Winter chills couldn’t keep a handful of southeast Gainesville parishioners away from church one dreary evening in January. They didn’t want to miss their time of fellowship.
For an hour, Trollyn Gillins, 49, led the group through a series of jumping jacks, leg lifts, crunches and other moves she had learned from another church member at Open Door Ministries.
In the year since she started going to church to exercise, Gillins has been able to stop taking one of her two blood pressure medicines, on the recommendation of her doctor. Before, she used to get exhausted easily, but now she can walk 3 miles with ease and line dance for more than an hour.