For over a decade, Cynthia Yates and her daughter Venessa Yates have been determined to use their business, AC and V pharmacy, as a platform to minister to clients.
Speaking with Freedom Come Rain Newspaper, Cynthia, who is a retired teacher and a social worker, said that along with her daughter, who is a trained pharmacist, there have been countless charitable interactions with especially senior citizens. A part of her mission, is to ensure that as much as they can, the personal and medical welfare of each customer is attended to.
“Most of the persons who come to us, they are like retirees, and so my daughter has developed a relationship with the customers,” she explained. “She would keep their prescription [and] she would keep their cards. So she’d know exactly when they come [and] what they would need. So on an individual basis she would deal with them,” said Cynthia.
She said in those instances, the focus is less on money and more on the welfare of the customers. She also prays for her clients and minister through words of encouragement and testimonies.
“I always stay with them; pray with them; minister to them; or we hold a conversation about God’s goodness and they would testify,” she said, ” That’s how I minister to my clients. So we are like a family.”
She also disclosed that AC and V Pharmacy has conducted summer community outreaches, specifically for families who have children that are to attend classes in the following school year. These actions have helped to establish a group of people who are not only clients, but brothers and sisters.
“I am happy for this family,” Cynthia declared “as I said, I don’t believe that the Lord wanted me just to come and set up a business; but the Lord had a mission for me to come and minister to the family.”
All this, Cynthia said, was born from a divine instruction, following her retirement. As a former teacher and social worker, she was instructed to start a business with her daughter, specifically a pharmacy. However, the road to establishing that business was not easy. She disclosed that, at the time, she was without an income, as she had not yet received her pension payments. Despite what appeared to be setbacks, she was able to acquire the building from which AC and V now operates.
“I was washing my hands in the bathroom one day and I heard the name Kitson Town. So the (next) Wednesday, I went to Kitson Town, not knowing where we were going. I went to the top of Kitson Town. We saw nothing. But on our way back, I looked across from where I am right now, and I saw a supermarket,” she explained, “As we drove over to the supermarket, there attached to the supermarket was an open office; that is where we are presently. But the young man where we are, told us that it has been empty for years and his mother decided that she was going to use it for a storeroom for the supermarket and she is not renting it.”
“Persons came, doctors came, everybody came,” she said, “A young lady from Utech who had just graduated as a pharmacist asked the owner, why wouldn’t you open it as a pharmacy and let me operate it? She said no.”
Despite this history, Cynthia made the call in faith, and found herself successful where others had failed.
Given her own testimony of taking a leap of faith into entrepreneurship, Cynthia is encouraging all believers who have had a similar revelation to follow God’s direction entirely, and to do away with fear.
“Don’t be afraid to follow the direction of the Lord. If the Lord calls you, all you need to do is find out from him the area that he wants you to go into. God is not going to put you into a business to make you fail,” she stressed, “Once it is the call of the Lord upon your life, seek him. Step in.”
