• Meals Delivered: 68 plus 46 by “St Philip’s Angels”

• Hams Delivered: 19

• Flowers Delivered: 32 plus 42 Easter Lilies

• Home Visits: several

• Notes of Encouragement: 14

• Notes of Bereavement: 46

• Poinsettias Delivered: 94

The Compassion Committee (CC) continues to deliver meals when needed, hams when there is a death, flowers, notes of encouragement, notes for bereavement, and home visits. We are blessed again with a responsive committee and another great year. We have about 80-plus members on our email list for the committee, and usually when we send an email asking for a meal, we get a response in seconds! If you can deliver one meal a year, this committee is for you! Call the church office if you would like to join.

We wanted to share with you all the evidence of God working through you, Christ’s feet and hands in our St. Philip’s. In 2016 we began an ongoing Care Calendar to help a parishioner with meals as she began to face tremendous physical challenges. In 2016 the CC delivered 27 meals, 2017––51 meals, and in 2018––68 meals. In the beginning of 2018, it became apparent that more help was needed. Two people answered our prayer and began on their own taking a weekly meal to this family. Callie and I call these extra meal deliveries our “St Philip’s Angels,” not a direct part of the CC. A third person has since taken over so that an extra weekly meal has been taken since February 2018.

Monti would like to thank Callie, who continues her heartfelt phone ministry as she makes frequent phone calls to members who are on the read-aloud prayer list. Often she hears through her conversations that members have needs other than food. From these calls, for instance, she often heard from church members who just yearned for company, for conversation. They just wanted to talk and visit with someone. We could see there was place for lay visits in our church, but nothing was in place. So we prayed and then we were blessed when one member (Lavinia Thaxton) said note writing just wasn’t in her skill set but asked if she could make home visits because this was her gift! Amen! God provides!

In 2018 we were able to expand our ministry of note writing. We have in place a Notes of Bereavement Team and a Notes of Encouragement Team. We now have two members (Garden Frampton and Terese Dynjan) dedicated to writing notes of comfort and consolation to church family members who have lost a loved one. We also have a team (Travis Dew, Catherine Jones, Catherine Wallace, and Ashley Davis) dedicated to writing notes of encouragement to members who face long-term challenges in their lives. Kind and thoughtful words filled with prayerfully generated scripture can serve a greater purpose when food and flowers are not needed. We are grateful for all the time and prayerful moments all of them devote to this ministry.

We’d also like to thank John Hethcox, who wrote notes for us in 2018 but has moved onto other ministries in the church. We would like to thank Connie Stahl, who is our backup warrior in this ministry. She is 100% available to prepare and deliver food when no one is able to respond to our emails. We would also like to thank Felicia and Rachel in the church office, who answer our many questions with patience and thoroughness. They get this journey started for all of us and keep us on right track.

We think these notes reflect how this ministry has helped church members:

“I cannot express in words the gratitude for the love, food, prayers and notes. I truly felt loved. Like Christ said, His Family are the ones who do His work. I feel that you are my family. Your support and love during the last year meant more than you will ever know.”

“Thank you for leading this important ministry! I cannot imagine how much courage it takes to reach out to those who have lost loved ones. It makes me nervous just thinking about it. However, you do it with such grace and sincere compassion, that it truly must be one of the finest sources of comfort for those you contact during this difficult season of their lives.”

“Thanks so much for the healing words. Lord knows that I need them. Even though I have been around and knew what to expect, the loss of the last parent and of a mother has hit me harder than expected. And I thought I knew exactly what to expect based on the loss of my father years ago, whose unexpected death really threw me for a loop. This is different and probably worse. Thank you to all the folks who do such good work on the Compassion Committee.”

Thank you to Garden, Terese, Catherine W., Catherine J., Ashley, Travis, and Lavinia, and to all who have joined the CC volunteers.

Respectfully submitted in His name,

Monti Hanger and Callie McLaurin