They couldn’t stop beaming, these five graduates of the Christian Women’s Job Corps program.
It was a Saturday afternoon this fall, and the graduates of the 10-week program were there with their children, parents, friends, family and more. They held up their certificates for photos. They hugged people indiscriminately — classmates, friends, family, strangers. They wiped tears even as smiles seemed permanently affixed to their faces.
“The Lord has given me the gift of loving people,” said Charlotte Ertelt, director of Idaho’s first-ever CWJC, a compassion ministry developed by the Woman’s Missionary Union. “My back hurt a bit, but I wanted to meet every single person there.”
Christian Women’s Job Corps/Christian Men’s Job Corps — also known as Christian Job Corps — “equips women and men, in a Christian context, for life and employment,” according to the WMU website. “Through CWJC/CMJC sites across the nation and overseas, thousands of women and men each year gain hope for their future.”
Ertelt calls her CWJC “Fresh Start” because in her opinion that name better communicates the program’s purpose to potential students, she told The Baptist Paper.
A friend told graduate Isabel Serrano about Fresh Start, and she checked into it “to try to see what it is, what it is about,” Serrano told The Baptist Paper.
Married, unemployed and caring for a granddaughter, Serrano drove 40 miles due east from her home in Twin Falls to Burley twice a week for the classes that started each day with Bible study.
“I like it,” Serrano continued. “I like the Bible study — all the classes they offer, like computers, flower arranging, cake decorating, auto mechanics like changing oil and (a class on) boundaries. I learn how to have boundaries.
“I feel like I accomplish something that can help me,” Serrano continued. “I learn a little bit more English. Now I want to help people in Twin (Falls) to have the opportunity to learn something about boundaries and to be a follower of Christ.”
Each of the five graduates mentioned the boundaries class to The Baptist Paper.
What it takes
Since Serrano’s graduation, she and Ertelt have discussed what it takes to start and lead a successful CWJC in which women are empowered and encouraged to continue to take the next steps toward achieving their goals. Someone interested would need to do the following:
1. Spend $25 for an online introductory course on CWJC, which is found at wmu.org, along with additional online and in-person training over time.
2. Build a team of people who are interested in empowering women, some of whom must be Southern Baptist. All must be committed Christians.
3. Acquire a meeting space with at least one classroom and a bathroom. It is even better to have two classrooms, a clothes closet, a common room for meals and graduations and a bathroom with at least two stalls.
“The most important part is to not have to lock up everything every day,” Ertelt said with a “been there, done that” chuckle.
4. Find students through fliers and whatever promotion becomes available, such as a local radio program.
The people in the continually growing team that forms need to be able to contribute to the learning center by teaching some skill or by having connections with people who can teach or somehow provide assistance to the students, perhaps by preparing sandwiches or snacks.
“Everything is donated,” Ertelt said.
Teachers are not paid, but their time commitment is usually less than two hours on the day they teach, and regular update meetings are often on video chats.
The CWJC Fresh Start learning center in Burley met for its first semester in a city-owned building they rented for $200 a month. Ertelt made a presentation to Magic Valley Baptist Association about the CWJC ministry, and the association offered to provide the amount needed for rent.
Ertelt said she heard that while in some towns it might not hurt to meet in a church, in Burley, where many people come from a Mormon background, a church location might be detrimental.
‘Could we do that here?’
Shortly after moving with her son and his family to Burley from Little Rock, Arkansas, in November 2023, Ertelt visited Primera Iglesia Bautista del Sur in Burley, where Lucio Gutierrez is pastor. She met his wife, Terry, before the service started.
“She asked what I had been doing in Arkansas,” Ertelt said. “When I told her I’d been the executive director of CWJC, she knew what that was and asked, ‘Could we do that here?’”
It usually takes about a year for everything to come together to start a CWJC, but with the enthusiastic support Ertelt found from five area churches and the association — as well as people in the community — along with her experience leading at four previous CWJC sites, the first semester started in August.
“Miss Charlotte” and her husband Milton were Southern Baptist representatives with International Mission Board for 30 years, serving in Malawi, Kenya and three countries in the Middle East. She started with CWJC by leading the prayer focus for the executive board of the Texas CWJC and then went on to start new sites in Cleburne and Paris, all in Texas.
Ertelt’s husband died in 2014, and she moved to Little Rock to live near her daughter. Seven years later, her son decided to move from Phoenix to “cold country” and invited her to move with them. She has been in Burley for one year now.
“I love to hear the voice of the Lord,” said Ertelt, now 80 years old. “I love the work He has given me.”
