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Blossoming friendship

Hand in Hand with New Friends

Two new friends are grounded in God’s love — and living that love in the world

On this late spring day, Sharon has brought pink peonies and Siberian iris from her garden. The bouquet sits on Mabel’s window ledge. With the green courtyard of the Davenport Lutheran Home forming a backdrop, the flowers are a touch of garden glory shared by new friends.

In early 2007, Sharon Maxwell faced a void. “My life in recent years has pretty much been comprised of caring for my mother and my children,” she says. Now her youngest daughter was in college and her mother had died. Sharon wondered about “finding a new path for my energies.”

She called the church on impulse. A good place to start. Nancy Ingelson, at work on a new ministry, told Sharon about Hand in Hand. Designed to nurture mutual friendship in the places where people reside, this new visit ministry sounded intriguing to Sharon.

“Group situations are great” reflects Sharon. “But I’m the sort of person who enjoys the one-on-one, the private settings where I can be in touch with St. Paul people over the longer term.”

This is how Sharon has come to know Mabel Wiese. Hand in Hand made the link, planted the seed. And now a new friendship has blossomed like the peonies and iris that Sharon brings from her yard.

The two have found much in common for lively conversation. They share an appreciation for gardening. Mabel recalls the onions, radishes, carrots, tomatoes, and flowers she used to plant behind her west Davenport home. Sharon mentions cats. “Oh, I had a big black and white cat named Oreo,” Mabel recalls. “He’d hide until I got the dishes done, then he’d jump out. He purred and purred.” Sharon tells Mabel that she has now inherited two “grandkitties” while daughter Emily travels.

Death has reduced Mabel’s family to a sister-in-law and a nephew. A stroke has diminished her physically. But her easy smile and impish wit surface easily in the presence of this new friend. “I love hearing Mabel’s stories,” says Sharon. “She was just telling me that when she was a child, she and a friend would pick violets for their teacher.”

With the simple mission of mutual friendship, Hand in Hand is taking beautiful root in St. Paul congregation. One woman delights in the gifts of conversation and freshly-baked cookies. A man sits with a new friend, paging through a photo album of memories. Another listens to the rewards of a teaching vocation — and the sadness of a spouse’s recent death. One says, “I broke the ‘don’t stay too long rule’ and had the time of my life. I love this woman! It’s like we were meant to be friends forever.”

Whether visiting or receiving the visit, each seems to receive grace upon grace. A woman drops into a care center — and realizes that a 94-year-old’s spirit “brought me up on a down day.” When the grandparent of one Hand in Hand visitor died, her new friend spotted the name in The Journey. She sent a sympathy card. Because this is what friends do for each other.

Several weeks after Sharon Maxwell got connected with Hand in Hand, she sat in worship one Saturday evening. “I found myself seated across from a kindred spirit, a delightful woman with a quick and gentle sense of humor.” Sharon wondered if that had been “coincidence or divine intervention.”

But a whisper told her that this encounter was not mere coincidence. The Spirit was opening her heart to some wonderfully new connections in the community of faith.

“For me, it has been a gift at just the right time in my life,” says Sharon.

For more about Hand in Hand:
Nancy Ingelson,

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"Anybody can observe the Sabbath, but making it holy surely takes the rest of the week." ~Alice Walker, author