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Help in the Community

Posted Tuesday, March 13, 2007 by Charlie Trimm

For those of you in the Seattle area, you might have heard on the news about a house fire in Bremerton in which a girl died and two others of her family are now in the hospital. This house was right across the street from our church and the girl who died had been going to AWANA at our church for a little while, but we did not get to know the family as they had not been there very long. We would like to do something for the family and the community, but we are at a loss to know what exactly to do. We are thinking about sending the family flowers from the church. I was toying with the idea of maybe having a prayer service open to anyone from the community to come and pray with us. Ideally, we should have got to know this family more beforehand, but things usually do not happen ideally. Anyone have any ideas?

Thursday, March 15, 2007 8:28 AM

Brian wrote: 

They will have a lot of very practical needs: clothing, storage.

They need the same things that every family needs so finding the wys to provide these things in a way that they can use them is the best help.

The emotional cost is higher than the practical, though. The grief is and will be excruciating, but don't try to lessen it. Provide comfort through it.

This is a brutal dose of reality. In Christ we can find complete reality, and in Him we do not need to minimize any aspect of the reality of what happened to this family.

I pray that you will be a genuine comfort to this family as they live through this pain. 

Monday, March 19, 2007 10:05 AM

Sam wrote: presence
The flowers & card would be great...but I agree with Brian that the "stuff" they need is a real problem.  Insurance will likely restore them eventually, but there may be some immediate needs that you can help with.  All of this, however, will have a much greater impact if it is combined with presence.  Go to see them.  Do not send flowers...take flowers.  In our culture, we tend to think that strangers don't want us showing up at their doors...and that may be true when they've just gotten home from a 10 hour work day...but I believe that people in grief do want others to show up on their doorstep.  Ideally, a pastor and perhaps a worker who knew their daughter would go. 

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