LifeCare of Brandon Hosts Annual Spring Tea at Bell Shoals Baptist

The “Together For Hope” ladies spring tea fundraiser hosted by LifeCare of Brandon at Bell Shoals Baptist Church on March 26 was filled to capacity, with 51 tables seating up to nine guests each.

The annual tea is a major fundraiser for one of Brandon’s older ministries, which was founded as the Brandon Crisis Pregnancy Center and heretofore was known as the Brandon Care Pregnancy Center.

The changing name reflects the changing times, according to Cookie Gray, the ministry’s founder. Gray still works four hours a day with the ministry out of its headquarters at 122 North Moon Avenue in Brandon, in a house once owned by a school teacher, who sold it to the nearby Firsth United Methodist Church of Brandon.

Today, as it did 24 years ago, the ministry occupies the home rent-free and pays for utilities and other bills. The church provides upkeep for the grounds, Gray said.

The ministry was founded 24 years ago “because there was a need in this community,” Gray said.  “There were a lot of crisis pregnancies at the time, especially [involving] teens.”

Today, she added, women seeking education, counseling and support from the ministry range in age from “14 to older than 40,” Gray said, “and so we’re broadening our scope, dealing with women of all ages and even men.”

“We educate about abortion, we educate about parenting and we educate about adoption,” Gray said. “A young woman has a choice, no matter what we educate, but when you want to be educated about anything you want to consider, that’s what we try to do.”

The obvious stance of ministry workers is the pro-life position, Gray said.

And there are counseling sessions as well to help women cope with post-abortion feelings.

But, “we’re very non-judgmental,” Gray said. “What a woman feels when she walks in that door is that she’s special and she’s loved and that’s been our way since the beginning.”

The center’s mission has been expanded over the years to give pregnant women the tools and resources they need to be successful at adoption or at raising their children themselves.

That includes help finding a home, or a job, or in developing skills to find or change a job, for parenting under pressure, for couples going through a rough patch, for single mothers faring it alone, for health issues and other matters.

“I love to support the case of life,” said Ann Nicholson, the chair of this year’s tea. “We support life but then we give women the tools they need to make that choice. It’s not like we say, ‘Keep your baby and now go on your way.’ We support them with counseling and help in finding housing, jobs, health care and the opportunity to get ‘boutique dollars’ for [necessary baby items, including diapers].”

Karen Brooks is the center’s executive director, and has been with LifeCare from 1988 to 1993 and again from 2007 to the present.

For her, it’s a calling, she said, and so, too, the push to purchase the house at 720 Dew Bloom Road, now in foreclosure.

The aim is to purchase the white, two-story home of some 5,000 square feet and open it as a “Haven of Hope” residential home for six mothers and their babies, Brooks said.

“We’ve raised $65,000 to date and we need $200,000 before we go to the bank [to make our offer],” Brooks said. “We’ve been looking at this house for two years.”

The Haven of Hope motto is already determined: “Where love takes you in and new life begins.”

In a nutshell, that is the mission of LifeCare, which each year holds four major fundraisers. In addition to the annual tea, the ministry holds an annual “Sanctity of Life” outreach with area churches, a golf tournament and a gala fundraiser. Next year, the annual Walk For Life, which in the past had been part of the outreach with churches, will stand as a separate, and fifth, fundraising event.

It is traditional at the annual luncheon for women who have been  helped by the ministry to talk about their experiences. This year’s tea featured video of an “adoption entrustment ceremony” followed by the birth mother’s testimony as to why she opted for adoption.