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ST. ANNE’S DAY Matching Gift Challenge

Due to the overwhelming success of last year’s event, and the ongoing financial resources necessary to offer a caring home for the elderly and disabled, we have decided to hold this event again in 2023. 

Each summer, we celebrate our patron saint, St. Anne, with a week of festivities around her feast day.  Through this matching gift campaign, donors can have their gift matched by a local company as long as it is given (or check dated) on St. Anne’s Day (July 26th).  

In these months leading up to the challenge, we are collecting pledges of donations from local companies/organizations.  We want to have everything in place well in advance, and know how much money is available in matching funds.  

To make a pledge for your company/organization, please complete the form below. 

This project gives our donors a chance to “double their dollars.”  Funds received will help us as we provide a caring home for our residents.  

About St. Anne’s:
St. Anne’s has been providing a safe, caring living environment for vulnerable adults since the mid 1940s. 

Our residents come to us because they are not able to lead healthy lives on their own.  Due to any number of reasons, physical and/or mental, they cannot properly care for themselves.  Alone, they would face various problems, suffering from isolation, poor nutrition, improper medication administration, poor hygiene or other problems.  They face a variety of health challenges, such as diabetes.  

We strive to create a homelike atmosphere, become “family” to many people who have little contact with their biological families. 

We provide nursing, housekeeping, laundry, and personal care services.  We have an excellent activity program, offering the socialization that is so vital to our residents’ well-being.  Along with table games, musical entertainment, and countless other activities, our staff also take residents out into the community.  We offer shopping trips, and also take groups out to eat frequently.  In the past, residents who were able were also given the opportunity to enjoy events in the community, such as high school plays and sporting events.  We provide transportation for them to and from medical appointments.

Thank you so much for helping us continue our service to our residents!

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Coping during a Pandemic

smile face(Reprinted from our September Newsletter)

Below are some tips for taking care of yourself and your mental/physical health:

Moderate the amount of news you watch.—Take breaks from the pandemic briefings. Stick to trusted sources of information and avoid hearsay (e.g., on social media) that makes you more anxious. Limit time spent on social media or other programming that you find raises your anxiety level.

Take care of your body by regular exercise, plenty of sleep, and healthy eating habits.

Connect with others in your family and faith community.

Be thankful. Along with being the “right thing to do,” an attitude of gratitude can help boost your mood and make you happier.

Share your feelings with a trusted friend.

Take time for quiet.

Take advantage of opportunities you still DO have: take a walk and enjoy the weather, catch up on sleep if you’re tired. Think of what you CAN more than what you CAN’T.

Think of ways you can help others.

Realize that this is a stressful time for everyone.

Pay attention to your feelings and thoughts. If you find yourself being negative, try to balance this with positive thinking.

Try a new hobby or learn to do something new; help move your attention off the huge problems in our world and onto something constructive and positive.

Sources: cdc.gov/coronavirus, usf.edu, buffalo.edu, vivalife.ca, theconversation.com

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Update on Growing Things

Plum trees

The protecting leaves have now been removed after the winter, and now our sweet little plum trees are ready to bud!

We’ve also been planning our garden and hoping to start some seeds indoors soon.

Our residents will enjoy watching them grow and eating the produce!

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Caramel Pull-Aparts…French Toast Bake…Mini Pizzas, Oh My!

A month or two ago, we received a call from Northlands Rescue Mission, asking if we could use some bagels.

Sr. Rebecca, our administrator, took the call and agreed that we could take some. There had been a mistake; to make a long story short, they had ended up with 160 cases of bagels which they had not ordered. (Please realize that each case contained 72 restaurant-quality bagels).

Since that fateful day, St. Anne’s staff have made multiple trips there to help alleviate the “bagel burden” at the Mission. Sr. Elaine has served as coordinator for the “St. Anne’s Bagel Distribution Center,” doing a good job at marketing and disposing of many of somewhat versatile wheat products. (Too bad she doesn’t have the same track record for selling our neat St. Anne’s Discount Cards.)

We have even gone so far as to put up signs advertising “FREE BAGELS – ASK AT THE FRONT DESK.”

Countless trips back over to the convent garage, where these bountiful boxes of bagels were stored, were made.

Along with giving these out to visitors and apartment residents, we’ve also found a few creative, and tasty, ways of using them in our Basic Care unit as well.

For our New Years Eve Party, Activities staff made delicious bagel pizzas, which were a big hit with our residents (so much so that dietary staff made them for lunch today when pizza was on the menu).

Sr. Christina has made French toast bake a couple of times, even serving it to our residents for snacks once. (They didn’t mind it a bit, always appreciative of freshly baked treats). She also made caramel pull-aparts. (Both of these recipes use five bagels cut/torn into small pieces.)

Now, with the warm weather promised over the weekend, we will need to find a more stable environment with temperatures maintained well below freezing.

(Don’t tell anyone, but a certain individual here has also been feeding the rabbits with them. Those of us who do gardening in the spring are not thrilled with the idea.)

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Vegetables and Friendships Grow together in the St. Anne’s Garden

 

garden at St. Anne's, Grand Forks

At the end of May, several residents helped Sr. Christina plant a small garden on our west patio.

Now, beets, peas, onions, peppers, cucumbers, and tomatoes are growing!  Soon, it will be time to harvest.

The main intention of having this garden is to give our residents a fun project to take part in and a chance to get their hands dirty with tangible results.

Another fruit of the endeavor is the camaraderie which accompanies working together on a project.

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A St. Anne’s Story

picshomeGuest Post by: Fr. Tim Bushy

St. Anne’s Guest Home has been a special part of my life for years. I remember as a young boy volunteering to shine shoes for the men’s residence up on the third floor at the old facility in Riverside Park. I also vividly recall that in the 8th grade a friend of mine and I were hired to help out in the kitchen with dish-washing and to help with maintenance. How time flies and the memories continue to be implanted and cherished.

After college I worked at First National Bank (now Alerus) in Marketing. I was involved in the community and in my parish at Holy Family. My good friend Mary Bohlman, God bless her soul, came to me one day at the bank and said, “Tim, we could really use you to serve on the Board of St. Anne’s Guest Home. The fire Marshall has recently ruled that the place as unsafe and that the Sisters will either need to rebuild or close.”

My fondness for St. Anne’s sparked me to say, “Sure; I will do what I can.”  It wasn’t long after that I was working in the Grand Forks community to explore resources and to begin to solicit support and funding for St. Anne’s. We also sought the help of the Catholic parishes in Grand Forks and through the grace of God we were able to obtain the not-so-old St. James Convent that had housed the Sisters of St. Joseph who served the parishes and St. Michael’s Hospital. The convent was used by the parishes for religious education purposes, but they decided that if St. Anne’s could use the facility and gain the funding needed to remodel, they would support the effort to continue Catholic healthcare in Grand Forks.

Once the convent was obtained, we worked with several local, state and federal resources to obtain Section Eight grant funding through the US Department of Housing and Urban Development. This funding would provide for the stand-alone subsidized affordable housing apartment units that would be built onsite. I remember flying with Sr. Rebecca Metzger, who was, and still is, the Administrator of St. Anne’s. We flew to Denver, CO to sign the legal agreements. It was Sr. Rebecca’s first airplane flight and, needless to say, it was a very interesting one for her; she got sick on the plane once up in the air. However, she was bound and determined to make it to Denver, and the papers were signed.  We returned to Grand Forks by plane.

After many planning meetings with building contractors, architects, parishioners, pastors and the Sisters of St. Francis of Hankinson the dream of a new St. Anne’s became a reality and was dedicated in 1981.

I am proud and grateful that my name is on the cornerstone of St. Anne’s with many others who made St. Anne’s Guest Home a reality in its present location. The dedication was a day of great joy when the facility was blessed by Bishop Justin Driscoll. The Bishop and I became friends, and he was instrumental in my answering the call to priesthood. The Sisters at St. Anne’s have been and are a very special part of my life and the life of my family.

My dad, and now my brother, have been selling and delivering paper and other supplies to St. Anne’s for over 50 years. The Sisters hosted a reception at St. Anne’s for me when I was ordained a transitional deacon. My grandmother lived at St. Anne’s before she died and my mother was an auxiliary member for years.

Years have passed and the healing ministry of Jesus continues. Through God’s grace and work, the Catholic community of Grand Forks continues to support the wonderful ministry of the Sisters of St. Francis and the ministry of many dedicated lay people who make St. Anne’s a very sacred place.

Today, the purpose of St. Anne’s, a Catholic Health care facility, is to create an environment of living and sharing the Gospel Message for the healing of the spiritual and physical, as well as the psychological, social and emotional needs of the people they serve, in accordance with the moral and religious directives for Catholic Health Care.

St. Anne’s continues to build and celebrate the Reign of God. A special thanks to the Sisters of St. Francis and the many lay women and men who give of themselves in service to others at St. Anne’s Guest Home. May all of us use our gifts together to care for others as Jesus calls us all to do.

Fr. Tim Bushy.jpg

 

Fr. Tim Bushy has been a Catholic priest for over 33 years and is now the Director of Mission Integration and Spiritual Formation for Providence Health Plans in Portland Oregon. Providence-St. Joseph Health is the largest provider of Catholic Healthcare on the west coast and the third largest provider of Catholic healthcare in the United States.