Loving Hearts - Valentine's Party 2012
Loving Hearts, a ministry that serves special needs adults (and their families and caretakers) by providing social events where they can come together to fellowship and create relationships, recently held their yearly Valentine’s Party. The Loving Hearts group has grown to 12 Special Adults that regularly attend, and their Valentine’s Party was another great gathering for them. The night held refreshments, music, goodie bags, and arts and crafts activities to do. Since their inception, Marilyn and Ed Hester have been recruiting small groups to serve these Special Adults at their events by providing the refreshments and activities, as well as attending the parties to build relationships and show the love of Christ to this group. Traci Campbell recently became the Go Rep for her small group, and as she was looking at the available Go Ops, she decided to contact Loving Hearts and sign her group up for the Valentine’s Party. She is in a small group of women who all enjoy artistic endeavors, so they got the chance to use their gifts and talents in this area to provide the crafts for the party. They brought supplies for Valentine’s Cards, Cookie Decorating, and Picture Frames. At the party, about two women from her group staffed each craft station, and they got to spend the evening not only helping the Special Adults get their creative juices flowing, but they also got to spend time with, talk to, and love on this group of people they may not have met otherwise.
Traci’s group could really tell how loved the Special Adults felt, and how much they enjoyed getting to meet and fellowship with a new group of people. Since most of the women in her small group have small children, it can be hard to organize times to serve as a group. This was one of the first times they got a large group together for a Go Op, and they had such a great time with Loving Hearts that they are already planning to serve at another party in the future. Their group was so thankful to get the chance to love on this group by sharing their gifts, time, and hearts. Traci especially was blessed by how sweet the group of Special Adults are, and to get the chance to see and learn more about how God is working in this group of people. As Traci puts it,
We felt more blessed by getting the chance to meet this group of Special Adults than anything we did or brought to them.
The next event for Loving Hearts will be on April 1st, 2012 (no that’s not a joke, it’s really on April Fool’s Day!). They will have a live band, and the Special Adults will bring their favorite games to play. If you or your small group are interested in serving with Loving Hearts, contact Marilyn Hester at [email protected] or by phone at 713-206-7396.