Spirit Church in Bartlesville will be hosting a special event on Saturday morning.

During a virtual church service on Sunday, volunteer Paige Bostwick announced that Spirit Church and Hope Clinic were partnering up to put on a drive-thru “Day of Hope” for our community this weekend. She said each guest will receive a bag of groceries that could last a family a week, plus a bag of hygiene and cleaning supplies.

The event will start at 10:00 a.m. at Spirit Church, which is located at 2121 S. Madison Boulevard in Bartlesville. Tune in to KWON AM 1400, FM 93.3 for “Consumer Calls on the Road” as Bartlesville Radio keeps you posted about the event while being at your beck and call.

This event is taking place nearly a week after Lead Pastor Darryl Wootton and his wife, Faith, announced that Spirit Church would eliminate $2.6-million in medical debt in and outside of Washington, Nowata and Osage counties. You can find the story on Sunday's big announcement here.

SpiritCHURCH in Bartlesville, Oklahoma is clearing $2,679,045 in medical debt for households across the state of Oklahoma. 2,151 Oklahoma families will get letters this month announcing that all of their medical debt has been paid off by a local church.

Pastor Wootton, stated, “The mission of our SpiritCHURCH is to share the love, joy, and peace of Jesus Christ with the least, last, and the lost. We thought this was a wonderful way to bless our neighbors in these economic challenging times.”

SpiritCHURCH initially eliminated the critical medical debt of Washington, Nowata, and Osage Counties. However, they were able to partner with Christian Assembly in Los Angeles to bless other counties across Oklahoma.

Pastor Wootton indicated that families in 56 Oklahoma counties would be blessed by the generosity of SpiritCHURCH members. In the state of Oklahoma, about 26 percent of the population has medical debt. In order to eliminate the debt, SpiritCHURCH, an Assemblies of God Church, partnered with RIP Medical Debt. RIP Medical Debit is a nonprofit organization that allows generous organizations the ability to erase, at a greatly reduced rate, the debt of Americans whose lives have been destroyed by unjust medical debt.

Pastor Wootton said, “We were able to help those in our communities that need the assistance the most.”

Those receiving the debt cancellation letter this month are individuals that make less than twice the Federal poverty level, have more than 5-percent of their annual income going towards out-of-pocket medical bills, and have debts greater than their assets. SpiritCHURCH leaders do not know the identities of the people they are helping, or if any of them are part of the church’s congregation.

Medical privacy laws require that only RIP Medical Debt have knowledge of the gifts’ recipients. The congregation was “overwhelmed” when lead Pastor Darryl Wootton made the announcement during their online Mother’s Day Services.

Wootton stated, “Over $2.6 million of medical debt has been cancelled for our neighbors. We hope this medical debt forgiveness will remind people that God wants everyone to experience His grace and forgiveness every day.”

Since the Corona outbreak, SpiritCHURCH in Bartlesville has served meals, distributed groceries, provided meals to nursing homes with COVID19 outbreaks, safely visited over 500 homes in the community, and broadcast their services via live stream on their website, spirit.church, YouTube, Facebook, Periscope, Boxcast, Twitter and local radio. Eliminating medical debt was a practical way for their church to continue their mission of sharing love, joy, and peace.