How You Make a Difference

Pastor Valerie Strand Patterson is responsible for our caring ministries here at St. Philip the Deacon. Here’s how she summarized some of these important forms of outreach to the congregation during worship on the weekend of December 5th and 6th.

In a world that is filled more and more with people in need, your gifts make a world of difference.

Your gifts are a major support for Kaleidoscope Place for inner city kids in the Phillips neighborhood of Minneapolis, especially for their summer program. I wish everyone could see the excitement, wonder, and sense of accomplishment on the faces of these students,  because they have a safe, creative, educational and nurturing environment where they can play, learn and grow.

In a world that is filled more and more with people in need, your gifts make a world of difference.

In recent weeks, classes have been discussing, “What does it mean to be rich?” Much to the delight of the staff, the kids listed family, friends, school, kaleidoscope, homes, and food. Your gifts make a difference in their lives—and in their sense of having a good future.

Your gifts are also the sole support of the Messiah Food Shelf, also in Phillips. At Thanksgiving, five hundred families came for food baskets—a huge increase. For a lot of people in our Twin Cities, it is really rough out there. The year round food shelf and holiday meals would not exist without your gifts.

Through Families Moving Forward, your gifts support homeless families throughout the year and for the three weeks each year these families stay with us here at church. A staff-person wrote to us: “With your support we are helping more than 60 families per year, including 200 children, move from homelessness to home.” And speaking of those children, when they are at St. Philip the Deacon, my goal for them is that they don’t know they are homeless–they think they are on a week-long adventure where a hundred new people love them and play with them. And last time they were with us–over Halloween—the kids told us they didn’t want to leave. Because of you.

And you’ve got to hear this thank-you note from one of our Adopt-A-Person recipients to their St. Philip family: “What you have done for me has helped me in ways that I can’t even begin to explain. I appreciate the gift card very much, but you showing me that there are still beautiful people like you has helped me even more. Thank you for your prayers—and I will keep you in my prayers.”

From Lutheran Social Service to Meals on Wheels, from Home Free Shelter to Feed My Starving Children, from the Kasambala Medical Center caring for the poorest of the poor in Malawi to our many other ministries I would love to tell you more about, your gifts reach out locally and globally to change lives and sometimes give life to real people in desperate need. God bless you and thank you.

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