Love Thy Neighbor: The Quiet Courage of Jayson Richmond

Jayson Richmond, founder of Love Thy Neighbor Outreach.

There's a quiet kind of courage in Jayson Richmond. As the founder of Love Thy Neighbor Outreach, he leads a small but devoted effort called Project 99 — a ministry built not on numbers or recognition, but on trust, in a state where counties across West Virginia face some of the highest overdose-related suicide rates in the country.

Jayson keeps his team small, just three people, because he believes in showing up for people with familiar faces, not strangers. Together, they walk the back roads and quiet woods, finding abandoned houses where people are living out of sight — sometimes dozens of them in a single place. When Jayson's team arrives, they don't come with judgment. They come with hygiene packs, snacks, and water, and often, an invitation: to a larger gathering the next day called "Hope in the Park," where there's a warm meal, clothes, and shoes waiting.

No one on Jayson's team is paid. This isn't a job. It's a calling.

Hygiene packs, snacks, water — and an invitation.

A Calling Born From Pain

That calling was born from pain. Jayson doesn't shy away from his past — years of alcoholism, time spent incarcerated in North Carolina, and a release that led him not home, but to a homeless shelter in Charlotte, where he lived on the streets for six months before finally making it back.

It was there, back in 2012, that he made himself a quiet promise: one day, he would get clean. One day, he would come back for people just like himself.

The Promise Kept

That promise took years to become real. But it did.

Jayson and his wife started their outreach work in Matoaka, West Virginia — a place Jayson had driven through for years on his way to the coal mines, watching the need grow all around him. What began as a simple idea to fill a few Christmas stockings turned into something much bigger.

Not long after, Jayson prayed for a sign — some confirmation that God was truly calling him into ministry full-time. The very next day, he was laid off from his coal mining job. And the day after that, the Princeton Towers fire displaced an entire community of elderly residents, pulling Jayson in to care for them around the clock: three meals a day, seven days a week, driving them to appointments, showing up when it mattered most.

Love Thy Neighbor Outreach launched this past December, and it hasn't stopped growing since.

"Hope in the Park" — a warm meal, clothes, shoes, and a place to belong.

Why This Stop Stayed With Us

Jayson doesn't talk about the lives he's touched with pride — he talks about them with tears in his eyes. Because for him, this was never about recognition. It's about the people still out there in the woods, in the abandoned houses, in the quiet corners no one else looks. People he understands, because he's been there himself.

And for as long as he can, Jayson will keep walking toward them — one familiar face, one small act of care, at a time.

In His Own Words

After we met, Jayson shared a reflection of his own. He wrote about looking at the map of our route — Florida, through Georgia, Tennessee, Virginia, and finally into West Virginia — and thinking of the maps in the back of his Bible that trace the journeys of Jesus and His disciples. They didn't stay in one place, he noted. They went town to town, meeting people where they were, strengthening those already serving, bringing hope to forgotten places.

The mission hasn't changed, he wrote. The roads are paved now instead of dirt, and the vehicles are cars instead of sandals — but the heart is the same: go where the need is, encourage those on the front lines, be the hands and feet of Christ.

He closed with Romans 10:15: "How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news."

We couldn't have said it better.