The way Deb Watson and Marcus Teague finish each other’s sentences and tease each other, you might think they’re siblings.

Teague, legally blind and needing dialysis three times a week, connected with Watson and her husband, Don, through FaithHealthNC in Lexington, a program that is part of Wake Forest Baptist Health. FaithHealthNC connects people in need with a network of congregational volunteers.

In need of a big sister

One recent afternoon at Smokey Joe’s in Lexington, they sat down to share their story, and in no time, Deb Watson was pestering Teague about whether he’d taken care of a dental issue and whether he’d called about a follow-up heart stress test.

“I have called them—they’ve not called me back yet,” Teague informs her.

“How long ago?” she immediately responds.

“This is what a single person who lives by himself needs—a big sister,” Teague says, shrugging, “even though you’d like to strangle her sometimes.”

All three laugh heartily.

For people such as Teague, FaithHealthNC has been a game-changer. For Teague, it’s not only because it provides the transportation he needs to get back home from dialysis, but it has meant a new network of friends he can count on for advice, support and, yes, the more than occasional nudge to take care of something.

Volunteers field requests

The Watsons, who relocated from Maine less than three years ago, had joined First Baptist Church, one of a dozen congregations in the Lexington area that participate in FaithHealthNC. They heard about the volunteer program and liked the concept.

When the Rev. Ray Howell, senior minister at First Baptist, asked the couple to become FaithHealthNC’s care coordinators at the church, they agreed. That meant they would begin to field requests for assistance, most often funneled to them by Coley Rimmer, the FaithHealthNC liaison based at Wake Forest Baptist Health Lexington Medical Center. The FaithHealthNC program—begun through Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center—started in late 2012 in Lexington, and has since spread to other areas across North Carolina.

Rimmer says the program serves to help more than patients who need assistance.

FaithHealthNC volunteers, he says, “get an opportunity to become involved in someone else’s life and see that it benefits that person immediately. For the patient, it lets them know there are other people out there that care about them, that they don’t walk alone.”

Teague, for his part, needed transportation at the end of his dialysis sessions in order to relieve family members and friends who’d been helping him.

“One day out of the blue a lady came and said she heard I needed rides,’’ he says. “I had no clue what to expect. I was just thinking I’d get a ride back, but this has become a family venture.”

Help the community be healthy

“As I understand FaithHealthNC, the big picture is to help the community be healthy,” Don Watson says. “I think Marcus is healthier because of FaithHealth. This is a great blessing.”

When Deb Watson’s brother, who lived with the couple, died recently, Teague was dialing her as soon as he heard the news.

“I was trying to be on top of things every chance I could just to let her know, and Don, too, that I will call and check on them,” he says, a reversal of the normal order, “to make sure there wasn’t anything I could do and or anything they needed.”

The Watsons, meanwhile, are brimming with ideas to help FaithHealthNC reach more people in need in new ways.

For example, they’re developing a questionnaire that FaithHealthNC volunteers will fill out to help them learn more about volunteer experiences. That way, as they also establish new contacts with community agencies such as Cancer Services of Davidson County to seek out ways they can help, they can better match volunteers who have had experiences with a given problem to those in need.

The FaithHealthNC program can assist with anything from transportation to visits in a hospital or facility to connecting people with local or non-profit agencies for assistance beyond the means of volunteers.

Seventeen congregations

Rimmer says there are currently 17 congregations representing seven faiths now involved in FaithHealthNC in Lexington, up from the original five congregations that signed covenants to participate in 2012. He hopes in years to come, the congregations will work together more and include government and nonprofit agencies to spread the mission of helping those in need.

“That begins to create more education for the people in the community about health issues,” he says. “We can do much more together than anyone can do themselves.”

Deb Watson says FaithHealthNC reminds her of what things were like when she was a child.

“This is what people used to do,” she says. “We’ve gotten so spread out and isolated. This program brings it back. It gives us the ability to take care of each other.”