Hope Ignited

 “You can’t go back and change the beginning, but you can start where you are and change the ending.” C.S. Lewis

We all have a story.  Within those stories, there are chapters that are filled with wonderful tales and adventures. These chapters are fun to tell and easy to spin. Other chapters are filled with hardship and shame. These chapters are hard to tell, and are often told with downcast eyes and tears. They are hard to walk through. It may be a time of loneliness and brokenness. Sometimes, we get stuck in our hardship and shame, and don’t know how to move through the valley of the shadow. We need help.

Love INC’s Connection Center is the place where such chapters unfold.  Our Intake Specialists listen and calmly breathe hope and life into our neighbors’ stories, so that the chapter can be turned and a new ending can be written.  As each neighbor shares with an intake specialist, HOPE is ignited. A relationship has begun that will transform a life.

One of our neighbors has a story that is a perfect example of a chapter turned and the hope of a new ending. This gentleman called us, brand new to Sheboygan. He is a veteran and disabled. Pain would rack his body every day. He needed furniture. We listened to his story and met his need of furniture. The Furniture Ministry Team sat with him, listened, prayed, and gave him a bible. The next week, he called us letting us know that he would be going to rehab for his pain medication addiction. The love and compassion of the volunteers he interacted with encouraged him to begin to change his story.

Our Neighbor Liaisons continued to call and check on this man weekly. He was depressed and lonely. He was off the narcotic pain killers, but still was in pain. Volunteers also sent him encouragement cards. We continued to love on him. He struggled with God. We prayed with him.

One day, we heard a plot twist. Our neighbor began to read the bible again. He watched church online. He prayed. The Holy Spirit was on the move. He began to see the goodness of God in his life. The last time we talked with him, we found out that he is engaged to a lovely women who wants to join her story with his. He feels he has a purpose, not only to follow God, but to become a good husband and serve others. He said that his life has new meaning and is grateful to Love INC for supporting him while he turned the chapter and wrote a new ending to his story.

The heart and soul of Love INC are relationships with our neighbors. What a joy to see and hear the wonderful things God does as we love our neighbors!

The Impact of Hope

She slipped in the door, trying not to call attention to herself, but scanning the room, trying to figure out which person she had spoken to on the phone earlier that day.  Then someone approached her and welcomed her with open arms, proud that she had mustered up the courage to walk through the doors of an unfamiliar church, not knowing a single soul.  She was nervous and scared, but desperate for healing.  As Love INC learned her story, she shared that, “For almost 4 years I failed at everything.   After a 16 year marriage of cross categorical abuse, my divorce was finalized.  Those 4 years of failure were filled with the loss of my job, my house, my children.  The trauma was overwhelming.”

These are her own words after completing Love INC’s Affirming Potential class and now attending the Boundaries class:

“I was in rehabs, counseling, partial hospitalization programs, intensive outpatient programs; I also tried medication.  New Way Program was the first successful program I went through.  I found an environment where I am not judged, where no one questions my intent or integrity.  There is sincere, individual treatment, unconditional acceptance, and realistic expectations.  The Affirming Potential class taught me how to affirm my potential in Christ.  I felt validated and proud of myself for the first time in a long time.  It has given me hope for tomorrow.”

New Way is part of Love INC’s Transformational Ministries, held at Calvin Christian Reformed Church in Sheboygan.  It is a place where people meet to learn new skills, ask questions, develop relationships, and encourage each other in reaching goals.

Want to know more, attend class, or volunteer?  Check out our website www.loveincsheboygancounty.org  Or contact us for a visit at our New Way Program!

The Connection Center: A Caring Place

People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.

Theodore Roosevelt

My name is Mary, and I have the honor of being a Neighbor Liaison for Love In the Name of Christ.  I work in the Connection Center, making regular phone calls to neighbors who want to grow a relationship with us.  Here is how one relationship with a neighbor has grown through caring, listening, and a lot of prayer.

It started when I was given a list of former neighbors to "cold call" in order to touch base with them and see how they were doing. I contacted a neighbor who had received bedding from our Bedding and Linens Gap Ministry in June 2020.  In 2021, she attended Love INC’s Faith & Finances class.

As I was entering her story, I learned that she was recently released from jail and hoping to be reunited with her kids. I listened, encouraged, and prayed with her over several phone calls. It was a rough time getting her kids back, but when it finally happened, she knew that it was with God’s help and she was so grateful to Love INC for our support.

When I called her this week, she was concerned for her and her kids’ safety because she is in an abusive relationship. Love INC works hard at being aware of Sheboygan County’s resources, so I connected her to Safe Harbor.  When I was praying with her over the phone, I realized we never know how a call might change a neighbor’s life. God is always working behind the scenes.  I am privileged as a Neighbor Liaison to grow relationships in the name of Christ that reflect the love of Jesus.  I hope they know how much we care!

2022 Living Out Love Gala Testimony

2022 Living Out Love Gala Testimony

Helping Hands Make a Lighter Load!

Transitions can be one of the hardest journeys in life.  Moving is one of those difficult journeys, but with loving, kind, and patient support, the move can become a lighter load.  The Love INC Moving Ministry does just that, becoming the hands and feet of Christ, with open and willing hearts.  Vicki, Moving Ministry Leader, shares, “No matter what we are asked of in the Connection Center, this team always jumps in to help our community!”  Recently, a challenging move was presented to this ministry.  It was hard, messy work with very cold temperatures and took two days to complete.  But what really matters, as Pastor Rob (St. Paul Lutheran Church, Sheboygan Falls) said, “It’s more than helping a neighbor move.  It is about walking with the neighbor and listening to them.”  As it turns out, a moving volunteer was able to provide a job reference for our neighbor too!  It is a blessing to provide the service of helping someone move.  It is God’s work when we do it with love, kindness, dignity, and a listening ear.  Truly a beautiful partnership between volunteers and our neighbors.  To God be the glory!

It is about walking with the neighbor and listening to them.

Members of the Moving Ministry in January 2023

Third Graders Become Justice Seekers

Third Graders Become Justice Seekers

On any given day in Sheboygan County, someone is waking up on the floor, perhaps using a towel for a blanket, and eating their breakfast out of a package, no plates or silverware to be had. Floors are hard and cold. Towels are small and thin. Packaged breakfasts are poor nutrition and unsatisfying.

The rest of the day is set up to be unfulfilling too. Basic needs are being met, just barely, but the feelings of inadequacy and shame are a thick barrier to a thriving life. Hopelessness fills the heart as this stark reality of their life shouts, “You are a failure and you cannot break free of it!”

“Sadness is part of the human condition but lack of hope and lack of feeling worthwhile are not. Feeling hopeless is not because there is no hope at all, it’s because you feel there’s none.”

-Edward Shorter Ph.D., Psychology Today

What is it like?

“A distance between you and the world. You cannot see any tangible future, so there is a feeling of hopelessness.” –Heather Eyre, blurtitout.org

“Like your own personal hell, specially tailored to you!” -Rebecca Cooper, blurtitout.org

Love In the Name of Christ is here to offer the love of Jesus through its Volunteers ready to walk alongside the hopeless in a journey to thriving instead of surviving. But how do we help each other understand what living a hopeless life is like? Lisa Roerdink, from Bethel OPC in Oostburg, and Ms. Meinnert, 3rd grade teacher at Oostburg Christian School, found a way to bring some third grade students a glimpse into this life.

“How would you feel if you walked into an empty room and all you had were the clothes on your back and a toothbrush;” asked Mrs. Roerdink. This question ensued a conversation about people who struggle to meet their basic needs and how Christians can help.

Lisa explained that Love INC came to Sheboygan County to help churches work together to make people’s lives better. People can call Love INC and tell a Christian volunteer their problems and ask for help. One thing Love INC can help with is providing basic furniture.

It is hard to understand what it’s like not having furniture so the students started by listing all the ways they use tables and chairs. The list was longer than they had imagined.

Next, students were invited to experience a day at school without their basic furniture. All day long kids lay and sat on the floor to do their work and dug around in a box to find their supplies. It is possible to get some school work done, but as one student said:

“I learned that it is hard to do everyday things without having what you need.”

“Why do you do this?” a student asked. Lisa responded, “I can be the hands and feet of Jesus and help someone who is hurting by giving a hand up.”

Now it was time for Ms. Meinnert’s third graders to become JUSTICE SEEKERS, so they created an action plan to help too. They wrote letters to local furniture stores to encourage them to donate to Love INC and hung signs in their school telling people they can donate their gently used furniture.

At the completion of their project, one student remarked:

“I felt like I was supporting God.”

Won’t you JOIN US in living out God’ greatest commandment to love one another as I have loved you (John13:34)?