Having outgrown its facility on Pierceton Road in Winona Lake, LifeTouch Ministries & Counseling Center has moved to Warsaw.
The Kosciusko Chamber of Commerce held a ribbon-cutting ceremony Wednesday for the Christian nonprofit organization at its new home at 2510 E. Center St.
“We outgrew our last building, but we’ve just been really thrilled to have a location that’s so close to Center Street, so, yes, we are definitely growing a lot every week,” founder Darla France said.
She founded LifeTouch 23 years ago.
“We offer Christian counseling, Biblically-based counseling, to a variety of people – individuals, families, marriage, extreme trauma, children, teenagers,” she said. “So we have seven counselors and all of those things are specialties of our seven people.”
Darla said they also do some drug addiction counseling.
The counselors are from Kosciusko County so are very familiar with the community, the Frances said.
LifeTouch doesn’t take insurance, but Darla said, “We are one of the only agencies that allow people to pay on a sliding scale what they can pay. So we have a set rate, but we will work with anyone who comes in, to pay. We have people who pay $5. We work with people. We want to make master’s level counseling affordable to anyone who wants to come.”
Jeff France, LifeTouch director, said, “So what we say is we’ll never turn anybody away due to the inability to pay. And that’s one of the founding foundations that Darla did way back, that we not turn anybody away. So we just welcome anybody who needs our services.”
As a nonprofit, Darla said that can be challenging. She said LifeTouch has been in the community for about 23 years in various buildings and has barely written a grant because of the support it receives.
“Amazing support,” Jeff said.
Darla said the support comes from businesses, churches and individuals.
Without identifying the person, Darla told a story of one woman whose life was changed by LifeTouch.
“When we moved to this location – obviously our sign is right out there for everybody to see – we had a former client stop in one day, and I happened to be free. She was my former client. She came in and I small-talked a little bit with her, and she said, ‘Here’s the reason I came. Your sign is so visible now and your tagline is helping people turn to joy. I just want you to know that I am one of those people,’” Darla said. “She said, ‘I did return to a state of joy after counseling.’ She said, ‘I just want you to know that what you’re advertising is absolutely true.’ So that was a nice story.”
Jeff said people can access LifeTouch’s counseling services by calling 574-269-7990 or visit the website at www.lifetouchmin.org and request an appointment. One of the office staff will talk with the person, see what their need is and match them with a counselor.
Darla said LifeTouch’s goal is to “help restore people to a joyful state, to a state even healthier than before, and we feel like we work with any and every kind of people.”
She also said, “It’s always been interesting to me that, it’s clear we have the word ‘ministries’ on our sign and how many people who just don’t believe come. And I’m thrilled about that because we want to see everybody, anybody. We want to make anybody feel that they are welcome and loved by God. So it’s been kind of a shock to me how many nonbelievers we have, and that’s great. We want that.”
“We’re here to reach out to the community, that’s what our position is,” Jeff said. “We’re here to serve the community. We love it and we want to do what we can to reach out.”
