Our Stories
Teens bring servant hearts from Southwest desert to Puget Sound
Who says you have to live in the Northwest to volunteer for Lutheran Community Services Northwest? An energetic group of youth and their adult chaperones from Arizona recently proved that faithful service knows no bounds, and you don't need a passport to enter...
Port Angeles Family Center has bigger space to go with big hearts
Early this year LCS Northwest’s Port Angeles Family Center moved to a building more than four times larger than the old center. On the road to Hurricane Ridge, behind a chain-link fence 150 yards from Olympic National Park, this new home base for the agency’s Clallam...
Puzzle art reconnects Portland communities fragmented by COVID
If life can be explained in metaphors, here’s one that helps sum up the last two years. The COVID-19 pandemic turned many people in our communities into puzzle pieces scattered across a table, unattended and disconnected. But the good news of society’s gradual...
As Hope House closes, a different hope arises in Astoria
LCSNW is marking the end of an era and celebrating the start of a new chapter in Astoria, Oregon. For 30 years, the agency has partnered with local Lutheran church members to operate Hope House. There, children and families in the coastal community found counseling...
Counselors help others find healing, wellness and hope
May is Mental Health Awareness Month. At LCS Northwest, our counseling teams help people heal from trauma, regain wellness and find hope. Last year, we provided 63,349 counseling hours to 4,565 Northwest neighbors in need. Mustafa Mohammed and Nadia Kolomiyets...
No more half measures – Afghan refugees are on borrowed time
As Americans, it’s easy to transfer all our concern for the world’s refugees onto the good people of Ukraine. In this time of short attention spans and fast-moving global emergencies, it’s a natural impulse. More than 5 million Ukrainians have crossed European borders...
Attempting to level the playing field for families seeking asylum
Violence and political persecution have driven a record number of migrant families to seek asylum in the United States. Most are arriving at our Southwest border. In May 2021, the Biden administration announced a Dedicated Docket initiative to expedite cases of...
