Neighbor Spotlight: Ellie O'Connell & Vi McKnight

We are not all volunteers. Yet many do step up and spend their time helping others for no reason other than the voice inside that moves them. Repeatedly, those requesting services express amazement that anyone does this – for free!!!! It makes no sense to them. I know our volunteers somehow change something in others as they work to clean, drive them around, mow lawns, or just sit with them for no reason other than they want to - for a stranger.

 

If volunteering is hard, amazing work, coordinating is incomprehensible altruism. Ellie O’Connell and Vi McKnight have taken the task to a new art form. Vi once said she believed that if a person came to St. Michael’s then God intended for St. Michaels to serve them. No one is turned away. This philosophy results in creative maneuvers to find a way to serve – even in the most difficult of circumstances.

 

I was stunned to learn of the hours they work. I soon found there was no problem, or care receiver that they would not find a way to help. I borrowed their creative techniques to add to my repertoire. I was also touched by the love and deep grace that they see others with as they reach out to them. As the mother of a child with a mental illness, it is with gratitude that I have witnessed to their love and service of those with this disease. I personally know the world is often not this way. It is a gift hungrily received. And this is just one of many unattractive, or not well-understood disabilities that those we serve may come with. They view, touch and treat each the same.

 

This month I would like to hold up the amazing effort, endless work, boundless grace, unconditional love, and unwavering faith of the two coordinators of this community of faith. If you come to them, then God intends for them to be there – what an amazing way to look at life and each of the people we meet!