She has a silly side, and her love of wood and woodcarving carries into everything she does. First and foremost, Weaver’s passion is sharing the gospel of Jesus Christ. But in doing so, she’s traveled some less-traditional paths.

Inside and outside the home Weaver shares with husband Kenneth are statues, wall-hangings and furniture carved from wood, which she does herself with a chainsaw and chisel.

As a tomboy child, she whittled faces into sticks, and that grew into a career carving pieces for wealthy businesspeople, country singer Randy Travis and the corporate collection of Johnson & Johnson.

Weaver spent 1979 until 1993 making wood statues full time in Florida. Mostly she carved outdoor animals like bears, her favorites, or scenes like country stores. She lived and worked on a lot just off an interstate and had a shop called Down to Earth Creations.

“I’m one where I’ll wing it on faith,” Weaver said. “Everybody would pull in and stop. I really built a life there.”

Weaver said she left a good-paying job to open her shop and almost went back to work a few months in, until a customer said something that made her reconsider.

“I never will forget him; his name was Roger Hatfield, from Virginia,” Weaver said. “He said, ‘Susie, you’ve got a gift like I’ve never seen.’”

One day, her foster father, who owned the lot where Weaver lived and worked, got an offer too good to refuse. Weaver kept her tools with her, but set out for the mountains of Cherokee to start ministering. She drove a school bus then, too.

After work, Weaver entertained the residents of her trailer park by chatting with them as she worked on pieces of cedar or cypress. Over the years, she had built up a following from all over and stayed occupied with pieces ordered or to take to shows.

For years, Weaver told stories and jokes on stages occasionally. And, never shy, she continued to find and introduce herself to other woodworkers. “I have talked to more people about the Lord because of the opening of woodcarving,” she said.

About 1993, Weaver tracked down a guy who did the best woodcarvings she’d ever seen, and when she met him at his home, she smelled marijuana immediately. She stayed and shared her faith with him as they talked about their shared art.

During a 2000 trip back to Florida, Weaver made a similar trip to find a noted woodcarver and was surprised to find herself in front of the same man and his wife. They brought her in the house and showed her their heavily thumbed Bible.

“She said we’ve been reading the Bible ever since you witnessed to us,” Weaver said.

She said she’s hoping to do more Christian comedy now.

Weaver said she’s never been a prissy and proper person who demurs around people higher in stature than she is. In fact, she quite enjoys being the one to break the tension in any setting. “I was always the class clown,” she said. “I like to joke and cut up. It breaks the ice with people.”

Ken said he accompanied her to a class reunion that had the stilted air of a dentist’s office waiting room until Weaver caught the ear of a few people to whom she started telling stories. Soon, a chuckling audience gathered around her. The first time she met his family, she popped in a set of fake buckteeth and asked the staff at Bill’s Barbecue in Wilson if they had corn on the cob.

In service of her faith, Weaver said she keeps her jokes clean and avoids mean-spirited gags. “I make fun of myself and my make-believe family,” she said. “My main character is Aunt Woody. I’ve got a make-believe brother named Hickory.”

Weaver said she likes to tell funny stories and get people having fun with her. She’s remembered in an Alabama steakhouse for inciting a room of diners to help her guess the number of cows depicted in a dining room painting. A manager at the restaurant got her started on that activity after she had already pretended to be a long-lost teacher or friend of much of the wait staff working that evening.

Weaver said she’s never been a self-conscious person, and her husband tells her she has a gypsy spirit. Weaver admits that if she were still single, she’d get a trailer and just stay on the road. In witnessing, that openness has sometimes drawn tsk-tsks from those who thought she should be more solemn in her faith, she said. But Weaver said she thinks the Lord has given her humor as a way to seem approachable to all kinds of people.

Otherwise, much of her material comes from her day job, driving two bus routes a day and working as a teacher’s assistant at Selma Middle School. She said she overhears enough amusing comments from her bus riders every day that she can tell real-life stories onstage, with names changed to protect the innocent.

Weaver will have a role in the school talent show and recently took the stage during a benefit for Operation First Response, which provides aid to wounded soldiers and their families. “I just like life,” she said.