Marianna Laney said that God showed her that "things are never so bad that they can't be worse," in her account, "A Miracle Touched My Life."

After suffering through a devastating car accident in 1988 that left Laney paralyzed from the neck down, it seemed nothing could be worse. Yet the power of prayer from hundreds made her one in a million who would make a complete recovery from the most severe physical trauma.

But 11 years after the accident, now at age 73, Laney feels the effects of the accident through uncompromising arthritis and fibromyalgia. Yet she remembers that God has "spared her for a reason."

She has become the great encourager among so many in her church, community and even abroad. In her Fayetteville home, she takes up her pen each day, sending out perhaps as many as 20 letters a week of encouragement.

"The way you don't worry about yourself and your feelings is you think about someone else," Laney said.

Laney said she began writing after the accident to a church member's brother who was getting divorced. It was three years later before she even met him.

"I learned about him and tried to encourage him," she said. Being by myself, I have time, I save letters." And as she says this, she pulls out bundles of letters and stationery passed on to her by her recipients.

"I guess I never thought you could write to a stranger. It's odd you can write to someone you've never met and feel like you know him," she said.

From there she has become a "virtual communication center for round-the-world relationships," according to her pastor, the Rev. John Hatcher at River's Edge Community Church. Laney is one of 26 charter members remaining at the church.

"She is a prolific writer who has taken the initiative to be an encourager," Dr. Hatcher said.

In 1995, the church awarded Laney with an emerald-cut crystal trophy in recognition of encouragement.

In her letters, Laney says she reminds people that God loves them and so does she, lets them know she cares and to remember that God is always there. She has helped with grief support, and this past Valentine's Day, sent out 20 Valentines to various people who had lost their spouses, saying,

"We have to love one another when we don't have our partners." Laney lost her husband about two years before her accident.

"God is good," Laney said. "When He healed me, He expected something of me."

So when she gathered up clothes and items to send with church members on a mission trip to Uganda, she had no idea how God would use that to begin another relationship.

The box of items went to the very household where she would begin ministering with her letters and messages of encouragement. The household belongs to Peter and Elizabeth Asiimwe and their six children of Kampala, Uganda.

Peter is the director of Life Ministries in Uganda, a ministry of Campus Crusade for Christ. Life Ministries seeks to evangelize and disciple across denominational lines throughout the nation as well as provide support to the local churches.

River's Edge connected with the family through church members Steve and Ann Foster of Fayetteville, who had previously headed up the ministry in Uganda. While Steve was witnessing to an alcoholic man one evening, Peter, who was listening in, came to know the Lord Jesus as his savior. According to Hatcher, he made an exceptional response to the Lord and later assumed leadership over 80 staff members.

The Asiimwe family has visited River's Edge several times now and contacted the woman who had donated so many items to them.

"I'm so glad they spoke English," Laney said. "I never dreamed of meeting someone from Africa and I never imagined someone being so sweet from the start. Elizabeth hugs on you with such nice hugs."

Laney keeps all the letters she has exchanged from the family, each written very much like the prose of the Apostle Paul in his epistles to the church. Dr. Hatcher believes she has been appointed to encourage this ministry, who is solely responsible for all its support and lives just above a poverty line staggeringly lower than that of the United States.

"Marianna has been strategically placed to encourage those strategically involved," Dr. Hatcher said. "Every minister who is seeking to make a mark for God needs someone who will give unconditional encouragement. She has been that to me and others."

"Her reach has been so much farther than this church," he continued. "She is able to see and discern the things many people don't know about."

Laney said she attributes her influences to her mother. "She was also a letter writer, she was an encourager."