Prayers

by Rev. Eric Folkerth

Dear Friends:

Just a quick word in the newsletter this week…about your staff here at Kessler Park.

As many of you have no doubt heard through my online posts this week, my Mom, Pat Folkerth, is suffering from both increasing dementia and colon cancer. Based on the advice of her doctors, and conversations with all three of us kids, she’s opted to forgo further treatments and enter into Palliative and Hospice care.

This is a big shock to our family and we are of course still coming to terms with somebody so healthy declining so quickly. I want to say thank you to all of the church members who’ve reached out to me this week. You are very kind with your prayers.

But…I hope you are also keeping Ken and Kay in your prayers too.

Kay Ash is also wrestling with care for her aging father —who is also struggling with dementia— and how to best care for him. He may well also be headed to hospice care soon.
She is such a good and fierce protector of him in this time. Please continue to pray for Kay and her entire family as they seek the path for his care.

And finally, Ken Kelley is currently helping Colleen recover from her recent knee surgery, which is, as many of you know, an important and challenging thing too. Please pray for Ken as caregiver and Colleen for her healing and recovery.

After worship Sunday we were all briefly in the hall before we went our separate ways, and I think I said something like, “We are kind of all a mess right now, huh?”

God’s grace would compel and remind us to simply live-in to who we are at each moment of life.

And so we share these struggles with you, to remind us all of the tender journeys of life…and how a part of “being the church” is “bearing up each other’s burdens.”

So it is that I think I can speak for all of our staff when I say:

Thank you for your concern and care for us us in this time.
We are each grateful for your grace and compassion and it makes us love each of you all the more.

Grace and Peace,

Eric Folkerth