in California in 1993 before he felt God leading him to start a new work in Florida in January 1995. He helped form Pathways Community Church in Seminole, which was sponsored by First Baptist Church, Indian Rocks.
The three-year-old church now tops 500 in attendance and recently added its fourth contemporary worship service. Pathways had a 3-to-1 baptism ratio in 1997, ranking fourth among churches in the Florida Baptist Convention.
Each year, members have participated in ministries at the Pinellas County Fair, including a children’s area sponsored by Suncoast Baptist Association. The church distributes food, clothing and health items to carnival workers through a “Welcome Wagon” station.
The church has a heart for this type of ministry, “regardless of my history as a ‘carnie,'” Losasso said. “They see the need for the workers to know that Jesus loves them.”
When carnival workers arrived in Seminole to set up shop for the last Pinellas County Fair, about 40 Pathways volunteers had prepared 20 gallons of chili and 20 dozen cornbread muffins for hundreds of hungry workers who had transported equipment from Sarasota, where they had just concluded another fair.
Many of the workers do not get to stop and sleep or eat until they have disassembled, transported and reassembled equipment at their next stop, Losasso said.
“Most people just see the entertainment and the rides but don’t see what most of the workers’ lives are like,” he said. “They don’t see people sleeping under trucks or not having changed clothes for eight days. Fair life is one of the hardest forms of life in America today.”
The church used Suncoast Baptist Association’s fun wagon to distribute food to workers, sometimes driving around the fairgrounds to deliver food to those who didn’t have time to stop and eat.
Several churches in the association also provided clothing, blankets and health kits for Pathways to distribute. Last year, the need for blankets and food exceeded the supply, so the church brought double the amount this year, said Kathy Marks, clothes closet coordinator for Pathways.
“When the fair workers come in, they’re tired, hungry and thirsty,” said Lea Carrigan, Welcome Wagon coordinator and Pathways member. “They gratefully accept anything you give to them.”
Carrigan said she was so overwhelmed by the need the first time she participated in the event, she immediately decided this was a ministry she wanted to be involved in on a long-term basis. She said the most rewarding part is that workers she met years before remember her name.
“The things the workers desperately need — clothing, food, love — are so easy to give and do,” Carrigan said. “They are so polite, so nice and so hungry for the Lord.” Last year, volunteers handed out more than 100 tracts and when they cleaned up, none of the tracts had been left behind, she said.
Marks and fellow church member Barbara Newfield befriended a female carnival worker during the fair — giving her food and clothes-but also lending a listening ear.
“Many of the workers need to feel that someone cares about them,” Newfield said. “They are hurting, either physically — because they can’t afford medical care — or emotionally, because of family problems. They need to know they’re not alone.”
