TOWN OF WILSON, WI (WHBL) - Monday was the day the Sheboygan County community said goodbye to the three children who passed away from last week’s house fire in Sheboygan Falls. Hundreds came to Southside Alliance Church for the visitation and memorial service for Natalie Martin, Benjamin Martin, and Carter Maki.
The Maki family’s home church Crossroads Community Church led events, and lead pastor Jeff Jaeger tells WHBL News they scheduled a five hour visitation time period to accommodate as many people has possible. “We knew that there would be an awful lot of people that wanted to come and just express their support for Chris and Kristi and the entire family.” That was evident as the parking lot at the church was at least half-filled throughout the visitation time, and a free shuttle service was use for people who parked in an overflow area.
Jaeger says the memorial service would have several goals for those in attendance. “We’ll celebrate God’s love for us in the mist of difficult time like this, and then we’ll also celebrate key some themes that really come out loud and clear from each of these children’s lives that really warrant celebrating.”
Crossroads has taken a leading role in helping the Maki family since the fire January 26. Jaeger says family members may have become numb given the whirlwind of events with little time to catch their breath. He says Monday would be the start of getting over the trauma of the tragedy. “I think this is a key step in their healing process, is to be able to come together tonight and see the church and the community to come out and support them, and then take it one day at a time from there.”
Jaeger adds the fire has rocked many members of Crossroads, who have been asking questions themselves about why this happened. "I think it’s very easy for all of us to look and kind of see those children being our own children and how would we do in that situation. So what I think that’s caused is (that) it’s caused people to really realize ‘boy we need to rally around this family. We need to actually be the church, not just come to church’; there’s a big difference between the two. So I think what we’ve seen is our church really rallying around the Maki family and realizing that we have a role to play as they continue to move forward into the days and weeks and months ahead, which is going to involve a lot of healing.”
One positive from the tragedy has been the overwhelming response from the area to help the Maki family. A Go Fund Me page has seen over 130-thousand dollars raised in the past six days, and fundraisers are being set up at area businesses. Jaeger says he is floored by the help being offered from the local community and beyond. "The phone calls that have come, the e-mails that have come in regarding what can we do, how can we help. It’s been amazing to us what we’ve seen; I’ve never seen anything like it. Chris and Kristi, the entire family feel extremely grateful but also really humble by it because they really are humble folks that they look and the reality is a lot of people do go through tragedies and trials and they’re almost kind of like ‘why would we be blessed with this kind of outpouring of support, and they’re just incredibly thankful.”
As for the future, Jaeger says his church, as he views it, will be privileged to help the Maki family. "We’re going to sit down and compile a list with them of their immediate needs, and then all of the people that have submitted their contact information, areas that they might be able to help, we’ll start to try to match up the needs with specific people who might be able to help with those things and we’ll make calls of people to do that. That will happen this week already, we’ll start getting the ball rolling with that. It will actually be a significant privilege for our church to walk through this with them.”