MRC Covenant Fund

Helen had lived with fear for a long time.

She had gotten up with it in the morning, and she felt its chill and unwelcome hand a hundred times a day. And far too many nights she stared wide-eyed at the ceiling, unable to sleep, because the fear was in her heart and mind and soul like a cancer.

She was weak, lonely and vulnerable and she was intelligent enough to know this. The world outside her shabby apartment was fast, tough, brash, crude and rude, and it would surely get her when the last of her money ran out.

Helen was 75 years old and she had a small monthly pension and less than $9,000 in her savings when the hand of God guided her to an MRC community.

 She did not think what she had would be enough to allow her to live at the community, but the minister who had taken her there, had said simply, “We will see.”

“It does no harm to talk. At least they may have some ideas,” he said.

They did!  

The community team welcomed the opportunity to see what could be done for Helen.  With her little bit of savings, her small income, a bit of help from a nephew, her rightful participation in a state assistance plan or two, and a commitment of a subsidy from the Covenant Fund, Helen found a warm and comfortable place at the community with the assurance of future care as her needs may change.  

There would be no more of the nameless, clutching fears. And no more loneliness. Never again that feeling that she had to cope with the tough, fast-moving, cold world outside – alone.  

No one would ever know how much she paid at the Community. Nor would she know about the others. And she liked that.

Helen’s is a true story and the MRC Community to which she moved was Moody House on Galveston Island, MRC’s very first community.  Helen’s story was shared in an article in the Galveston Daily News on March 10, 1968.

The author of the article back then shared that her story illustrates two important and often least understood facts about Methodist Retirement Communities.

1) You don’t have to be rich to live here.

2) The staff who run our communities are professionals in the business of taking care of older adults. They can see possibilities that a worried child, a devoted friend or a concerned attorney might overlook.

Those two things ring true today.  

With assistance from generous donors giving to the Covenant Fund, even those who don’t have enough can live here.  

And the staff who lead MRC communities are professionals in the truest sense of the word and can see options where others may not see them.  

Namely, we are committed to ensuring that some who are living in difficult situations, like Helen, can find a home so they never have to feel the fear of uncertainty, loneliness, or helplessness again.  

* Helen’s story is a slightly modified excerpt from The Galveston Daily News article by News Staff Writer, Brooks Keller, called, “Professional Staff Cares for 288 Moody House Residents” published on March 10, 1968.  

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Methodist Retirement Communities    

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Or, online at www.mrcaff.org/giving

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