In a city known for monuments to the past, there is a new addition, and the organization that sponsors it hopes travelers along Interstate 20 will draw spiritual strength from seeing it.

Saturday morning, a group of men from Wynndale Baptist Church in Terry installed three crosses on ground off the Halls Ferry exit on Interstate 20. The crosses are the latest group to be installed by Crosses Across America, which is headquartered in Vicksburg.

“What we hope people will receive from seeing these crosses is what the Lord intended to have, and spread a message of hope,” Sara Abraham, executive director of Crosses Across America said as she watched the men from Wynndale install the crosses with the aid of rope and a tractor with a bucket.

“Since 1996 we’ve put up 156 sets of crosses across Mississippi,” said Gerald Keyes, a member of the group that installs the crosses for Crosses Across America, adding the group installed a set of crosses at Hinds Christian Academy between Raymond and Bolton Saturday morning before coming to Vicksburg.

Robert Jordan, a Wynndale member, said the group became involved with Crosses Across America after Abraham addressed the churches men’s group.

“These men dedicate one week a month to installing crosses,” Abraham said, adding the crosses here will also have a sign identifying Vicksburg as the international headquarters for Crosses international.

“We are truly and international organization. We have crosses in South Africa, the Philippines and we’ve put a set of crosses in Nova Scotia, so we are now in Canada.”

She said the Halls Ferry exit site was selected because Mississippi Department of Transportation statistics show 46,000 cars a day pass the site, meaning about 24 million people will see the crosses in a year.

Crosses Across America was organized by the Rev. Bernard Coffindaffer as a roadside ministry in 1984, when he erected the first trio of gold and blue crosses in Flatwoods, West Virginia. From then until his death in 1993, he spent almost $3 million putting crosses in 29 different states.

Abraham took over the ministry in 1996, when it was renamed Crosses Across America Inc.

Abraham thenn tuurned the organiizationn into a 501c(3) corporation.