Essay: Gray Fleetwood
ESSAY: GRAY FLEETWOOD FAITHFULLY RESTORED For my service learning project, I chose to volunteer at Faithfully Restored. Faithfully Restored is a non profit organization whose goal is lifting women up who are in need of care, encouragement, community and even a powerful feeling of being loved. Faithfully Restored started out with four female members. Each of the four founding members have deep desires to give back and to provide hope to the community and other women in need. Each member has experienced trials that have rocked them and challenged them. The founders have experienced the loss of small children, infertility and adoption issues and cancer, so they are familiar with pain and loss and suffering. Their trials are real, yet somehow they manage to come together and put others first in a way that helps them heal themselves at the same time. These women want to provide help to other women in their darkest hours even though their own days could be troubling to them. They put their pain into the love of someone else. They encourage others to choose joy, love and healing while they themselves do the same exact thing in their own daily lives. They want to connect to other women in similar situations so these women can feel understood. Through their hard work and dedication to their desire to help others in need, they are able to make everyone around them stronger. They influence the other women they interact with directly and influence their families and others around them. These women listen to their community and take action to be a positive influence and give their time to directly see the impact of their work. Their work does not discriminate. The fact that these individuals have experienced or are experiencing loss or tragic events reiterates the reality everyone can experience the same feelings. Having a positive force in your life can make a huge difference in the lives of others as well as your own life. Faithfully Restored started as an idea amongst friends and with strong determination they were able to figure out a way to translate this idea to an effective non profit charity. Each of the four founding members are from different backgrounds and experiences. Starting off, they realized the power of prayer and positive reinforcement from other women who have endured similar difficult situations, and they were able to grow from four founders to many people who are now involved in their amazing organization. What started out in their homes and cars has grown significantly, and they now have brand new offices in Cool Springs. They used to have to do all of the work themselves and now they have many volunteers who are more than willing to help them. They now have prayer groups, special events with speakers, workshops, singersongwriter events and many more fundraisers on a regular basis. The work these women have done has been seen in many ways, but the impact they have made on others can be seen especially in their yearly growth in donations. In 2019 they raised $28,000 and then in 2021 they raised over $315,000 (Jamie Heard from Faithfully Restored). To date, Faithfully Restored has responded to more than 600 individual prayer requests. They
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