About 17 years ago, Crestwood resident Renee Boros traveled south to help victims of Hurricane Katrina. It would be a trip that changed her life.
“We were fed, warmed and loved by the community churches while we were volunteering in Louisiana,” she said. “They met all of our needs as we were meeting the needs of the injured and the sick.”
The experience stuck with her, and she made it her mission to pay that spirit forward.
“It’s up to us to show people where this love is and where they can get help and in turn help others,” Boros said.
As part of that continuing effort, Boros organized a Spring Rally earlier this month at St. John’s Lutheran Church in Country Club Hills, where she is president of the Lutheran Woman’s Missionary League. Over they years, that group has tried to help out via projects far and near.
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The group has sent Bibles to prison inmates, collected coins for missions, send college students treat boxes.
“We do small things such as support food pantries, collect baby items for single mothers and do an Angel Tree at Christmas which supports a local need for children who otherwise would not have gotten any gifts,” Boros said. “Whatever the needs are both in the community and in our congregation, we try and support that.”
The goal at the rally was to encourage other women to help their communities and to hear a presentation from Love, INC of Tinley Park, which would “talk about how they are helping others and how we can help them,” she said.
As League members signed up for the rally, each brought a new bottle of laundry detergent to donate to the clients of Love INC. The Tinley Park-based group works with churches to help supply needs for families facing a crisis in Orland Park, Orland Hills, Tinley Park, Oak Forest, Country Club Hills, Matteson, Frankfort, Mokena and New Lenox.
Lisa Dailey, the executive director of Love INC of Tinley Park, said the group isn’t an emergency service, and it doesn’t give out money.
“Our theme is helping churches help people,” she said. “There is nothing more powerful than churches working together to transform lives in local communities. We connect the church with the struggles of the community.”
Dailey said the most pressing needs now are housing and auto repairs.
“We get a lot of calls for car repairs,” she said. “There is no agency or ministry that we know of that deals specially with this issue. Yet, for each church there is someone in the church that has those skills, how could we pull them in and create help for the people who need their car repaired?”
Love INC of Tinley Park has partnered with 17 area churches. Two have food pantries, another offers an employment program called Self Help Jobs, and another has a personal care pantry.
Dailey said that network can be crucial to link people with the help they need. For example, one woman the group helped had a dilapidated fence that she couldn’t afford to repair. She was about to be fined by her municipality.
“Her church did not have the resources and did not have men in the congregation with the skills that could help her,” Dailey said. “She called Love INC, we put out the word to our churches, within an hour we had a pastor call and say they are taking care of the labor. Minutes later another church called and said they will take care of the cost of any supplies. Suddenly, we have this need that just got met.”
Housing is becoming an increasing problem for people as well, she said.
“People tell us, we lost our house and living in our car, or they’ve called the shelter but the shelter is full,” Dailey said. “What if churches came together and created transitional housing? We need to work together and be a wholistic problem solver in our community.
“We can be that shining example. We dream of a world where churches are united in purpose, fully engaged and actively living out their faith, by lovingly serving people in need in their communities.”
More information on Love INC of Tinley Park is at www.loveinctp.org or 708-444-2033.
Mary Compton is a freelance reporter for the Daily Southtown.