Elaina sits down with Pastor Sergei Marchenko to discuss his experience with mental illness both in his home and church. Pastor Sergei shares hope for the hurting and discussed the importance of mental health awareness in the church, and from the pulpit.
Ah, Thanksgiving. That festive time of year where we gather around the table with family, friends, or those who are like family to us to share in a feast of turkey, stuffing, pumpkin pie and all the foods that can fit on one plate and then some. While Thanksgiving can be about the food and the endless hours of football on television, it also provides us an opportunity to give thanks to God for the blessings we have experienced in life.
Elaina sits down and talks with Lisa Jamieson from Walk Right In Ministries about family caregivers, the holidays, and ways the church can better support them.
The training, content, gatherings and experiences that we’ve created for pastors, church staff and ministry volunteers produced with the assistance of like-minded colleagues serving in disability ministry have become our principal service. So much of what we’re able do to help churches welcome and support families, we accomplish by bringing together experts from other ministry organizations.
November is Caregiver Awareness Month. As someone who became one of my dad’s caregivers before I started school, I grew up thinking everyone in the world was aware of caregivers and caregiving. As a young adult my husband and I cared for a son born with a life-threatening medical condition, and his typical sibling. As members of the sandwich generation, my brother, sister, and I cared for our mother for 15 years after she was diagnosed with dementia. This explains why, when I first heard that November is Caregiver Awareness Month, I was incredulous, and I still am.
Whenever a group or congregation is talking about mental illness, there is a tendency to want to help the helpless. We are the powerful ones who can make a difference. As a result of my years of counseling, I saw myself as weak. But over the last year or so, the language I use about my ability has changed. I am no longer weak. I am resilient, remarkably resilient.
