One of our prayers for Matt’s House when we launched, was that God would guide us to the needs He wanted us to meet. Allison and several others with a passion to reach young moms established a young mom’s support group, in partnership with Metro-Maryland Youth for Christ.
Through this experience, Allison began to volunteer with the Center for Pregnancy Concerns in Baltimore, a center that has been around for over 35 years and provides excellent free services to woman facing unplanned pregnancies. She has been volunteering for over 2 years and has received countless hours of training as a peer to peer counselor. The center provides sonograms for expectant moms, peer to peer counseling, health screenings with a nurse, and material assistance: baby clothing, maternity clothes, baby formula and food, diapers, cribs, blankets, and more – all for free. They also provide parenting classes, and help moms connect to government service providers.
We at Matt’s House believe that this is a direction that God has been calling us, so we have been working toward and praying for a partnership with CPC. I was invited to join the Advisory Board last year and this year was asked to join the Board of Directors. After much prayer and dialogue, the Board of Directors invited Matt’s House into a partnership to open a Pregnancy Center in Arbutus, providing services to an underserved area in and around Baltimore.
On Friday, April 6, a letter was sent out to CPC supporters to raise the $20,000 necessary to launch and fund the Arbutus Center through the first year. Monday, April 9, Carol Clews, the Executive Director for CPC, received a phone call from a supporter for a Matching gift of $10,000 to go toward opening the new center. On Tuesday, April 10, a check arrived in the mail for $10,000, so God raised $20,000 in 2 days!
When Allison sent out the good news about the $10,000 matching gift via email, she received a multitude of responses, and 17 of those responses were from individuals who want to either financially support the new center or personally volunteer.
Later, Allison when was introduced to the 80 person advisory board of the CPC as the new center coordinator, they also announced that another $12,000 had come in, making the total $32,000 for the new center!
We look forward to renovating our storefront space, the Community Connection Center, so that it can now serve as a Crisis Pregnancy Center. Our hope is to open the doors to the new CPC @ Matt’s House this summer!
This is an answer to our prayer that our hearts would break for the broken hearted, and our lives and ministry would adapt to meet their needs. Our prayer is to give them a tangible demonstration of God’s love – and that is what this new center will do.