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Meet The Homebound Ministry: Heartwarming Opportunities To Share In Faith And Fellowship
Whether parenting, teaching, or volunteering, we may not see the fruits of our labor right away. When visiting our homebound faith community members, however, you see their joy and their gratitude instantaneously.
“We are so very much appreciated for visiting with the homebound,” says Patti Collins. “You see that immediately when you visit with them one-on-one and get to know them. Going into a home or a facility isn’t the easiest thing to do, but it is a very heartwarming experience.”
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St. Jude’s Homebound Ministry offers pastoral outreach from the parish to those who aren’t able to physically come to the church. This ministry is available for any parishioner who is unable to come celebrate the Mass in person.
Some parishioners might need long-term home visits because of infirmity or disability, while others might be temporarily recovering from surgery.
“Whether they’re at home or in a facility, we try to minister to them,” Patti says. “We bring Communion to them in their homes or if they are in one of the facilities that we visit through a Communion service or to their individual rooms.”
Typically ministry volunteers visit five facilities, and the volunteers are on a rotating schedule so that they only go once every four weeks.
“We are at each facility once a week, and we have two Communion services that are on Sunday and one on Thursday,” Patti says. “Then, we have two facilities where we go to individual rooms.”
During the COVID-19 pandemic, ministry members were unable to visit the homebound for some time, and instead, volunteers made phone calls, sent cards, and did groceries for these faith community members so that they would still be connected to the life of the parish.
“Then we started back with the homebound much sooner than those in facilities,” Patti says. “We were wearing masks and gloves and were able to start visiting facilities again in the spring of 2021.”
The ministry also began sending bulletins to homebound parishioners and then started an electronic bulletin.
“Many of our homebound don’t have access to the internet though,” Patti says. “We were mailing out 65 or 70 a week and were printing the whole newsletter. Sometimes it would be 91 cents per newsletter in postage. Now we are mailing to about 33 people and are only sending the adult-related information.”
Another way the parish ministers to the homebound is through our Confirmation candidates who made cards and reached out to them during the past year. A parishioner also started a card ministry for the homebound in facilities.
“They started for Christmas and sent cards to over a thousand people,” Patti says. “They have continued doing that — buying cards, writing notes, encouraging them — and now are supported by several people.”
The Homebound Ministry needs more volunteers, and everyone is welcome to become involved. Interested parishioners will be trained as Eucharistic Ministers and should be confirmed and in good standing with the Church so that they can distribute Communion.
“We even have two groups of teens who are ministering to our homebound, and that has been awesome,” Patti says. “The people they visit just light up when they see them.”
