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HELPING HANDS MINISTRY: Adding a Personal Touch to Parish Events
As Catholics, we must always strive to reach out to our brothers and sisters in faith, and a helping hand is always appreciated. Whether it’s for a social event, a funeral reception, a deanery dinner, a sacramental celebration, or anything in between, the Helping Hands Ministry is there to assist.
“Our ministry started in the summer of 2017, when my husband, Mark, and I were asked to help out with the social events of the church,” says Karen Frederick. “After I retired, I volunteered to take Communion to a care facility, but then after a while I said, ‘Lord, I’m ready to do more now.’ Shortly after that, Mark and I were asked to do Helping Hands. Now we have a group of 17 men and women. Whenever there is a function, I send out an email explaining what we need, and people respond if they can or can’t do it. It’s a wonderful group, and there’s no pressure at all — sometimes we have all of us, and sometimes just one or two, but there is always someone willing to help out.”
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Helping Hands Ministry duties include setting up, decorating, and preparing refreshments for a variety of events. The refreshments can be anything from just coffee and water, up to a fullfledged meal. While the ministry doesn’t take care of cooking, members will arrange for catering or will purchase food from a local grocery store. For parish events, the parish reimburses the ministry for food costs, while for events such as sacrament and funeral receptions, the family pays for the food. Beyond the cost, the ministry takes care of everything else.
“We supply all the linens, place settings, flowers, and drinks,” Karen says. “I am not a decorator at all, but some of our ladies are beautiful decorators. We’ve been working together for so long that I just need to tell them a few things, and they just go ahead and do it. Some people come and work in the morning to set up, and others come in the afternoon just for cleanup. Everyone does what they can when they can.”
Karen recalls several memorable events with which the ministry has assisted, including organizing a sack lunch for a recent parish retreat, as well as a reception for Fr. Estrella when he was installed as pastor.
“We need to be very careful with COVID, so recently we did a sack lunch for the parish retreat,” she says. “We also prepared a continental breakfast the next morning and served them individually on trays. When Fr. Estrella became our pastor, we had a dessert reception for him. It was in the evening, and we had three dessert tables and people could walk around. It was wonderful and turned out so nicely!”
The ministry commonly organizes funeral receptions and makes sure that they have special touches that are meaningful to grieving families and friends.
“It’s really helpful to the families when they don’t know which way to turn — some of them are from out of town, so I’ve never even met them, and we do most of our arrangements over the phone,” Karen says. “I always ask things like what their favorite color was, and we try to arrange a color theme around that. We always try to make it personal for them — for example, one man loved pie, so we had a pie for the family among the other desserts.”
Through her service to the parish with Helping Hands, Karen has been able to grow both in fellowship and faith.
“I grow every day in faith, and every reception seems to bring us closer to the Lord,” she says. “I like to go in a bit early before anyone else gets there, and my husband always says, ‘Talk to Mary, she’ll help you,’ so I go in and talk to Mary. We have a statue that we always put out on the reception table, and everyone knows the statue — if someone gets there and she’s not out yet, they always say, ‘We have to get Mary out!’”
For Karen, involvement in the Helping Hands Ministry has helped her and Mark further establish roots of faith and fellowship here in our parish.
“When Mark and I became involved with Helping Hands, we started meeting the people of the church,” she says. “I have met so many people now, and they know us — the church is like our second home.”
The Helping Hands Ministry started in the summer of 2017, when Karen and Mark Frederick were asked to help out with the social events of the church.
