Kim’s Story: A Place to Rest, a Community to Hold You, and a Calling You Never Expected

Before cancer entered her life, Kim Russell had already weathered more heartache than most people face in a lifetime.

Her husband died of cancer when he was just 47. Their three daughters were still so young — one about to graduate college, one finishing high school, and the youngest only fourteen.
“It was so fast,” Kim remembered. “So traumatic. It took a toll on all of us, especially my youngest. She was devastated.”

So when Kim started feeling unwell years later, she feared the worst — and waiting for a diagnosis felt like standing in a long hallway with no doors.

At first, friends back home in Louisiana told her, “Go to MD Anderson.” That’s where people thought the best care was. She even made an appointment. But during a visit with an oncologist in a larger town near her home, she heard something unexpected.

“For your specific illness,” he said gently, “I would recommend UAMS. The Myeloma Center.”

Those words changed her path and in time, changed her life.

A place she didn’t know she needed

When Kim arrived in Little Rock for treatment, she had no idea how long her stay would be or how hard the road ahead was going to feel. She needed somewhere safe, somewhere calm, somewhere that didn’t feel like a hotel lobby with people coming and going.

And then she walked into her Goodness Village apartment.

There was a casserole waiting in the freezer — a sign that someone had thought of her before she ever stepped inside.
There was scripture taped to the inside of a kitchen cabinet.
There were volunteers who showed up with warm meals and gentle smiles.
There were young people serving through a ministry team, and their kindness nearly brought her to tears.

“I thought, Lord… You have put us in the right place, in the right hands of these wonderful Christian people.”

It wasn’t just an apartment. It was a soft place to land.

When healing takes more than medicine

Her first transplant was hard. Recovery at home in Louisiana was even harder. A hurricane swept through, knocking out power and adding another layer of exhaustion to a body already fighting to rebuild itself.

“I prayed, ‘God, please strengthen me. Please get me through this.’”

And just when she felt the smallest bit steady again, her doctor delivered news she never expected:
“I want to do another transplant. Two, back to back.”

Kim felt something inside her crumble.
“I said, ‘I can’t. I can’t do that again.’”

Her children, now grown, stood beside her.
“Mom, you have to. You can do this.”

But Kim knew the truth — she couldn’t do it without a place to stay.
“If you don’t have anywhere to stay,” she said softly, “what do you do?”

Goodness Village gave her the answer.

The apartment wasn’t just convenient. It was her lifeline. It kept her away from germs, people in and out of her space and the general chaos of hotels. It gave her room to spread out, rest, and let her body heal.
“When you’re not feeling well, you need your own space. And the apartment feels a little like your home.”

Finding community in unexpected places

Between treatments, Kim would walk slow loops around the parking lot. One day she met a couple whose son was recovering from his first transplant. They were scared, unsure, holding their breath the same way she once had.

“I think I was encouragement to them,” she said. “I could tell them I had been through it — and that it was going to be okay.”

It was in those small, tender exchanges that something inside Kim began to shift. She started seeing that her story, her grief, her healing, her faith had become a gift she could hand to others.

“When I saw people caring for cancer patients like this,” she said, “it touched something deep inside me.”

A new calling, born from a place of goodness

When Kim returned home after her second stem cell transplant her pastor approached her with something she never expected. He told her he believed she would be a strong leader for a cancer care ministry and that she could bring hope to people facing the same fears and uncertainty she had faced herself.

Kim didn’t take the idea lightly. She saw how much people needed community. How healing gets lighter when shared.

She went through a three-day training program, still unsure if she had the strength, but trusting that God was working through her journey for a purpose bigger than her own.

Since then, she has trained more than 30 volunteers and helped build a ministry that now supports cancer patients and caregivers across her parish and the surrounding ones.

So far, this ministry has blessed more than 200 people.

Goodness Village didn’t just give her a place to rest, it helped reveal her calling.

“It’s such a blessing,” she said. “The encouragement. The hope. The stories. Even here, out of state, you feel held.”

Kim received the amazing news that she is in remission. When she does have to travel to  UAMS, she turns to Goodness Village,  the place she says God used to surround her with care when she felt most alone.

Her story reminds us that healing is not just in medicine.
It’s in casseroles.
And scripture notes taped in cabinets.
And strangers who become neighbors.
And a Village that insists no one should walk through the hardest days of their life on their own.