MAMA SUE’S SOUTHERN KITCHEN

Sue Garrett never set out to make her cooking a business. But God had other plans for her.

She had always shared pictures of what she was serving for dinner on her personal Facebook page. Being from the South, she loved to cook and share meal ideas with her friends.

In July 2020 and in the middle of the pandemic, some owners of a vegetable farm came to her and asked if they could make a video of Sue preparing some dishes with their vegetables. She did and they put it on their Facebook page. And she put it on her page. To everyone’s amazement, the videos went viral.

Thousands of people started following her. Sue’s daughter convinced her to make a separate Facebook page where she could share her recipes and cooking tips.

And Mama Sue’s Southern Kitchen was born.

Sue’s popularity exploded and people started asking if she had a cookbook. She had made one for her church so she called the company which had published that cookbook. She wanted to order 200 but the publisher told her it would be a more attractive cost per book if she ordered 1,000. So she did.

She posted something about the cookbook on Facebook, and she was shocked when she sold 680 in 24 hours. She placed a second order the very next day. She now has four volumes of her cookbook.

Mama Sue’s Southern Kitchen isn’t about cooking. This is her ministry. Her social media sites on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and others now have over one million followers. Not just in the South, but all over the world.

This is her platform to share her strong Christian faith and talk about God. She ends each video or recipe by telling people to “be the salt and light”. A lot of people started asking her what that meant. And she’d tell them that it’s from Matthew 5:13-16, that as Christians we are called to be the salt and light of the world. Just that simple phrase opens up the door for her to start sharing her faith.

She can certainly see God’s hand in guiding her success. When her cooking site started to surge in popularity, it became much more difficult for Sue and her husband to keep up with everything. They were packing all the cookbooks into shipping boxes, labeling everything, making all the videos and posting them on social media. One of Sue’s friends, Miss Annie who also has a wonderful cooking site on Facebook, met with her and gave her a tip that really changed her world. Annie told Mama Sue she needed to get some help; if Sue wanted to do this to the best of her ability, she needed to meet and hire a social media person named Angela. Sue did meet with Angela and hired her right away. That instantly changed things for Mama Sue. And it was in God’s perfect timing, because a few months later, Mama Sue was diagnosed with cancer.

Mama Sue can look back and see that God nudged her to meet with Miss Annie who introduced her to Angela who really saved her site and ministry when Sue came down with cancer.

During that cancer battle, Mama Sue couldn’t cook since she was sick from the chemo and radiation. So Angela started posting some of Mama Sue’s old cooking videos to keep the site going. Then, Sue and Angela saw that this sickness was another opportunity to share her faith and be totally transparent about her cancer. She told her followers that all the days are not good. But that God is always with you, even in these difficult times. She told them that God’s ways are not our ways, that His thoughts are not our thoughts.

Mama Sue takes every opportunity to be totally transparent with people on the struggles of life. Those struggles open more doors for Sue to share her faith.

Her grandson, Blake, was born four years ago with Mosaic Trisomy 22, a rare chromosomal disorder that occurs when some cells in the body have three copies of chromosome 22 instead of two. He has never been able to walk or talk. She shares openly about how hard this is but that God has a purpose for Blake and that we all need to still trust Him.

She always prayed that her cooking videos on social media could help lead one person to Christ. God answered her prayer right before she was diagnosed with cancer. She received a fairly terse email from one of her followers, saying she didn’t believe in God. She told Mama Sue how she was abused by her dad, and that she couldn’t trust a God who would allow that to happen. That she could never forgive her father. Mama Sue wanted to write her back but she knew she had to choose her words carefully. She told her she didn’t know why God allowed that to happen, but that our Heavenly Father is someone that will always love you and be there for you. Mama Sue asked for her address which she provided and she sent her a copy of the book “Forgiving What You Can’t Forget” with a note that said “If you ever want to talk, I will be there for you.” And Sue did something she rarely does: she gave out her personal phone number.

As Sue awaited her pathology report in the doctor’s waiting room on July 1, 2021, her phone rang with an out-of-state number she didn’t recognize. But she felt God’s nudge to answer it. She did and it was the lady who received that book. She was crying and just wanted to talk. Sue told her she had every right to be hurt and that God is with you and wants to heal you. After a few minutes, the lady asked how she could become a Christian. Sue told her to confess her sins and acknowledge Jesus as her Savior. She did right there on the phone. And then Sue said, “Just because you prayed that prayer, that doesn’t mean you won’t have problems. After all, I’m about to get a pathology report saying that I may have cancer. But what it does mean is that you’ll never walk alone, that Jesus will always be with you.”

That wonderful incident showed Mama Sue that God has her doing a cooking site in order to share her faith and plant some seeds for Him.

Mama Sue says, “I prayed that I would not get cancer or have to go through chemo. But I did. I didn’t want to get sick as a side effect or have to undergo radiation. But I did. That doesn’t mean that God doesn’t love me.

“It’s been said that if God showed us what our entire journey would look like, we wouldn’t take the first step. But I know that He is always with me, in good times and in bad, and when I’m healthy or sick.

“God has blessed me with this following. It’s my job to model Him to my followers. Many people won’t open a Bible. Christianity to an unbeliever may be what they see in a person who says they’re a Christian. We want them to see that there is something different about the way we live. That’s what I try to do with Mama Sue’s Southern Kitchen.”