Volunteer Meeting – Marriage Material

Marriage Material – Volunteer Meeting Minutes 11/16/21

Welcome:
1. Attended meeting: Jen, Ann, Missy, Deb, Denise, Cheryl, Nancy, Angie – and Donna in AZ and Sandy in Maui by phone
1. Jennifer’s 4 kids were a welcome addition – and wonderful babysitters and playmates for Gia.

We gathered at noon in Angie’s living room for fellowship and shared a lunch of salads and sandwiches. It was so wonderful to gather in person. A PowerPoint was displayed on Angie’s TV.

After lunch, we started by reviewing Marriage Material’s mission:
- We are a Catholic pro-life apostolate offering hope and support to women in the Twin Cities who are in crisis and likely searching online for abortions. We help these women choose life and then explore the possibility of marriage.
  We strive to walk with clients as a sister.

It’s a blessing to be able to perform the corporal and spiritual works of mercy for moms and their babies. Some of these include:
- Instruct the ignorant, counsel the doubtful, comfort the afflicted, pray for the living and the dead, feed the hungry, clothe the naked, shelter the homeless, visit the sick, ransom the captive.

Our Clients:
- In 2014, we received about 100 calls a year and about 20 women would get off the abortion pathway.
  In 2020, we received almost 150 calls and about 30 women got off the abortion pathway.
  We have received about 650 phone calls in the past 8 years, so that means we have 650 families that we get to hold up in prayer.

Supporting our clients:
- We talked about the importance of supporting our clients both during and after pregnancy. We want to continue to walk with moms – as a sister. Nancy has so many sisters that we need volunteers to help with this ministry.
- Angie will be sending out reminder emails to check-in with the clients you help support – your sister(s). We know that each client’s needs are different. Some clients may not need as frequent check-ins as others.
- We will be using a volunteer report form (Google Form) as a way for volunteers to share client updates and needs, and to document our attempts to support clients. The information entered in the form will help us better support clients with our prayer program and connect them with needed resources. We may also be able to use the data collected to help with future grant writing.
  - Link: Volunteer Report Form
  - If the link does not work for you, please let Angie know.
  - You may find it easier to bookmark this link on your phone or save it to your desktop. We are only sending this now for you to preview. You can start using it now if you would like. Angie will send this link in future emails with more information.
- At future meetings we would like to:
  - share one client story to highlight how a volunteer is walking with her as a sister.
  - Have time for discussion to:
    - talk about the successes and challenges of being a sister to clients
    - work as a team to problem solve possible solutions (calling on the Holy Spirit for wisdom and guidance)

Other:
- We talked about making care baskets for new moms to deliver when they are in the hospital (since Nancy is not visiting new babies in person, due to COVID).
- Missy shared how she had a plethora of goat milk at their farm this summer, and felt called to use that milk to benefit Marriage Material. She made goat soap this summer to sell at the Lake Elmo Farmers’ Market. The proceeds from the sales went to Marriage Material. Missy shared information about the mission of Marriage Material whenever she could. (The Farmers’ Market does not allow merchants to talk about faith.)
- We discussed ways to volunteer for Marriage Material. Nancy talked about how we should all give from our areas of surplus; we should be joyful about serving. We are all called to give in different ways.
- We talked about future training ideas. One idea was to present ways to answer the phone and talk with women who are seeking information about abortion.

Closing Prayer: Jennifer closed the meeting with a beautiful prayer.