Three jobs, six kids, a cancer diagnosis — and he’s just getting started

By Jessica Breazeale

The Hood Family

If you think you’re busy, spend five minutes with Josh Hood. 

At 35, Hood juggles three jobs, pastors two churches, teaches a Bible college class in India every Thursday morning at 4 a.m., and is raising six children — ranging in age from three weeks to nearly nineteen years old — alongside his wife, Hannah.

And, somehow, he still finds time to fix tires.

Hood is the pastor of Wesson Baptist Church, located at 2083 Highway 51 in Wesson, where Sunday school begins at 8:45 a.m. and worship service at 9:30 a.m. He also leads Redemption Church, a church plant he helped launch in Hazlehurst in 2021, right in the middle of COVID-19, when most congregations were scaling back.

“Everybody else was trying not to go to church,” he said, with a laugh. “We were starting a church!”

Hood preaching at Redemption Church

Redemption currently holds Sunday morning services at 11:30 a.m.; and, for now, those services are held at Hazlehurst Tire, Hood’s auto repair and tire shop on the edge of town.

“We make jokes about it all the time,” he said. “We turn it into a church, flip it into a fellowship hall, then it turns back into a tire shop — three things in one day.”

That won’t be the arrangement forever. Redemption Church has big plans: a 14,000-square-foot community center on a four-acre lot in Hazlehurst, currently being cleared of trees. The planned facility will include two basketball courts, a weight room, space for after-school tutoring and a large commercial kitchen to support the church’s feeding ministries. The $900,000 project is underway on Highway 28 next to the railroad tracks. The process has started, Hood says, but completion will be a matter of faith and fundraising.

At Hazlehurst Tire, expansion is also in progress. The shop recently began carrying ExMark lawnmowers and servicing outdoor power equipment, including saws, trimmers, blowers and edgers. Three additional service bays are under construction, expected to be complete by late September or October, and utility trailers are anticipated to arrive by late July or early August.

“If the community sees a lot of construction coming up in the near future,” Hood said, “they’ll know why.”

The Hood family itself is something of a small community. Josh and Hannah have been married twelve years and are parents to six children: Elijah, 18, currently in his second year at Copiah-Lincoln Community College; Harvey, 10; Henley, 9; Hosea, 8; Heights, 4; and their newest arrival, Jerry Hezekiah — “J-Hezzy” — born a little over a month ago.

Elijah has also built his own business on the side, cleaning swimming pools and cutting lawns across Copiah County. Josh and Hannah say they have also been obedient to what God called them to in 2020 by being foster parents and jumping whole heartedly into adoption.

While Josh serves in his local Hazlehurst community by being on the Cares Board at Copiah County Medical Center, Hannah serves on the Preschool Board at Wesson Baptist Church, where she was board president for the past three years.

Perhaps the endeavor closest to Hood’s heart stretches halfway around the world.

Since a 2018 trip to India, he has partnered with a discipleship training institution, essentially a tuition-free Bible college, that the churches he pastors help support. He teaches a class every Thursday via video call at 4 a.m. Central time (2:30 p.m. in India). The program has held three graduations in three years and is now entering its fourth year. Each February and March, Hood travels to India, along with other church members, to participate in graduation ceremonies and visit graduates in their communities/mission fields.

The longer-term vision for the India Bible College is to purchase property and build a dedicated campus with a training center and dormitory facilities, allowing students to attend four to five days per week. The estimated cost is $100,000, with a five-year fundraising goal currently underway. Hood continues to fundraise here in the U.S. to help make this vision a reality.

Josh Hood stays positive at his medical appointments.

In February 2024, Hood received a diagnosis that would reshape any man’s perspective: stage four lung cancer with brain metastasis. He has since undergone targeted immunotherapy and one round of radiation. The results have been encouraging: the tumor in his left lung has shrunk and stabilized, and the brain metastases have also decreased in size.

He speaks about it the way he speaks about everything else: with clarity, gratitude and faith.

“Even though we do all the things — eat right, go to appointments, take supplements, take medication and so on— utilizing both holistic and western medicine practices, we’re still trusting that my life is in God’s hands,” he said. “That’s a reminder for everybody. We are all dealt a different hand of cards, and we have to play our hand; but we must never forget that God is in control.”