After serving on more than a dozen Legacy Retreats® over the years, Paul and Ellen reflect on their experiences as Inheritance of Hope volunteers. The beautiful stories they share will inspire you to use the gifts, talents, and resources you have to give joy to those facing the loss of a parent due to terminal illness. As Ellen shares, we can all be “gloves on the hand of God!”
In 2018, Paul and Ellen Benson discovered Inheritance of Hope through their daughter-in-law, who was already serving with the organization at the time. “I think that I have kind of a tenderness of heart for children who are going through that. And that was also my daughter-in-law’s heart as well,” they said.
They were first inspired to volunteer with Inheritance of Hope because they have “often marveled at how God works in our lives. We can’t always know and sometimes we do get to know” and both their son-in-law and daughter-in-law lost their mothers when they were small. Volunteering also seemed like a fulfilling way to pass the time during their retirement.
“We wanted to find some sort of ministry that we could serve in that wasn’t obviously a full-time thing and this just really fits well. It’s just been very rewarding and to serve these families and even as hard as it is, it’s very rewarding,” they said.
The Bensons frequently volunteer at Legacy Retreat®, where families dealing with terminal illness gather together to take part in fun community-building and emotion-processing activities. Volunteers accompany families, facilitate activities, and maintain both a safe and supportive environment for these families. The Bensons “feel so privileged to be able to love on families who are going through really hard things like they are and to just be a glove on the hand of God.”
The power in accommodation
Even if some people aren’t believers, the family aims to give quality care regardless of religious differences.
Among other volunteers, Paul and Ellen also frequently take feedback to heart after each Legacy Retreat®. Most of the time, the participants have an amazing time despite their circumstances but there are others which the family didn’t know they helped until hearing back from them in the future.
One example of this was when one family came on a Legacy Retreat® two weeks after the mother passed away. The family had three daughters and one had trouble enjoying the retreat. She “was not into it at all. She didn’t want to come out of the hotel room.”
A few months after the retreat, the father of the family sent the couple an email saying that the retreat actually did help his daughters process their grief in the long run.
Another time they needed to step up for a family when a two-year-old came attending his ill father, but couldn’t play with the other kids because he had an eye condition. “He was sad that he wasn’t with his mom and dad and so it was hard to know how to love on him,” they said.
So, they had to get creative and make a separate adventure for him where they ran up and down the stairs with him for two hours because he loved the stairs so much.
A little while afterwards the mother of the child told the couple that he became more spatially aware and had better hand eye coordination and that the activity during the retreat might’ve helped him train those skills. “So, you never know what you’re going to get when you serve. You might just be the person who walks the stairs with a cutie that just needs that physical way of experiencing something. It was great,” they said. “Who knows how many years or months or however much time goes by before, you know, maybe what you said or did meant something.”
Outside of volunteering at Legacy Retreats®, the two intend on being a part of Hope Hub™ in Southern California. They’ve already cleared the idea with their church and are just looking to sign up enough families for meetings. Though they are sacrificing their time and money to be active in the Inheritance of Hope community, making a difference with families struggling with such a difficult time makes the experience worth it.
Hear more of Paul and Ellen’s story on the Inheritance of Hope Podcast. Listen now >>
Kennedy Owens a Storytelling Intern at Inheritance of Hope. She is currently a sophomore at Florida Southern College with a major in advertising and public relations, and is an active participant on her school campus as the Event Coordinator for the Young Adults Self Advocates club and Brand Manager for the school’s radio station The Hiss. She enjoys all things writing-related and likes to serve her community the best she can.