On August 15, 13 residents from The Lodge at MapleCreek packed backpacks to give to school-aged kids in Lutheran Social Services of Michigan (LSSM) Foster Care in Grand Rapids.

The backpacks were full of supplies including pens, pencils, pencil boxes, folders, notebooks, scissors, glue sticks and bottles, coloring supplies, rulers, snack packs, tote bags and a small piece of advice from the residents "Do your best at whatever you do!"

"The residents wanted to do something to reach out to others," said Christa Schwarz, activity director at the Lodge at MapleCreek. "Our goal was to have enough supplies to provide bags for 50 foster children, and we're happy to say we exceeded that goal."

Items were donated by MapleCreek family and staff as well as by Meijer, Elmer’s Glue, Wolverine, Sodexo and Walgreens. The residents were able to give back to the community, and enjoyed reminiscing about their school days while packing the bags.  We hope to make it an annual event!

As part of an ongoing commitment to family caregivers, Home Care Assistance is hosting a free, online seminar, Caregiver Burnout and How to Protect Your Health, on May 1 at 2 p.m. Eastern to discuss the warning signs of burnout and helpful everyday tips for family caregivers to protect their health .

 The webinar will be held on Tuesday, May 1 at 2 p.m. Eastern. It will be led by Dr. Jennifer Hoblyn, professor at the Stanford University School of Medicine and chief medical officer of eTherapi, an online therapy provider that connects adults seeking to improve their mental and emotional wellbeing to licensed therapists who provide counseling online via live video conferencing. To register for the Caregiver Burnout webinar, please visit www.homecareassistance.com/caregiver-burnout and reserve your spot today.

Caregiving has rapidly become a second profession for many individuals; nearly one in three adults provides ongoing care to an elderly or chronically frail loved one. The typical family caregiver is a 50-year-old female, often married and employed, providing care for an elderly parent. Family caregivers often juggle commitments to their work, their children, their family and friends and their communities alongside their caregiving responsibilities. They often lack or do not know where to seek the resources and supports they need to manage the stress associated with their responsibilities; it’s no wonder then that 46 percent of family caregivers suffer from clinically significant symptoms of depression and other forms of caregiver burnout. In addition to causing depression, caregiver burnout can lead to changes in energy, mood and diet. Full-time caregiving can reduce an individual’s life expectancy by up to eight years. Education and awareness about caregiver burnout are important steps in prevention and control of this insidious and all too common problem.

Individuals currently providing care for a family member or loved one can use Home Care Assistance’s Caregiver Burnout Checklist to evaluate the impact of caregiving on their life. For more information about Home Care Assistance, visit www.HomeCareAssistance.com. For additional resources for family caregivers, call a local Home Care Assistance office at 1-866-454-8346 and speak to one of the care managers today.

Remember Alex Chivescu, the teen in foster care who starred in our video, It Started With a Letter (You can view this video on our homepage at www.lssm.org)? In order to remain in his high school until he graduated, Alex needed to find a foster home in the district, which he did by writing letters to strangers. In the video Alex jokes that he’s “a viable candidate for the next homeless-to-Harvard’ movie.” He’s now a scholarship student at Harvard – and a TV movie has been made about his experience! Called “Finding a Family,” the movie will air on the Hallmark Movie Channel on Jan. 12.

Heres a little bit about the movie "Finding A Family" from HallmarkMovieChannel.com:

"Finding a Family" is based on the true story of Alex Chivescu, a ward of the state of Michigan, who knowing he cannot be emancipated from the foster care system, searches for a new mom and dad within the school district that he believes can fulfill his lifelong dream of attending an Ivy League university. 

You can learn more about the movie by visiting HallmarkMovieChannel.com. Below you can watch a trailer for the film.

We are very excited about our Lakeview's renovation. Lakeview is a skilled nursing and rehabilitation senior living community and it is getting a facelift that is well deserved. Our contractors, Elzinga & Volkers, were nice enough to put together a monthly construction update called "Inside Look". We wanted to share the progress with all you. It's a pretty interesting read and we are quite happy with the process so far. Take a look. We all look forward to the completion of this wonderful undertaking.

Click here to view the Lakeview renovation monthly construction update, "Inside Look"

As they have since 1984, the families of students at Cedar Crest Academy in Clarkston will “adopt” some of the families being served by Lutheran Social Services of Michigan at Christmas, providing them a bounty of gifts. This year, the Cedar Crest families will travel to Lutheran Social Services’ Refugee Services training center in Madison Heights on Saturday, Dec. 10, laden with gifts for seven Iraqi refugee families. The school families will meet the families they’ve “adopted,” share a pizza lunch and then deliver the gifts to the refugees’ homes.

“We bring one wrapped gift for each of the children with us to the party and leave the rest of the gifts in our cars, because there’s a lot,” said Karen Jbara, whose three children attended Cedar Crest Academy, an independent private pre-K – 8th grade school. “Before you know it, the kids are kicking around a soccer ball or working on a puzzle or game together. It provides an opportunity for the children to bond and have something in common.”

The Cedar Crest families enjoy learning more about the refugee families, sometimes with the help of an interpreter. “It’s especially educational for the children,” said Jbara. “It’s humbling for them to realize that these people have needs for things like sheets and pots and pans that are very basic.”

Cedar Crest has been adopting families for Christmas since the school opened. “The opportunity to share our blessings with local families is valuable to us,” said school director Bette Moen. “How proud our students are of the mounting heap of needed items in their classroom, which will disappear into good hands. For the youngest of us, it is an unknown story to learn the difference between ‘needs’ and ‘wants.’ Oh, the lessons to be learned!”

Today is National Philanthropy Day, and three of our volunteers will be honored at the annual dinner of the Association of Fundraising Professionals Greater Detroit Chapter. Jean Schluckebier is the volunteer manager of the ACTION Thrift Store in Saginaw. She took a floundering enterprise and made it profitable once more so that it can support programs for people in need all over the state. She freshened the look of the store, improved the merchandise mix and helped start a statewide system of donation drives. Matt and Richelle Pedersen "adopted" a room at the Wayne County Family Center homeless shelter so that it could be renovated and refurnished. They donated a truck through our Motorvation Drive vehicle donation program. And they introduced 30 of their friends to Lutheran Social Services at a reception in their home. Matt served as a trustee for the LSSM Foundation and is now a member of the Lutheran Social Services of Michigan board of directors. Congratulations to our Distringuished Volunteers!

Our Kalamazoo office, Services for Children and Families, is once again selling their famous Cookies in a Jar. These kits were created by volunteers from SWELL (Sharing With Everyone Lutheran Love), and they make great holiday gifts for only $5. Add your own butter or shortening, eggs and vanilla -- the jar has everything else you need to make two or three dozen tasty chocolate chip cookies. Supplies are limited. You can pick them up at our Detroit administrative center, 8131 E. Jefferson Ave., or at the Kalamazoo office, 1803 Whites Road, Suite 5. Proceeds from the sale are used to help foster children and families in Southwest Michigan.

The plea came the week before Halloween. A client of our In-Home Services program in Saginaw was in desperate need of clothing. She is autistic, still in high school, and recently had a medication change that caused a fast and dramatic weight gain. She went from a size 9 to size 22. The girl has lived with her aunt since birth, and the care provided by Lutheran Social Services enables her to live at home, rather than in a group home or institution. But the aunt has a very limited income. She could not afford to buy the girl  a new wardrobe. Coping with her disabilities was hard enough -- now the girl also had to cope with a change in body image and clothes that didn't fit. Pastor Phil Hemke, our director of Church Relations, emailed his clergy colleagues at Bay Area ELCA churches last week to see if their congregants could help. Many of the pastors took the story to the altar that Sunday, including Pastor Kathleen Basner at Resurrection Lutheran Church in Saginaw. The very next day, Tammy Hynes, manager of In-Home Services for the mid-Michigan region, got a call from church member Pat Wolff, who was moved by the appeal. Just that morning, before church, Pat had decided to clean out her closet. Tammy went to Pat's house and picked up a large bag filled with nice clothing, which she dropped off at the girl's house that afternoon. "God is so good!" said Tammy. And so are our Lutheran Social Services supporters.

The "Faith at Work" blog series is created and written by Pastor Doug Kahl, LSSM's Organizational Chaplain. Look for a new entry every week!

These thoughts on compassion are prompted by a sentence fragment which speaks about American society in general in 2011.  The fragment says:

                “Compassion is out of fashion; in fact, lack of compassion has become a matter of principle…”

In response to that I wonder if those who have become so “compassionless” have ever wondered what a day without God’s compassion would be like.  What would the world do without God’s compassion on display constantly?  His compassion is so intricately interwoven into all he has made; if we went without it for even a brief moment, it would mean chaos.  Psalm 145:9 says it all:

                “The Lord is good to all; he has compassion on all he has made.”

What scares me is that the virtue of compassion seems to be missing from so much of life today.  We seem to be unafraid to speak, act, and react without it, as though somehow God’s compassion will fill in all the places where we no longer care to express any.

Without our compassion to accompany the compassion of God daily life will be miserable for countless people who count on us every day to think with our hearts as well as our minds.  God chooses to not always make up for what we lack or refuse to use.  How do we go about making compassion an “in” thing in our society?

The "Faith at Work" blog series is created and written by Pastor Doug Kahl, LSSM's Organizational Chaplain. Look for a new entry every week!

One of the greatest spiritual gifts that can be offered in times of disaster is hope.  Hope is extended by our presence with those suffering, by listening ears that hear the pain and sorrow, and by well-timed words of hope.  The following Bible passages are quoted from the “Serendipity Bible,” NIV.  They are here to use with others and to bring a renewed sense of God’s direction for you.

1.     Ruth 1:16-17… But Ruth replied, “Don’t urge me to leave you or to turn back from you.  Where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay.  Your people will be my people and your God my God.  Where you die I will die, and there I will be buried.  May the Lord deal with me, be it ever so severely, if anything but death separates you and me.”

2.    Psalm 23

3.    Psalm 91:11-12… For He will command his angels concerning you to guard you in all your ways; they will lift you up in your hands, so that you will not strike your foot against a stone.

4.    Psalm 103:8… The Lord is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love.

5.    Psalm 121:7-8… The Lord will keep you from all harm – he will watch over your life; the Lord will watch over your coming and going both now and forevermore.

6.    Psalm 138:7-8a… Though I walk in the midst of trouble, you preserve my life; you stretch out your hands against the anger of my foes, with your right hand you save me.  The Lord will fulfill his purpose for me.

7.    Isaiah 46:4… Even to your old age and gray hairs I am he, I am he who will sustain you.  I have made you and I will carry you; I will sustain you and I will rescue you.

8.    Isaiah 41:10… So do not fear, for I am with you; do not be dismayed, for I am your God.  I will strengthen you and help you; I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.

9.    Matthew 76:7… Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.

10. Matthew 11:28… Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.