Helen Morgan is an angel of hope. She has dedicated her life to assisting and touching the lives of countless people in her years in church ministry and then through partnership with community organisations that provide succour to the needy.
Many people in Komani will know Morgan for the years of service at St Michaels Anglican Church, along with her husband, Reg Morgan, who was the rector from 2006 until they retired in 2012.
Above ministering to the congregants, Morgan served the wider community, embracing and championing many community causes from assisting the elderly and destitute to underprivileged children.
Reflecting on her life she says: “I believe it has been to empower young people. First, as we said to our children, ‘What do you want to do with your life? What is your passion and we will try to help you achieve it’. We have also encouraged many young people to pursue their dreams and it has been a privilege to watch them blossom and grow,” she said.
One of the causes close to Morgan’s heart is knitting clothes for the neonatal high care unit at the Frontier Hospital for the new mothers and babies who often have no clothes when they are discharged. “It is a shame that the people in town who knitted for the infants are dying with that skill.”
She has also been collecting clothes for different charities and families for years. One of her favourite projects is knitting doll’s clothes for a toy library that lends children from the townships toys to play with. She also makes socks and donates them to people who battle with cancer.
“I make the socks whenever I hear about people going through chemotherapy because they often get cold feet. A project close to my heart is writing letters to people recovering from operations. Having spent long days in hospital as a teenager because of a blood disorder I thought there must be something one could do to help people through that time. I write letters of encouragement, letters of fun and laughter, letters of challenge to think of things differently. I make cards using pictures from magazines and enclose jokes sometimes. I have lost count of the number of letters over the years, but the feedback has always been hugely encouraging.”
Currently, however, most concerning for her is the isolation many people are facing because of Covid-19. “Many people are very sceptical about the vaccines and that is an issue close to my heart. I have been praying about it and hope we will finally get to a place where we are free to socialise again. I still visit a number of older people I am concerned about. Some were in the church and others are friends I made when I came here, people who do not have close family around who have been battling through Covid.”
