Elaine Oliver — Adults Category

by Tara Perre
Photography by Dave Kaphingst

Elaine Oliver (Port Charlotte, Florida)
Peace Lutheran Church; Charlotte County Chapter of Thrivent Financial for Lutherans

Motivation: God wants us to reflect His love and actively show His love in our community. He set the example.

Favorite ministry: The Waves of Praise flag ministry. Flags are used to artistically express the Word of God. We take a song or Scripture verse and interpret it with the flags.

Most money raised at a single event: About $7,500 at a screening of 'Luther' to benefit Habitat for Humanity.

Favorite organization helped: The Foot Care Ministry. Our volunteers clean and dry the feet of anyone who needs help. Then the doctors treat and medicate the more serious problems. We lotion their feet and send them home with clean socks, a fresh pair of shoes, anti-fungal cream and antibiotic creams.

Grant awarded to: Peace Lutheran for outreach ministries.

Volunteer involvement: Foot Care Ministry, hurricane relief, Waves of Praise flag ministry, worship team, landscaping at church, grant writing for Peace Lutheran, Habitat for Humanity, Charlotte County Homeless Coalition, Salvation Army and the Interfaith Interagency Network of Charlotte County.

Family: Sons, Damon, 28, and Keith, 24.

Time spent in volunteer service: About 20 hours a week.

First involved in volunteering: Volunteering had always been in my heart, but with small children I was always limited. As a single mom I did what I could do, but my heart was always yearning to do more. I started within my own church with a lot of outreach ministries. You can almost get overwhelmed in volunteerism and that happened to me. I asked the Lord to show me how to prioritize. I am blessed with organizational and administrative skills. Some of our church volunteer projects were outreaches into the community. I didn’t grow up Lutheran, so AAL was news to me. I learned more about how Thrivent Financial could help our church. I put everything to prayer, and God directed me to get involved. I volunteered with AAL one year and am now in my third year with the Thrivent chapter board. Thrivent Financial takes you into a lot of areas. Our church and Thrivent chapter work a lot together.

Hurricane relief: On Aug. 12 nobody knew that Charlie was coming but the Lord knew. I knew I was where I was supposed to be because of the Lord. Our church, Peace Lutheran, houses a lot of the people who come to help with hurricane relief efforts from all over the country. We have a Hurricane Relief fund that started right after it hit. All three hospitals were damaged. Families didn’t even have gas money to get to loved ones that were moved to different hospitals in the state. They even lost many patients because of the stress of moving. We were also without electricity, so we lost a lot of food at the food banks. So far we have raised more than $23,000 for hurricane relief, which is amazing because we were shell-shocked. Thank God we have received help from other Thrivent chapters from all around the country. Peace was housing 40 volunteers a week. I took my $2,000 to help fund some of our church’s ministries that had funding cut because of the volunteers, foot care, homeless showers, evangelism and other ministries.

More on ‘Luther’ screening: The Lord, in January, made it clear to me that He had a special project in mind. Everyone agreed it was Habitat. When I came home, there was a note from Habitat that a grant was available. We needed to raise $10,000 to get the Habitat matching grant from Thrivent Financial. We decided to bring the movie “Luther” to our area. We rented a theater and sold it out to raise money. It was so great, we got all eight of our Lutheran churches to participate. We couldn’t hold one more person! We wanted to bring the movie for a week, but that got turned down. We packed it, and they added more shows. The movie theater didn’t think it would work. We raised about $7,500 including $4,000 at the movie from ticket sales, concessions and the Luther book. We did it through the Care in Regions program and received $2,500 from Thrivent Financial for that. Plus we had a donor that kicked in money, too.

More on Peace Lutheran’s flag ministry: We do programs at our church and other churches. We raise money for other charities. It involves the youth. We do the Christmas parade each year. The flags are so awesome. We have 15-foot-tall majesty flags to tiny children’s flags and swing flags. We’ve been doing it since 1997. We often choose music that is very simple and that people know. We have a Peace Lutheran banner and a Jesus banner. Once we get the flags up, everyone wants to know what we’re all about. The parade always has a theme so we try to work with it, but we always have a Christian song. We always do an upbeat song, and it doesn’t have to be a Christmas song. Our next step is possibly adding a wheelchair team. If they can play basketball in wheelchair, they can praise the Lord!

More on the Foot Care Ministry: We do our big thing once a year, usually during Lent. Many times we are treating people from our own churches that don’t have enough medical coverage. Many times the need is sitting right there in your church. We went to a mission for the homeless, then on the street in Punta Gorda. Then we started going to churches and even a recreation center. We move it to wherever God tells us to move it. The third year, we started providing prayer rooms—a separate quiet room to pray with people. So many people wanted prayer. This has helped people dealing with cancer and marriage.

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