Greater Palatine
The residents of St. Joseph's Home for the Elderly in Palatine were recently disappointed when arrangements fell through for a donation of sheer curtains for their rooms. The existing curtains block out all light when closed and when open, they let in too much sunlight to watch television.
Our Inside Out project team of four women wanted very much to find a way to make this project happen. So we prayed and then called and e-mailed friends, relatives, neighbors and another neighborhood group.
We raised enough money and found enough people willing to spend a Sunday afternoon at St. Joseph's hanging new curtains. Many of the families had already served on a neighborhood project but joyfully stepped up again to help us.
There was just one glitch to our project. The day before our serving day, we discovered that all 74 special order curtains we received were two feet too long. By scouring local stores for the correct size we were able to find enough curtains to complete more than half of the rooms.
Twenty adults and six children helped get the curtains up, and then stayed to visit the residents in their rooms and to play Bingo.
Our team is looking forward to another afternoon of hanging curtains and bingo with our new friends at St. Joseph's. Initially I thought that providing and installing the curtains was the major part of our project. However, it became clear to me that the most meaningful part of our day was the time spent visiting the residents.
It was just like Mike Breaux says, "Love God, love people."
April Kimura-Anderson









