The Parrishes' Place

Welcome!

birdhouse grouping

We are the Parrish family and we live near Thomasville, Georgia, a beautiful Victorian city in southwest Georgia. 

Our family is all grown up. We are into the "empty nest" season as our three children have grown and left home.  We homeschooled each of them and graduated the youngest in the summer of 2003, so mom kind of graduated too.  We are very glad we chose homeschooling for our family and saw good fruit come from it. As a Christian family, we felt it was important to be responsible for our children's education and the impact that had on their lives. Even though many days were very hard, now that we are all finished, we can honestly say it was a wonderful decision.


The dad in our family is Tom. He owns and operates a residential construction company called Parrish Builders. He has been on many mission trips that focused on construction and loved it. He is very musical and plays several instruments, including the guitar. He loves to lead worship. He does a great job. When he can find the time, he also loves to go water skiing, jet skiing, fishing, and to play golf. He's quite handy around the house, too! We have just purchased property next to ours that had a small house on the front and he is renovating it to become our new offices!

Mom is Brenda and I run a birth business called South Georgia Birth Services. My ministry interests involve working as a lay Christian counselor. I use Restoring the Foundations as our method and have seen the lives of many people healed and changed. I have been a lay midwife for about 14 years. I was a full-time nursing student, with my goal to become a certified nurse midwife, but I decided to go instead in the direction of becoming a Certified Professional Midwife (CPM) so I can focus on homebirths and birthing center births. I'm currently enrolled in Ancient Art Midwifery Institute, a three year midwifery school, in order to prepare to take the NARM, the national certification exam. I've gotten certified through DONA as a doula (see my business website if you don't know what a doula is!), and a childbirth educator through CAPPA. I also have become a certified lactation counselor and am working with mothers through a breastfeeding support group.

Our oldest child is Matthew, (currently age 28) who graduated from our home school and has attended our local technical school. He took classes in a two-year program learning Auto Technology, and another course to obtain his commercial driver's license. Matthew joined the Army Reserves in the summer of 2007, and attended school to become an EMT and paramedic. He is currently serving as a medic in the Army. He loves working out at the gym, and is a certified personal trainer.  He graduated from CORE Institute in Tallahassee as a massage therapist. Matthew is father to Benjamin Barak Parrish, born on October 28, 2006. Benjamin and his mommy Raquel visit us often or we go down to Tampa where they live for visits too.



Our middle child is Erin (age 25), and she also graduated from home school and college. Erin graduated from Belhaven College in Jackson, MS, where she majored in political science.  It had been a real passion for her because of her involvement in a Christian organization called TeenPact .  She is married to Wesley Fielding (also from Thomasville). They now live in Atlanta, where Wesley works for Flowers Corp. and Erin is working for Grey Atlanta (an advertising agency) as an executive assistant. They are about to move into their first home, a condo in Decatur. Erin has been active in local theater groups in the Atlanta area and they attend a great Vineyard church up there.

Kayla is our youngest (22) and graduated from our homeschool in May, 2003..  She was married on June 14, 2003 to Luke Fletcher.  Luke grew up on the mission field in Belize and his parents have been friends of ours for many years. Kayla gave birth to our first grandchild, Olivia Alyse, in January, 2005. Since then, she has had a little boy, Noah Thomas on Feb. 28, 2007. They built a new home on the property right next to us, and lived there for three years. They recently moved to the Atlanta area also with a new job opportunity for Luke. Luke works as a draftsman/engineer using CAD.   They are both very ministry oriented and we are excited to see just all that the Lord has for them. Kayla is working towards getting ceritifed as a doula through DONA also.

For Family Photos, see this link for the most current pics we have.