Donations up to $5,000 are expected to be matched by The Edge in September

The Edge Lutheran Church is looking to award a grant and match donations to benefit the Eagle Mountain Pregnancy Help Center (EMPHC). Donations collected from June to August up to $5,000 will be matched by The Edge.

People can donate by sending a check made out to The Edge Church with “EMPHC” in the memo line to The Edge Lutheran Church of Azle, 1313 Southeast Parkway, Azle, TX, 76020. You can also give online by following the QR code or go to edge4all.com under the “GIVE” tab and use the drop-down menu to choose EMPHC.

Cynthia Chapa, executive director of The Edge Lutheran Church, described this as a big endeavor for the small congregation.

“Katherine Ewing, a committed and gifted volunteer member of The Edge Lutheran Church of Azle, is currently completing the demanding task of writing a grant to benefit the Eagle Mountain Pregnancy Help Center,” Chapa said. “She is joined by a team of Edge church members who are spreading the word and organizing fundraising efforts. The grant, if awarded in September, would secure a dollar-for-dollar match, up to $5,000, yielding a maximum total of $10,000. This ‘Life match’ is offered by the congregation’s national organization, the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod. All donations collected through the end of August, whether matched or not, will be delivered to the Eagle Mountain Pregnancy Center.”

Once the church has received the matching funds, its treasurer will write a check for the entire amount to the pregnancy center.

“Many members of the community are not able to attend the gala, and so contributing toward the matching grant doubles their efforts to support the ministry and help the center save babies and serve families,” Karen Ogea, EMPHC Board President said. “To see another local ministry in such support of the ministry at EMPHC shows that the community is becoming aware of the increasing need for family services in our area. The EMPHC deeply appreciates all the efforts of the community to keep the center a vital role to these women, children, families, and the preborn!”

Funds are expected to cover the cost of:

Reduce SILOS staff and patients talk on the efficacy of the program and how it has changed lives.

On May 2, 2023, the U.S. Surgeon General released a report declaring loneliness a public health emergency. The report went on to describe the impact of being socially disconnected as having the same effect on mortality as 15 cigarettes a day.

In recent years, medical professionals have been taking more steps to address isolation and loneliness as serious health risks. In 2019, Texas Health applied for a grant to implement programs focused on addressing social isolation. Texas Health received their grant in March 2020, just as the COVID-19 pandemic began.

“It was bad pre-pandemic, post-pandemic it was even worse,” Marsha Ingle, Senior Director of Community Health Improvement at Texas Health said. “Believe it or not your social calendar impacts your physical health. If you are socially isolated, you are 29 percent more likely to have heart disease, you’re 32 percent more likely to have a stroke and the big number is in dementia and memory loss, you are 50 percent more likely to develop dementia, memory loss and Alzheimer's.”

With the grant, Texas Health started Reduce Social Isolation and Lift Outcomes for Seniors (Reduce SILOS). “Reduce SILOS is really trying to rebuild connections, getting them reconnected back into society,” Ingle said. “Our original plan, once the pandemic hit, we couldn’t implement any of it. We really had to pivot; we call it the pandemic pivot. That ultimately has allowed us to be more successful.”

Ingle said the pivot has allowed Texas Health physicians to embed the Reduce SILOS screenings into their regular checkup procedures.

“The pandemic caused us to build in a different way to reach the isolated that is ending up being way better than the original plan in the first place.”

By giving physicians the power to screen for isolation and to inform patients of the dangers of isolation, Reduce SILOS has been able to have a farther reach.

“It’s been amazing going from what we intended to what we have now,” Ingle said.

Every month, Texas Health identifies about 200 individuals as being at risk for social isolation. After that, it is up to Texas Health employees to initiate contact and find personalized solutions for them.

“Part of the process once you enroll is the screening process, we go through several screenings to identify if there’s any loneliness or depression,” Sherry Kincade, a community health worker for Texas Health said. “There’s a screening for social determinants of health as well. It’s a year program, but initially we go through the baseline screenings, and we create a connectivity plan geared specifically toward each participant.”

Kincade joined the Azle Reduce SILOS team in 2021 and in that time, she has been able to reach out and make a connection with over 70 people.

“It’s very rewarding, it’s a privilege to be in this line of work, to be able to make a difference in someone’s life,” Kincade said. “I’ve had a lot of participants share with me ‘thank you for calling’, ‘[it’s amazing] just to have someone care enough to call and check-in’, ‘I received these services just in time.’ With all the positive feedback we hear, we know we’re reaching the right people.”

Last year, Sherry made a call to Victor Moore, a 77-year-old Azle resident. Moore moved from West Texas to Azle with his family in the fifth grade. Moore has lived in the same house in the Castle Hills area since 1959. “[Reduce SILOS has] really been a life-changing experience for him,” Kincade said. “One time he told me ‘I don’t know if I’m going to make it just being here alone by myself’ and that he had a friend that would come by to pick him up to get groceries on Sundays, but that was the only time he’d get out and the only interaction he’d have with anyone else, basically.”

Through his connection to Sherry and Reduce SILOS screenings, Victor was able to get connected to Good N.E.W.S 4 Seniors. Now every Tuesday morning, someone picks Moore up so he can socialize with volunteers and other seniors.

“It’s a light breakfast, some coffee and a lot of conversation,” Moore said. “It’s really nice, it gets me out of the house a little bit…I love that…It’s real good to get out of the house and visit with somebody. I don’t do that a lot.”

Though they had spent months speaking over the phone, Sherry and Victor did not get a chance to meet in-person until April 18. Kincade surprised Moore at a Good N.E.W.S. 4 Seniors event with a certificate of completion, a gift bag, and a hug.

“I just love [Sherry] to death, she’s the sweetest thing,” said Moore. “She’s a big hugger and so am I. She was calling me for several months and trying to get through to me what she was doing… She just follows through; she doesn’t let go and she’s still searching [for resources]. We’re still in contact and everything. It was kind of nice to have her call and we’d chat for a while. [Reduce SILOS] is a really good organization and I hope they continue to grow.”

Kincade reports after connecting Moore to various resources, his Upstream Social Isolation Risk Screener Scores(U-SIRS) improved from high to low risk for social isolation.

“He’s made some awesome connections and friends and the volunteers are just awesome,” Kincade said. “Over the year I’ve kind of created a bond with Mr. Moore.”

According to Ingle, 75 percent of the people that Reduce SILOS has screened have managed to reconnect with society.

“One of the things that we did recently that was very interesting was we got individuals connected to students from the social work department at TCU,” Ingle said. “They did what we call reminiscent interviews, which is fascinating. You talk to individuals where they were during specific major events in history… Building that bridge between multi-generations has been fascinating.”

Right now, Reduce SILOS is only in 14 zip codes, throughout Parker and Tarrant Counties, but it hopes to expand. Texas Health serves 16 counties with 401 zip codes.

“We want to open it up so we can serve individuals across the Dallas-Fort Worth area,” Ingle said.

Ingle described one patient who had worked as a nurse for most of her life. She was forced to retire and become a caretaker for her terminally ill husband. After her husband’s passing, she found herself full of grief and without any other connections or sense of purpose in retirement.

“She was in a really rough place, Ingle said.”

Through Reduce SILOS, she was able to become a full-time volunteer nurse for a local church.

“So now she’s impacting the health of people in that congregation, so it’s a trickle-down effect,” Ingle said. “When you transform a life, eventually you’re going to transform a community. We’re targeting the older population, but it really affects all ages.”

Like many areas across DFW, Azle is experiencing rapid growth. While new people move in, one part of the population is slowly being forced out - deer. With nowhere to go, some residents are welcoming them with open arms, but others want them gone. The disconnect is fueling new debate over how to manage them.

Deer have called Azle home for decades.

To Rick Stepp, they've felt like family for 20 years.

"I talk to them like dogs, like little dogs you know. They seem to like my voice,” said Stepp, a longtime Azle resident.

Lately, Stepp said he's noticed a change. He’s now going through feed at a much faster rate than this time last year. The corn he spent $25 on last Sunday is already gone.

"Four bags, 200 pounds and it would take them roughly about a week and a half to two weeks to go through it and now they're doing it in less than a week,” he said.

Across from his home, bulldozers now appear on what used to be farm land. They’re making way for new home construction. Two new schools have also been added to the area, gobbling up the natural habitat along with his money.

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"It makes me feel sad. They’re pretty animals and they're getting choked out,” Stepp said.

With the change, there’s also been an increase in frustration from residents in nearby neighborhoods, like Oak Harbor. Azle City Manager, Tom Muir, has heard their complaints.

"They were just talking about how what a nuisance they are to property, that they were causing property damage,” he said.

From eating shrubs and flowers in manicured lawns, to concerns about run-ins with joggers and cars on nearby roadways, some residents said they’ve had enough. Muir said he understands based on his own experience.

"I'm sensitive to it, you get a little aggravated with it. I've had to deal with deer in my lawn before in a previous house and it is aggravating,” he said.

Muir said a vocal minority is so upset, they spoke out at a recent meeting, urging council members to take a look at city rules and consider a ban on feeding deer.

"Right now we're just in the fact finding mode,” Muir said.

But he knows new rules would bring new issues over enforcement and new heartbreak for longtime residents with feeders like Stepp.

"For the city council to say you can't feed them, we're trying to get them outta here, the biggest single question is where are they gonna go?” Stepp said.

Muir said he’s also sympathetic to the many people in Azle who love their interaction with wildlife.

“There's a lot of folks that like having the deer around and they like feeding the deer. I'm not necessarily looking to take that away from them. I'm not real sure what the solution is,” Muir said.

Because there's no easy fix, he's looking to other Texas communities, hoping to find one to serve as a model for either the animal feeding ordinance or how to control the deer population. Muir plans to bring it up for discussion at city council meeting in late August.

Will Norman started listening to others after what he says was the "hardest year of his life."

AZLE, Texas — It had nothing to do with the pandemic, but Will Norman says 2020 was the hardest year of his life.

He was struggling personally and just needed someone to talk to, but nobody would listen.

“I felt alone,” he said. “I felt like I was in a hole, just kind of by myself. I felt like there was no one.”

For this cancer survivor, it was the most painful time of his life.

Rather than wallow in self-pity, he took it as a sign to put up his own sign.

Under a banner that reads, “Need to talk? I’ll listen. Confidential/no judgment,” Norman offers to listen.

Pretty much every day, sometimes up to nine hours a day, he sits in the parking lot of the local liquor store in Azle and invites anyone who passes by to talk. He chose the spot because it’s one of the busiest intersections in town.

He’s been doing it for three months and people he doesn’t know have told him things he can’t believe. They talk about everything from cancer diagnosis to drug addiction to alcohol abuse.

“It’s not like one or two beers,” one man told him. “I’ll drink a six-pack, eight beers.”

Some people have wondered why passersby would share such things with a total stranger.

“Cause they have no one,” he said. “People say, ‘Nobody cares about me, they don’t care what happens to me.’ And I’m like, ‘Well, I care what happens to you.’”

Norman isn’t a trained therapist, but, under his tent, he has become a trusted friend and companion.

He tells each person he meets the same thing: ‘No one can help everyone, but everyone can help someone.’

For many people, he’s heaven-sent.

“Anybody that’s willing to give up their time to help other people is a saint,” said one man who stopped by to talk.

Norman doesn’t know these people, and he'll never see most of them again. It made him wonder, was being out there really helping anyone? That’s when a man sat down and told him something he’d never forget.

“He said, ‘I was on my way to kill myself and I just saw you and I felt that I had to stop,’” Norman recalled.

Norman encouraged the man to get help and he did.

Norman said the man checked himself into the hospital and when he got out a week later, the first thing he wanted to do was say thank you.

“And he turned around and started walking off and he just stopped and turned around and said, ‘I love you.’ And I said, ‘I love you too,” Norman said.

It still brings a tear to his eye each time he recalls that story.

That moment was the confirmation Norman needed and also, the closure.

“Last year was the worst of times for me, but at the same time it was the best of times because it led to what I’m doing now,” Norman said. “It’s given me a purpose to do. A purpose in life.”

Everyone wants to be heard, but those who speak the loudest are those who are willing to listen.