Stroke or outline? Seems simple, but not.

Hi, Iʻm relatively new to Illustrator, I used Fireworks until my Mac no longer supported it. I need to outline some text with a diffused white stroke so it stands out on a black background. I converted the text to outlines. Can somoene show me how to do this in Illustrator? Iʻve spent hours looking into strokes, brushes, drop shadows and nothing is working. Thanks in advance! See the image Iʻve attached.