AVA Advocate Katy McGehee of the Stockton, California Covenant Church.
You are terrific intercessors, most of you, I know!
So when I ask you to pray, it’s a tremendous feeling, knowing you take the request seriously.
Last Saturday I went to Stockton, California to participate in the memorial service for AVA advocate Katy McGehee. People gathered, grieved, cried, hugged, sang, read scripture, and promised prayers. I promised prayers. I promised your prayers. Thanks for being the kind of intercessors on whom I knew I could lean.
I don’t really know how a family copes with the circumstances facing the McGehees. When one family member ends the life of another, the grief and pain are so raw, so unfathomable; the way forward is choked and clouded. But the McGehees must go forward with their lives, even though it’s the most difficult, impossible, unthinkable thing to do.
So they need our prayers—your prayers—and I promised you’d do it. Hold them in your heart and speak of them to God whenever he brings them to mind. Ask God to comfort and soothe the pain and to point the way forward. Pray for grace for Thom, Justin and Rachel, Colin, and Katelyn and Katelyn’s fiancé, Eric. They are terrific people with an extraordinary path to walk as they adjust to life without their wife, mom and mother-in-law. Katy also had a wonderful extended family who grieves her as well.
If you missed the story, Katy had just been commissioned as an Advocacy for Victims of Abuse advocate through Women Ministries of the Pacific Southwest Conference. For decades, she had devoted herself to serving the needs of her family and had been a caregiver to several family members with health issues. Stepping up to the AVA ministry was a new thing in Katy’s life, and her sense of call was strong.
Because of her dedication, the McGehees have designated AVA as the recipient of memorial funds. If you’d like to honor Katy and stand strong with AVA, please make a gift to AVA, or send a check to AVA Memorial, Women Ministries, 8303 W. Higgins Road, Chicago, IL 60631.
Thanks. This was one very special woman—someone you would have loved knowing—and she is gone too soon.
