Eddie - March 2019

(Eddie, and her dog Priscilla, pictured above.)

At our state capital earlier this week, I shared with legislators the important work we do and assured them that privately funded, local, compassionate charity is more effective and more responsible than state-funded solutions. Research has proven that government involvement crowds out private sector initiative. There are a number of reasons why that’s a problem, but the main one is that government cannot be compassionate and doesn’t build relationship necessary to really help people struggling with issues of life. This is why we work so hard to help the local Church crowd back in. It’s vital for people like Eddie.

“The Joplin tornado destroyed my apartment and trapped me under debris for two and a half hours. After I was rescued and examined, I found out I was going blind and that I was going to need the help of a wheelchair on a constant basis (instead of just on bad days). I had been living on a fixed income even before the tornado and now had to go into assisted living too.

Preparing food has become harder and harder in recent years, and I was getting tired of peanut butter sandwiches. The assisted living services coordinator contacted Neighbor Connect to deliver meals to me and a few other residents, and I have since made friends with Sandy and Jenna on the meal team. Now they even come over outside of just meal delivery. After they brought me to a volunteer dinner at Watered Gardens, I decided I’m going to try and start using the bus to go over and partner with the mission myself.”

Thank you for your continued support. Your gift helps us connect one neighbor’s need to another neighbor’s skill and even more importantly, to connect lives. Please take a moment to visit neighborconnect.uswhen you can.