The Crookston Care and Share Hope Center has teamed with area churches to redo the six rooms and make it a nicer place for people to stay when needed.
The Hope Center has six units, three units are one room, and the other three units have two rooms. The rooms are not large but sufficient to provide a temporary place to stay. But while sufficiency is excellent, the rooms seemed institutional and unattractive.
Enter the Adopt-a-Room project. Six area churches have embraced the Hope Center, each adopting a room.
-Room 2A, Trinity Lutheran Church
-Room 2B, Our Lady of Sorrows Catholic Church
-Room 3, Our Savior’s Lutheran Church
-Room 4, Nexus Church, Thief River Falls
-Room 5, Harvest Church
-Room 6, Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception Catholic Church
The idea is to make things a little more homelike for resident families. Not every room will look alike, so it isn’t so institutional. It also shows residents that the Crookston region is caring. The committed church volunteers that took on this project faced some challenges. Everyone had to address the flooring. Everyone had painting to do. This was in addition to the separate little things each room needed to be done.
In addition to time and effort, supplies were needed. The different church families came together to support the project with donations of supplies. When it came to the painting, Sister Justina must have meddled in this project a little bit because, right on time, Jason Klinnert, manager of Hardware Hank in Crookston, called with an offer to donate paint. Hardware Hank of Crookston donated many gallons of paint and even tinted it at no cost.
There comes a point where the hard work is done, and then the fun stuff starts. The churches get to decorate the room and provide bedding and towels that look nice together. They also create a welcome basket for the incoming family. One of the most fun parts for the churches is knowing that what they have provided is available for the families to take with them when they move into their homes. This boosts families when they gather necessities needed in a new place. It also gives them something enjoyable to decorate with when encouraged to take décor they have particularly liked.
Leah Winjum from Trinity Lutheran Church is the communications coordinator volunteer. She was kept busy as the project started because we had to let the churches know when there was the time and opportunity to get their room done in between the rooms being used. Her job should get more manageable now that almost all the rooms are complete. From now on, when a family leaves a room, the church that adopted that room will be notified so they can come and refresh the room. Families in the rooms don’t know the volunteers who worked in their rooms. Volunteers don’t get to meet the families they are providing for. But that’s okay. The result is a mutual sense of caring and gratitude between people who will never meet, a miraculous happening. Thank you, churches, for making the Hope Center and our world better!
