Brittany Suitt has a passion for God, a love of children and a deep interest in other cultures.
All are a result of her upbringing in a large, Christian family. She is the middle child of seven belonging to Jan and Cecil Suitt.
The Greenbrier High School senior admits that being from a big family can have a downside. She once yearned for a designer-label jacket, for example, but didn’t get it. Mostly, though, she says a large family is an asset.
“It’s never boring,” she laughed. “When I was younger, the older ones didn’t want me and told me to go play with the younger kids, and I didn’t want to,” the 18-year-old added. “Right now, I really like it; “I am really close to my sisters.”
Her siblings are Elise, 24; Ashley, 22; Bri, 20; Kara Grace, 16; and Celeste, 10. John, 13, is the only boy.
The siblings were home-schooled through the early grades. Brittany entered school in ninth grade and says there was an adjustment period, but the change was a good one.
“I really needed school to keep on task,” she said. Her mother expected Brittany to complete assignments without urging, and she didn’t always follow through.
Brittany’s first experience of another culture – which made her want more – occurred the summers she was 6-8, when the family invited two Russian teenagers to live with them. “We had so much fun with them. We would play school, and they would teach us Russian,” Brittany said, adding that she doesn’t remember any of the language.
Since then, Brittany has taken four mission trips with youth from the Bible Church in Little Rock. By doing so, she followed in her older sisters’ footsteps; they have been to the Ukraine, South Africa and Mexico.
On her trips, Brittany’s three passions converged.
“I feel like staying here when there is so much to be done out there is like a slap in the face to God,” she said.
On each trip, Brittany worked with children. In Cherokee, N.C., she worked with Head Start kids, many whose parents didn’t care about them. That was sad, she says. On a Navajo Reservation near Vanderwagen, N.M., and in the Ukraine, she worked at children’s camps. In Jerez, Mexico, she helped children and adults make crafts, as well as witnessing to her beliefs.
“My two favorites would definitely be Mexico and the Ukraine,” Brittany said. The Mexican children were very loving and enjoyed running their fingers through her hair, she says. People who didn’t come to worship service came for craft time.
“The Ukraine was unlike anything I’ve ever been to,” Brittany said. “You really had to make an effort to get to know them.” Although the country is no longer communist, Brittany says she could still see the effects.
Brittany is currently saving money for this summer’s trips to Cedar Rapids, Iowa, and to Siquatepeque, Honduras. She must raise the money herself; her parents don’t give it to her. Options are working or sending out funding letters. Brittany doesn’t like asking people for money; she knows they have their own preferred charities. So she works, currently at the Greenbrier branch of Home Bank of Arkansas. Her entire paycheck will go toward the trips.
In 10th grade, Brittany’s love of children led her to another interest – the Invisible Children Program. She recently won a Daniel Cayce Award for Inspirational Leadership in Public Service from the Clinton School of Public Service at the University of Arkansas for her work.
ICP began in 2003 to aid the children of northern Uganda caught up in an armed rebellion against the government by a terrorist group called The Lord’s Resistance Army. ICP made a documentary film, “Invisible Children: Rough Cut,” which is used to raise awareness of this war, which has been going on since 1987. It also rescues enslaved children and child soldiers and sends them to boarding school.
Brittany organized a GHS “movie night” at which the film was shown to raise awareness in Greenbrier. She also worked to get the National Middle America Tour to visit Greenbrier, but that fell through.
After graduation, Brittany plans to attend the University of Central Arkansas and possibly major in business. Eventually, she would like to go into the mission field, preferably in an area where she can work with children and continue to experience other cultures.
She also wants someday to have “a really big family, like my Mom.”