On April 10, 2017, the founder of the Love In the Name of Christ movement, Dr. Virgil Gulker, was the keynote speaker for the Gallatin Valley Love INC annual fundraiser event. His words were timely and helpful and we hope you are blessed by them as much as we were hearing them the first time.
Love INC 2016 Holiday Hours
Our Help Line (587-3008) will be open on December 12-13 and will then close until Tuesday, January 3.
Our business office will be closed between December 23-January 2.
Our Clothes Closet in Belgrade will still keep various hours over the holidays. To see the current schedule, visit our online calendar here.
To get a jump start on the assistance process for when our staff and volunteers return on January 3, fill out our online assistance form here. Please note that it won’t be seen until we have volunteers back in the office on January 3.
The Food Bank will also be keeping limited hours over the holidays, but HRDC will have food boxes to hand out while the Food Bank is closed. If you are in need of this type of assistance, give HRDC a call at (406) 585-4840.
We pray you have a warm and safe Christmas, that you are able to remember the baby who was sent as a baby to be the redeemer of our souls, and that you find the peace that passes all understanding.
Love to you. In the Name of Christ.
Matching Campaign!
Don’t worry! You aren’t seeing double. We just wanted to make sure you know that right now, when you give to Gallatin County Love INC, your giving dollars are being matched by another donor in town. So, give $50, it becomes $100! When yougive $1,000, it becomes $2,000! That’s AWESOME!
For more details on our 2016 Matching Funds Campaign, check out our end-of-the-year newsletter here.
To give online through PayPal, click here.
To donate by check, make it payable to Gallatin County Love INC and send it here:
PO Box 7117
Bozeman, MT 59718
Save the Date!
Be sure to mark Monday, April 10, 2017 down on your calendars! We will be holding our annual Plant the Seed Dinner and Silent Auction Fundraising event that evening!
Details will be coming in January!
Help Needed!
“Each one should use whatever gift he has received to serve others, faithfully administering God’s grace in its various forms.” 1 Peter 4:10
If you are reading this post you likely already know how our service model works here at Love In the Name of Christ – volunteers! Volunteers from our 45 partner churches! We don’t exist apart from this model and when our volunteer power slows down, so does the work we’re doing here.
Summer is busy for everyone. We get it. Family trips, weekend hikes, time to catch up on everything you didn’t get to during the rest of the year. But did you know that needs in Gallatin County don’t slow down during the summer? We continue to get calls from people needing rides, needing help moving, needing groceries, needing relational care, needing…people. Needing you.
Would you pray about how you might be part of our summertime slump solution? We need individuals to man our help center phone lines and be the first compassionate voice someone hears as they are reaching out for help. We need families who want to serve together by tending to the yard of someone who is physically unable to. We need couples to give rides to doctors appointments. We need church groups to serve together by painting fences or helping single moms move into a fresh start.
We need you. Our neighbors in need need you. Be the hands and feet of Jesus to those who are hurting right here in our own backyard.
Click here to fill out our online volunteer application and we will be in touch with you very soon!
Perspective
The main road to our business office is closed this week in both directions. To the casual observer, this presents a pretty significant problem – how do we get to where we’re going? There is no obvious alternate route. Just after our staff/volunteer devotion time yesterday we were all abuzz about this situation and the various goofy ways we all ended up getting to where we ended up. It was quite comical and a little disconcerting to hear how each of us was so easily frustrated by the thwarting of the familiar and the fact that it took us an extra 10-15 minutes to arrive.
And then one of our volunteers mentioned her son who is working in Texas right now where all the flooding is happening. It took him three hours to get where he was going and there is no immediate hope for improvement there. The silent pause around our table was deafening. You could almost see all of us thinking about what we’d just been so easily frustrated by and how our perspective changed in a second when we considered what this man, and so many others in his are having to deal with right now.
Being able to see another side of a story, or even a different story altogether is sometimes all it takes to reorient us to what is right and true. This is part of what we try to do here at Love INC and a big part of how God moves in our own hearts as we serve. It’s so easy to get caught up in the need of the moment, and indeed, the need of the moment can be blinding with its intensity at times. But experiencing the love of Christ through a sweet conversation, or delivery of a much needed household item, or prayer over the phone can sometimes provide the just the right amount of shade needed to see the road ahead to the next turn.
Prayer is a great perspective bringer, and God the great changer of our hearts.
Gallatin County Church Vacation Bible School Options
Several of our partner churches are hosting Vacation Bible Schools this summer and your children are welcome to attend! See our calendar for more details on each one.
June 13-17
Bethel Christian Reformed Church
June 20-24
Grace Bible Church
June 27-30
Evangelical Free Church
Volunteers Provided a Ramp
Dear Love INC,
You made my day!
I met with a patient of mine today who has had ongoing mobility issues for some time. The stairs leading up to his home prevented my patient from easily getting in and out of his home as he has recently had to rely more and more on the use of a motorized wheel chair to get around. I reached out to Love INC in hopes of getting my patient a ramp for the entrance to his home and today he brought me some excellent news! Love INC was able to build a ramp for the entrance of his home!
With a grin on his face, my patient told me how wonderful his new ramp was! He “felt like a person again” to be able to take his wheel chair outside to his riding lawn mower and mow his grass! He said he forgot how good it felt to just get outside independently, something I think many take for granted.
I can’t tell you how much I appreciate your support of this gentleman and the support you provide for so many of our clients. Your generosity goes a long way towards helping others and has such a positive impact on their overall well-being!
Thank you! You have made a real difference in the life of this man!
With Gratitude,
Sheila D’Amico on Air
Recently our Executive Director, Sheila D’Amico, was interviewed by JP Pendleton of Gallatin Valley Catholic Radio on The Mercy of Charity. You can listen to the entire piece right here.
A Story of Personal Care
The Personal Care Pantry is primarily stocked by caring people from forty-four various Christian churches who partner with us. We facilitate making sure we have the items on hand, but our faithful volunteers keep it running. It’s open every other week on Thursday mornings (call us at 406-587-3008 if you need more information on this).
We’re pretty good about telling you when we have a need there (and we do – we’re very low on almost everything right now), but we wanted to give you a little snapshot of the why behind it.
The other day, one of our Personal Care Pantry volunteers told us that during her recent shift a client told her she had received a homemade washcloth the last time she’s been in. She uses it as a cry rag under her pillow at night. It reminds her that someone in her community cares about her.
Is is about the things? Partially, yes. Is it about the people? Absolutely. Always.