A History of Faith and Service
The warmth of a caring community is what drew Elaine Alton and her husband to The Salvation Army.
In the 1950s, her father began attending a seniors’ group at The Salvation Army church in Grande Prairie, AB. Whenever Elaine and her husband visited with her Dad, they would accompany him to church services and seniors’ gatherings.
“It was wonderful and we fit right in, people were happy to see us,” says Elaine.
Since the 1990s, she has been actively attending a Salvation Army church in St. Albert, Alberta. In addition to worshipping there, she enjoys using her gifts as a former post-secondary teacher to lead Bible studies and helps coordinate the kettle count room and kettle volunteers at Christmas.
It is particularly meaningful for Elaine, as she and her husband used to volunteer together at the kettles before he passed away 10 years ago.
“Though he became more and more infirm and confined to a wheelchair for the last year or two, he’d sit in his wheelchair at the kettles and was still keen to chat with anyone and would just have a ball; he loved it.” she recalls. “He was quite the character and sometimes these moments come, and I just think to myself how he would have been in his element these days with the kettles.”
With a long and dedicated history of faithfulness and service to God with The Salvation Army, Elaine chose to leave a gift for The Salvation Army in her will.
“My experiences with Salvation Army churches have been extraordinary, and I admire how they look after the community,” she says. “Living in Edmonton, I also see that when there’s an emergency, they always seem to be the first people in and the last people out.
“Whatever they do, they do with dignity. For example, at our corps, we have a toy store for Christmas where the volunteers bring parents into the gym and they can select the gifts they want to give to their children. There’s a level of dignity that comes with choice and I love that the organizers picked up on that. The activity and personal interactions are very dignified and respectful. Treating people with that level of dignity is really important to me and what opened my heart to making a legacy gift.”
She hopes her gifts will honour God and create lasting change in the community.
“I hope my gifts will be wisely stewarded and will be used for enduring projects that bring hope, especially to young people,” she says. “When you’re young, it’s so easy to make a bad decision and not fully think of the repercussions I trust that the resources I leave will go to an enduring project where it will be needed and appreciated and stewarded well, because I’ve tried to steward it well.
“There’s enough of a history, trust and exposure to the public that I can trust that what I leave behind will be used the way I would like it to be used. I encourage other people to consider The Salvation Army, as well, because it’s proven itself worthy of trusting a legacy to.”
