Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: THURSDAY, August 4, 1994                   TAG: 9408180075
SECTION: NEIGHBORS                    PAGE: S-8   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: By FRANCES STEBBINS STAFF WRITER
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

COUNSELOR HAS MUSICAL MISSION

On Sunday, the professional guidance counselor, whose hobby is music, leaves for a mission to Kenya. She will be the featured singer in an evangelistic team headed by a Kenyan-born Martinsville man, John Cha Cha, an elder in Martinsville Christian Fellowship, where Chambers has been active for the past two years.

Chambers will sing at services several times daily in the rural area of Kakuru, not far from Nairobi. Cha Cha, who has conducted evangelistic meetings throughout the world, has told her that thousands of people, some who have traveled on foot for many miles, will be present. The team includes Christians from several communities other than Martinsville, she said.

Members will return to their homes Aug. 23. That's two days before Chambers will start a new job as guidance counselor at Kate Collins Middle School in Waynesboro, the town in which she grew up, before her parents, Alice Chambers and the late George Chambers, moved to Roanoke 16 years ago. She was, in fact, once a pupil at the school where she will work.

As a teen, Chambers often sang at churches other than those of her Baptist parents. Calling herself "an ecumenical Christian," she said she has been part of Catholic, Presbyterian and United Methodist choral groups. She joined the Calvary Baptist Choir when her parents came to Roanoke and has been a soloist with its Singing Christmas Tree program for 10 years.

Her great-grandmother, the late Ella Powell, was a soloist at Calvary in its early days, Chambers said.

After earning undergraduate and master's degrees from Radford and Regent universities, respectively, Chambers became guidance counselor for two schools in the Danville area. She has lived in Eden, N.C., but has maintained ties with Roanoke musical groups and with her mother, who now lives in Daleville.

She recently recorded a collection of gospel songs, "Shadow of Your Wings." She designed the cover for the $10 tape and wrote six of the songs. The tape is available from Calvary Baptist Church of Roanoke or by calling 992-3054. Chambers said she also is available for music and testimony programs in churches.