An 11-year-old Louisiana girl who has been on a mission to spread love and support to police officers across the country since God told her to five years ago visited the Hot Springs Police Department Thursday along with her family.
Rosalyn Baldwin, of Hammond, La., has visited police departments and law enforcement agencies in 35 states so far on her journey and while she and her family had previously visited Little Rock, they decided to stop by the HSPD while vacationing here, her mother, Angie Baldwin said.
"It was a call from God," Rosalyn Baldwin told The Sentinel-Record as she hugged and greeted about a dozen officers from the HSPD, handing out stickers and chatting with each one.
"I was inspired, but it was mainly a call from God to do this," she said, noting a shooting that involved several officers being killed was part of what inspired her mission.
Asked where her travels have taken her, Rosalyn Baldwin said she has been to 35 or 36 states. "It's been a lot," she said. "I have trouble remembering them all."
"She was 6 years old and she came out of her room and said someone was calling her. It was really emotional for her," Angie Baldwin said. "She told me she heard a voice calling her and she kept coming back out to me and my husband, who is a pastor, and asked, 'Who is calling me?' and we didn't know."
After the third time she came out asking, her husband, Errick Baldwin, told his daughter, "'No one in this house is calling you.' He asked her sisters and the baby was just a little baby so he told her, 'No one is calling you."'
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Angie Baldwin said, "He knew then something bigger was going on. He said, 'Go back in your room and when you hear that voice, say, 'yes Father, your servant is here'" and she said the response her daughter got was God telling her to start this mission.
"She was 6 years old and got called and started traveling when she was 7," she said. "That shows you God is so good because this is just grassroots and it shows how God's love was needed."
Angie Baldwin said the shootings where officers were killed in Houston and Dallas partially inspired the mission, but similar shootings in Baton Rouge, La., "really hit home" and made her daughter feel "something had to be done to show God's love."
"This mission is really a response to some very tragic circumstances that occurred several years ago and the slaying of police officers," Errick Baldwin said.
"Rosalyn has a mission of love to go about spreading love and to bring about unity in the community where officers serve so they know they have support and the community knows it's OK to support these officers," he said.
Rosalyn Baldwin's mission has brought her into contact with televangelist Joel Osteen, former President Jimmy Carter and the family of Martin Luther King Jr. along her travels, Angie Baldwin said.
"It's been a lot. God is good. Christians come and find us. That's the thing about it," she said, noting people approach them while shopping or other places out in public, inviting them to church or to their homes.
"This is God's mission. We have to be united. That's what he wants," she said.
The onset of the COVID-19 pandemic "shut us down" in 2020, Angie Baldwin said.
"We couldn't go around to all the places like before because everyone would still hug her," she said. "They didn't care. They still wanted to hug her."
Errick Baldwin said they had to "pause" the mission for a bit due to COVID-19, but were starting again now.
"I want to visit all 50 states and spread the love," Rosalyn Baldwin said.
HSPD Cpl. Patrick Langley, the department's public information officer, said the Baldwins had called and said they were going to be vacationing in Hot Springs and "would it be OK to stop by?" and "obviously we're not going to say no. We need all the love we can get and we'll definitely take it and receive it. We're happy to have them here."
