Health

How To Maintain Contact With Older Parishioners During The Pandemic

If you and your church family at Lutheran Church in the Foothills have been struggling with ideas to help you keep up with your seniors, you are not alone. Because our seniors are the most vulnerable population, many have taken social distancing to an extreme. As many of us have gotten vaccinated, now is the time to put measures into place so that you can safely, regularly, and effectively check in on these core members of your congregation.

Freedom from isolation

Isolation comes in many forms, but the pandemic has pushed its literal sense into the faces of the 65 and up crowd. Many of our retirees are now spending more and more time alone at home in hopes of avoiding a severe infection. One thing you can do to help them alleviate boredom, and to feel as though they are connected with the world, is to invest in audiobooks or help them find spiritual-based podcasts to listen to. You can also provide printed materials and videos to keep them company when they need it most.

Helping them at home

Pay a visit to a senior member of your church to see how you can help them out. Helping them declutter and clean their home can reduce stress and fatigue. If there’s chores to be done in their yard, you can help out there as well. Raking the leaves and removing debris from their lawn can help them maintain their home. If there are some tasks you can’t handle yourself, contact professionals who can help. For example, if they need their gutters cleaned, search for “rain gutter cleaning near me” and find trusted gutter cleaning professionals in their area. It’s generally a good idea to get your gutters cleaned twice a year.

Health check

Unfortunately, it is not always possible to physically pop in and check on members of your church that haven’t made it to service since March. But there are ways to stay connected so that your seniors, even the ones that live alone, have a link to the outside world when they need it most. One way is to schedule a rotation of church workers or volunteers that can call or video chat with members periodically.

While many seniors have access to computers and smartphones, you may find some that have yet to fully immerse themselves in the digital age. Talk with your congregation about donating their old calling devices. Most old smartphones can connect to Facebook or Zoom for video messaging even without a cellular data plan, assuming the senior has a wireless internet connection. The Echo Show and most Android tablets will also work beautifully for seniors, with the former offering hands-free video calling.

When you do find members in less-than stellar health, your church can organize a transportation ring to help them get back and forth to the doctor without trying to drive themselves or using potentially-contaminated public transportation. To disinfect your vehicle, Edmunds suggests keeping your hands clean and making sure to disinfect common touchpoints. If possible, provide transportation services when you do not have children in the vehicle, as kids may be asymptomatic carriers.

The gift of wellness

Many seniors inadvertently let their hygiene go when they are in the midst of isolation. This has numerous health implications, and poor hygiene may exacerbate their risk of illness. And when seniors cannot get to the store to purchase everyday hygiene items, they may be complacent to let themselves go. Put together hygiene bags and deliver them – socially-distanced of course – to their front porches. Your bags may include anything from toothbrush, denture cleaner, dental floss and deodorant to dry shampoo, baby wipes, and hand sanitizer. Use an online event scheduling service to organize a hygiene products drive and schedule volunteers for deliveries.

It is our responsibility to take care of those that have come before us. While the pandemic has thrown a wrench into many of the ways we do this, we can learn to adapt. The above tips can help you help your senior members stay safe and healthy until life can begin again.

Lutheran Church in the Foothills is a congregation of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) and is part of a synod comprised of about 150 congregations in Kern, Los Angeles, San Luis Obispo and Ventura Counties, worshiping in several different languages, and spanning diverse cultures, classes, and locales. Reach out today! 818-790-1951

Thanks to Camille Johnson for this information.

Beyond Miracles: How Science is Verifying the Healing Power of Prayer

How many times have you witnessed a sick or injured person praying for healing? What about all the times you’ve heard a devoted, faithful person claim they were “cured” by a prayer? Could there be any truth to these claims that God is capable of healing the human body?

USA Today points out that in recent years, various studies have been performed to determine the answers to these questions. Although further studies are still needed to verify the preliminary findings, there have been some scientific studies with promising results. Read on for more information from Lutheran Church in the Foothills.

Fantastic Findings

Many scientific studies have been performed using double-blinded trials focused on studying the power of distant intercessory prayer. During these trials, intercessors (people who pray to deities on behalf of others) are given only the first name and health condition of a total stranger and asked to pray for that person. Indiana University Professor of Religious Studies, Candy Gunther Brown, Ph.D.,has documented positive medical results showing physical health improvements after some patients received prayers on behalf of distant intercessors.

Harvard-educated Brown has conducted extensive, empirical studies on the power of prayer throughout the United States, Brazil, Canada and Mozambique. So far, Brown has studied the healing effects of prayer on a variety of health conditions ranging from cancer to hearing loss, from vision issues to chronic pain.

Brown has been so inspired by her findings that she has written two books on this topic. She is careful to say that her study results do not confirm the existence of God or prove that prayer has healing potential. However, her results do confirm some patients’ claims of improved health after receiving healing prayers from distant strangers.

Prayer With Results

One positive finding from another study was that 26% of people experienced a reduction in symptoms of pain during religious prayer. Equally intriguing: most of the patients “received multiple prayers for the same problems, noting progressive improvements after each prayer.” The most exciting part of Brown’s study results might actually be that some patients saw long-lasting healing effects. One patient even reported positive medical results that lasted up to eight years after the initial prayers!

It is important to note each of these studies used the power of prayer in conjunction with actual medicine and doctors’ visits. In other words, prayer was not replacing Western medicine. On the contrary, it was used as a complementary healing tool.

Although these studies do not “prove” existence of a higher power, they do offer promising medical evidence that there might be some truth to the belief that prayers can have a healing effect on the human body. Prayer and mindfulness can reduce stress, both its root causes and the effects of it. This is especially important if you hold a leadership position at work or in an organization, where your daily responsibilities are multi-faceted. ZenBusiness notes that of all the stressors managers face, maintaining a healthy work-life balance ranks at the top.

While science might not ever be able to prove or disprove the existence of God, we are now a few steps closer to measuring whether or not prayer and other spiritual practices might truly have a positive effect on our physical health. Until then, we can continue praying for ourselves and others who are ill, and hoping they continue the ripple effect of sending loving prayers and healing energy throughout our world.

Thanks to Camille Johnson for this information.