“Always Christmas at Christian Help”

Our long-time friend and volunteer Gail Ruble was here working this week  —  believe it or not, she’s hard at work preparing donated toys for next December’s  Christmas distribution!  That major annual program demands many hours of work throughout the year to make sure everything is ready come December. 

As staff member Delphia commented, “It’s always Christmas at Christian Help.”

Thank you, Gail, and all our beloved volunteers, as well as all our friends whose donations and gifts keep it all happening.

“And the winner is…” — Great Fundraising Challenge results!

It was close, but:  Christian Help is the winner of the Great Fundraising Challenge!  Thanks in large part to many long-time supporters who suggested to friends and family that they get to know what we do and offer a gift of support, we received more donations from first-time donors than our “competitor” in this challenge (and sister agency), ABLE Families. 

That means we’re the recipient of a gift of $4,000 from one generous donor,  and another gift of $4,000 from another generous donor.  Our grateful thanks to both supporters! 

It also means the ABLE Families staff will be working at our place for a day.  We’ll enjoy having them around!

Thanks also to the new donors who made our ‘win’ possible, as well as the long-time supporters who pointed us out to them!

Alert and Update: the Great Friendraising Challenge

Remember the Great Fundraising Challenge?  There’s $8,000 waiting to go to either Christian Help or our sister agency ABLE Families, depending on which agency can garner more new donors by May 15. 

Where do things stand with 3 days to go?  Christian Help is ahead — by one!  We have received donations from 18 new donors since the Challenge began; ABLE Families has received 17.  And with that news on the ABLE Families blog today, I suspect ABLE Families supporters will mobilize a bit.

Care to help us make sure we get that $8,000, to help the people we serve?  If you’ve never donated to Christian Help, now would be a great time to do it!  If you have, it would be a great time to get a friend or family member to do it.

Since we’re coming down to the wire, I’d encourage you or them to make the donation online, which can be done simply and securely here. 

Thanks for considering it!

Word gets around

We recently received a very kind gift of homemade baby blankets, household items, and a generous check from Susan Kimmey of Manchester, New Hampshire.  Susan included a note explaining that she’s the aunt of one of the students from Marianapolis Preparatory School in Thompson, Connecticut.  (See our post about the visit we received in March from those students, and the great work they did, here.) 

Susan wrote:

My niece Kayla recently helped out Christian Help with the group from Marianapolis.  I was really touched by her enthusiasm and respect for you and your mission.  I hope you can put these baby blankets I made and some other things to good use.  I’m sure you can.

We sure can.  And we’re very happy when we see word getting out about the good work that goes on here.  Thank you, Kayla and Susan!

Easter baskets!

Every year, Christian Help distributes Easter baskets to the children of many of the families we serve. 

This week we distributed 125 baskets to local kids!  Here’s a photo of one of ’em, picking up his basket with his family at our place.  In the photo below, the table of baskets waiting for good homes.

We do this thanks to the kind donation of Frank I. of Sharon, Connecticut, a friend of Christian Help who faithfully sends a check each March marked “Easter baskets.”  We’re also thankful for the efforts of local Christian Help volunteers, who put a lot of  time into shopping for the items and putting them together into beautiful baskets.  And one more thank you two nearby businesses who provided the Easter basket items at a discount for us: Food City in South Williamson, KY, and Rite Aid in Warfield, KY.

Have a happy Easter!

Our crew

Because a large donation of new shirts recently came through our doors, Sr. Therese was able to arrange for the printing of names and Christian Help logos on several of them at very little expense. We got a shirt for each of the staff and volunteers in our clothing store. Not everyone was available for the impromtu photo, but here’s a bunch of our crew.

Going left to right, that’s Tiffany Newsome, Minne Fitchpatrick, me, Art Spurlock, Kathy Spurlock, Maggie Messer, Mina Hammond, and Sr. Therese Carew.

A note from recent visitors (and new friends)

I want to draw your attention to a comment left on this blog earlier today. We’ve had several posts here about the recent visit of students from St. Peter’s Catholic Church in Geneva, IL, as well as a few other student groups we’ve hosted lately. Each of the groups have done some wonderful works of service here in Mingo County.

Anyway, I posted here about the people from our region who we’ve invited to come give presentations to these students, to help them understand central Appalachia’s culture, history, and economy.

Mary Kay Rogers, one of the adult leaders of the St. Peter’s group, left a comment on that post earlier today that I’d hope that not only our presenters, but also our local folks can see. She wrote:

Many thanks to all of the guest speakers!! We had our post trip reunion yesterday, and the students ALL agreed that the educational component of our stay in Kermit was awesome. It gave all of us a better sense of Appalachia from several vantage points and hopefully helped us be better servants during our stay.

THANKS for the opportunity to visit and serve in Mingo County, WV. We have fallen in love with the people you serve and your beautiful landscape!

So it’s mutual, because we loved having them as well!

Explaining what makes central Appalachia tick

Last week one of our visiting students approached me to say, “I want to thank you for all of the interesting people you’ve arranged to come visit us during our time here. It has really helped me understand a lot about this area.”

Besides providing opportunities for service to the student groups who come occasionally from high schools or colleges around the country, we also include in their visit a strong element of education about our region and its people, culture, economy, and history. To do that, we call on a variety of friends and collaborators from around the area, specialists in some aspect of life around here.

In the photo, for example, is Chris Newsome, safety director at Lee Sartin Trucking, a local trucking company that works closely with the state’s coal industry. He talked to our most recent group about the place of the coal industry in this part of the state and the nuts and bolts of how it all happens.

I want to offer our thanks to the following people who have given their time and insights to us and our visitors here at Christian Help and ABLE Families in recent weeks, speaking to one or more of several visiting groups. These folks donate their time to us, for the sake of helping others understand better what makes things tick in central Appalachia. They include:

Bill Richardson, West Virginia University Extension office

Rick Wilson, Society of Friends Service Committee’s Economic Justice Project

Nick Getzen, Thompson Barney Law Firm

Jenny Hudson and Philip Bryant, The JOBS Project

Chris Newsome, Lee Sartin Trucking

Warm thanks to each of them!

Friends from Illinois

Christian Help, along with ABLE Families, is currently hosting a group of high school students from St. Peter’s Parish in Geneva, Illinois.  They’ve come to do works of service for the people that our two agencies serve here in Mingo County.

They’re an enthusiastic and very helpful bunch, eager to help out in every way possible.  Last night they chose to forgo the movie night we had prepared for them in order to do extra work cleaning up and organizing Christian Help’s warehouse! 

Much of their time this week is being spent painting a local home.  (Though it’s a bit of a chilly day out — enough that I just brought them some hot chocolate over a few minutes ago — they’re doing it all without complaint.) 

Here are some photos of the work in progress.  (And for your smile of the day, check out the little video of the group that I posted on our Facebook page this morning.  They’re playing a fun little game to start the day off.  See if you can figure out the rules.) 

Service from St. Louis

Since Saturday, we’ve been hosting 14 students from St. Louis University here at Christian Help / ABLE Families.   Throughout the week, they’ve been staying here with us and doing work of service with both agencies here in Mingo County.  

Each day, part of the group has been visiting various Head Start programs throughout the county, doing literacy related work, which is ABLE Families’ bag.  (Visit the ABLE Families blog to see some photos of that important work going on.) 

Another part of the group has been doing a variety of jobs related to Christian Help’s work, the biggests of which has been the construction of a much-needed wheelchair ramp at the home of a Christian Help client who lives far down into the hollers of this region.  (It’s about a half hour drive from here, through several miles of narrow roads winding through the mountains and valleys.) 

I visited their work site today and snapped some photos of these young men and women hard at work, with the help of a local carpenter we’ve enlisted to guide the job.  I also got a few of the neighborhood in which they’re working.