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Passionate about The Church uniting to serve!

By November 23, 2023No Comments

Mandy Cloud has been part of Compassion Connect in Arizona since it’s inception. She was originally involved with Compassion Clinics through her church, where her husband is the pastor. Over time, she was able to pair her work as a director of the Vineyard Pregnancy Center with her passion for the ministry of Compassion Connect.

 

Mandy’s work with Pregnancy Center clients is a perfect fit with the Compassion Care Center model, where various service providers meet with clients to meet a range of physical, emotional, and spiritual needs. While Mandy still sees clients at her Queen Creek office, she schedules her Tuesday appointments fort the Compassion Care Center. 

 

What Mandy especially loves about working out of the Compassion Care Center is being able to 

collaborate  with other service providers sharing the space. “People come in who need our resources and they are all in one spot – it’s easy to flow from one organization meeting a need straight to the next one.”  Providers are able to get to know clients, which in her experience is unique. “You can’t get that kind of care elsewhere, where people take time to figure out the whole story. We work so well together that we can do that.” Mandy is “pro-baby and pro-life all the way through,” so she values being able to partner with other ministries to help the whole person and the family unit. 

 

Mandy views the providers at the Compassion Care Center as a team. If one member can’t figure out a client’s needs, another one might. As she says, “We all come from different paths, but God is using all of our strengths together to help our guests the best way we can.”  Often Mandy will see a client for a pregnancy-related issue, but realize the client has other medical issues that need to be addressed, or doesn’t have health insurance. Mandy is able to send her client into another room to meet with a nurse practitioner, or with someone who can help her get coverage. If the father of the baby could benefit from taking a practical living class, that’s offered at the Care Center. If someone needs clothes, Redeemed Threads thrift store is also there. “As a team we flow from one thing straight to the next. That’s what I love!” 

 

This collaboration spills over into her other Pregnancy Center location as well as the local churches, as providers call each other and contacts within their churches to figure out how to meet clients’ immediate needs. Her Pregnancy Care team all attend different churches. Mandy is thankful that the local area churches and pastors get along well. “We think that’s a beautiful piece, so we appreciate that Compassion Connect loves and wants that as well.” 

 

Mandy says that she often comes home from work and tells her husband, “In one day, we were able to do this, and this, and this!” She described going home “in awe” one day after an appointment with a client who was a refugee, newly arrived from Cameroon. The woman was clearly nervous about answering questions and filling out paperwork. Mandy felt grateful that the paperwork at the Compassion Care Center is designed to avoid clients having to duplicate a lot of information when they see different providers. The client was welcomed warmly and made to feel at ease.  Mandy was able to take time to explain the reason for the questions asked and to reassure the woman that the information would stay confidential within the Care Center. 

 

As the woman started to relax, she opened up more about her situation. She had fled her homeland with its chronic wars, leaving behind her parents and her two-year-old daughter. She was afraid of the baby’s father and didn’t want him to know she was pregnant. There happened to be a nurse practitioner in that day, so the client was able to have her vitals checked and while that was happening, someone else started entering her into the system to get health insurance. 

 

The woman clearly felt that she was in a place where she didn’t need to feel fearful, probably for the first time in a long time. Mandy concludes, “She could have gone somewhere else and not be loved on or reassured at all. I love that we are able to do some of the same things the government might do, but with the client being loved on and cared for as a person.” Mandy attributes this to the collaborative work of a team of Jesus followers living out God’s call to unity and compassion.