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Parish Ministries/Service: Helping out at St Anthony’s

Kraineem (19 May 2005)

By Sue Hannacher and Suzanne Christmas

Continuing our feature on the various ministries and many ways of assisting and getting involved at St. Anthony’s, Sue Hannacher describes her role as Usher and Suzanne Christmas tells us about the organisation “Helping Hands”.

USHER

How did I come to be an Usher? Well, it's a long time ago now but I recall someone
suggesting the need to have people welcome those attending our church at Sunday mass and, as I like people, I thought this would be a good ministry for me! 

At that time we had a good rota of people acting as ushers, but over the years, as many parishioners left, the number of ushers depleted and we have had difficulty recruiting new
volunteers. Today, we are left with a total of 6 ushers to cover all Sunday masses!

The job is easy and a personally rewarding one. It involves arriving at church a little before mass starts, greeting people at the door as they arrive and handing out to them our Parish Hymn Book, our weekly newssheet Parish Word and any other relevant material such as our quarterly newsletter Parish Life. After mass, the ushers remain behind for a short time to tidy up the Hymn Books at the church entrance.

As you can see, all the job involves is a little time and a smile! If you can offer these and would like to help or would like more information, please feel free to contact me: Sue Hannacher, T. 02 731 44 52, email ray.sue@skynet.be

“HELPING HANDS”

I restarted Helping Hands some three years ago after a dormant period when those originally responsible for this ministry left the Parish to return to their home countries. 

The primary goal of Helping Hands is to assist parishioners with EMERGENCY needs. Sometimes unforeseen situations occur and can be very distressing whereby one does not have the time, or immediate assistance cannot be found to resolve the problem at hand. 

At present we have 11 volunteers who have kindly offered their time in such circumstances covering a wide range of categories: hospital visits, shopping (for someone who is housebound or sick), driving, gardening chores, handyman jobs, babysitting. For each category we have a few volunteers so that if one person is not available, there is someone else to contact. 

The Ministry is successful, in that we have been able to help parishioners in difficult times. We can never have enough volunteers for this kind of service. We still need people for areas such as assisting with legal matters, linguistic assistance on communal issues and financial advice.

Our faith is that of serving and helping others when we can, and indeed we should if we are true followers of Jesus! There are blessings that come from helping others! Please give it careful consideration. For more information or if you want to join us: Suzanne Christmas, T. 02 725 76 29.

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