Hello friends.
This is the first of what will be (fingers crossed) monthly updates from me to you, the Friendship House Board of Directors. My hope is that we work together to ensure these communications are fruitful to you. Feedback is useful!
Delaware hit a record in August for those who died of overdoses (
see articles below)
. Any time I think we are rounding the corner on the worse case heroin use, we see another record. Words fail me.
And that’s when I turn to Jesus. When I am not sure how to be a leader, and I want to throw in the towel and say “I give up,” I remember why we are here.
Friendship House has lost several clients and residents this year to drug addiction. We also lost Donna to cancer just recently. None of this is within our control to completely stop. As hard as I try, and as much as I want to help every person we meet – we just can’t.
What we can do is live.
We can live to serve as Jesus served.
As much as it hurts to lose just one person, if any one of us stops serving we won’t be there for the person whose life we may change. I think of us as being in the business of saving lives this way: not to prevent death, but to promote living. We connect people to the love and grace of God every day – and therefore help create a life worth living.
"Pursue life," Jesus says.
We do this through hard work and prayer. We do this through laughter, meditation, and crunching numbers. We do this by sharing stories, telling the good works of our staff, and why we chose Friendship House.
Strategic committee recently met and we got into who Friendship House is and how we market ourselves. It brought forth this question:
What special attributes and ministries of Friendship House do you talk about when you describe us?
Each of you will have a different answer to this question. And this is
not
a problem. Instead, it is an opportunity. An opportunity to dig deeper into how we explain all we do in a nutshell – the infamous “elevator speech” – and then how we market ourselves so people see why it matters that Friendship House exists today and tomorrow.
Friends, our journey must continue. Strategic Planning Committee will be presenting a strategic plan to you in November along with the 2019 budget from Resource Commitee. I think these things will feel challenging to us because we know we can not "fix" everyone or serve every person as we would wish. What we can do is live to serve to the best of our ability. Pursue life.
Today is World Gratitude Day. I am grateful for each of you. You are an amazing board of directors and I make sure to let everyone know. I also want to make sure you know. Thank you.
Your biggest fan,
Kim
