Neighborhood Ministries

Many elderly worry about what would happen if they fell and there was no one to help them. Many get no visits except for those that come to deliver groceries or pick up and deliver laundry. They might lie for days before someone came. Others able to get out might become sick suddenly. A couple years ago, an elderly man in lower Michigan became sick and could not get out to the post office. The checks to pay his utility bill lay on his table but he could not get out to mail them. The utility company sent a shutoff notice when they didn’t get any payments and eventually shut off the utilities. The man froze to death without heat. There was a great uproar about how the utility company should have tried to contact him. Yet, it all could have been prevented if someone had called or visited him and mailed his letters for him. Calling and visiting the elderly regularly can prevent such tragedies and ease their minds.  I once visited an elderly lady who told me how thankful she was that God was watching over her. She lived alone and her only outside contact was a young woman who visited her every Thursday and washed her clothes. There was a bad winter storm on that Monday and the young woman felt God urging her to check on the elderly lady. She resisted at first because the roads were bad and it was ten miles away, but she finally decided to go. She knocked on the front door but got no answer so she went around back to knock on the back door in case the elderly lady was in the back part of the house. She found the elderly lady laying on the walk outside the house. The lady had gone out just before the young woman arrived (she didn’t remember why) and had fallen on the ice. Had the young woman not arrived when she did, the elderly lady would have quickly frozen to death. God had told the young woman to go even before the elderly lady went outside. Had the young woman ignored the call, the elderly lady would have died, because no one knew she was there.