Bible Study at MorningStar Senior Living

*The following is the output of transcribing from an audio recording. Although the transcription is largely accurate, in some cases it is incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription errors.

Welcome to the answers for elders radio show. meet the trusted experts who will give you straight answers and I will help guide you on the path of later life care. Now here’s your host, founder, caregiver and CEO, Susanne Newman, and welcome everyone to answers for elders radio network. Is We are here again talking about the wonderful resources that we have in our elder community and certainly one amazing resource that we all have been learning about is morning star senior living. And for those of you that have been keeping up with our PODCASTS, you’ve probably seen a lot of different amazing communities in the Pacific Northwest and um I wanted to come out to my backyard because we’re going to talk about a very cerebral topic and it’s something that’s very important to the mission and the vision of morning stars senior living. And I am here with a wonderful lady by the name of Janice Harrington. And Janie, you are with Morning Star of happy value in Oregon outside of Portman. Welcome to our program Janie. Thank you so much. I’m so glad to be joining you today. I’m so glad and I love your little sign behind you where it says goodness, love, kindness, fairness, respect and honesty, and those are all, Um, kind of the basics of the vision and the mission of Morning Star senior living, and it’s really shows and everything that you do. And today’s topic is going to kind of be a little bit unique in the fact that, Um, Janie, you are the assistant director of life enrichment, which is an amazing title, life enrichments, but basically helping to improve quality of life every day and bring joy to residents every day. Is that kind of a good analogy? Sure is, it’s a perfect analogy and I love that you brought up the points back there, because it really is the the core point, um, of what we try to do as we’re living with our residents here and improving their quality of life, and it’s such an important piece of working at morning start that they’re looking for people who really exude these qualities. Yeah, yeah, so tell me a little bit about Um before we get into our topic. Tell me a little bit about your community as a whole. What kind of levels of care do you offer? And, Um, we’re you located? So we are in Happy Valley, Oregon and it’s near Clacamus or Damascus, for those are who are familiar with the area, where about fifteen, twenty minutes outside of Portland. and Um, we are in a great location here. Happy Valley is just booming and Um, at morning start here. We do offer services for both our reflections community, which is for those residents who need memory care assistants, and also we offer assisted living. And many of our folks who are in our assistant living are also independent as well and couples. So we reach a large group of people. So, in other words, let’s say mom needs care, dad doesn’t need care. Mom and dad can still move into the community. Dad can live independently, Um mom can have all kinds of care. So it’s a absolutely to keep Um families together, couples together, yes, sisters together, Um, whoever may you know, want to stay together. Um, you have that ability to do that, which exactly today. Yeah, so, Jenny’s tell us a little bit about what we’re gonna be talking about today, because I’m kind of excited about this topic me too. Um, one of my favorite Um life enrich my activities. That why work on here is, uh, I get to lead Bible study once a week with our community here, both our reflections and assisted living and just how important that is in in individuals lives and the need that they have for that. And so that’s what we’re going to be discussing today. That’s amazing and obviously, because you are a faith based organization, one of the things that I’ve really noticed about your communities is that you’re also very inclusive, which I think is awesome. It’s very it’s true to see. That is true. You know, as we have filled up, it’s been interesting to see the different folks who we have come to us, uh, those who are believing, those who are not believing. We have very many different arrays, kind of like thirty one flavors of it’s Catholic or methodist or Jewish or Christian Baptist based. Thankfully, what we are working on here is very inclusive for anyone who would like to attend. And that’s very true because I’ve seen it with my own eyes. I know that Um, I had a family member. Most are my husband’s family is all Jewish and so they are definitely actually my brother in law, Um, went and towards Kirkland on the other day loved it, loved it, loved it and that’s the thing. For somebody that’s Jewish that said, wow, this is such an amazing community. I’m not quite ready yet, but this is number one on my list. That was a nice thing to to see, because it’s awesome. Yeah, so tell us a little bit about what you do in your Bible stuff. How did you get started in this? Well, you know, I I have had experience in the past and so it wasn’t a difficult leap for me. Um, and I felt comfortable leading when I was asked to. But what I have tried to do is to hear it especially towards our specific residents here and the needs that they might have. And so the format that I follow. Um, we begin with opening with a few great hymns, two or three hymns, and then what we do is we always read God’s word together. That is the main point of our whole Bible study. That’s why it’s inclusive and reaching to all different people of different backgrounds, of different faiths. What we do is we read one chapter a week together and then after we read the chapter, we will try to discuss how it applies to our life. What can we get out of this? How can we apply it to us today, and so I do do a little bit of you know, I will look into it and research it a little bit first each chapter so that I can hear it towards our residents and what they’re going through in this stage of life and make it really personal for them and for myself as well. God’s word reaches everyone at any age, and so after we read a chapter, we’ll talk about how to apply it to our lives and then we’ll see a couple more hymns and clothes in prayer and our our format. It usually takes about one hour, which seems to be a really great amount of time, both possibly our reflections residents and our a l. It seems to be just about the right amount of singing and the word to really be compatible with our our group of people we have. Yeah, and for those of our listeners, when you say a l, that’s the stem. Yeah, we in the industry, we sometimes forget WHO’s listening. So I want to make sure that you guys know. So obviously you Um have done an amazing things. How is that changed your life as far as being able to lead these groups? This is this is a wonderful calling for you to do something like this. You know, I am so blessed. I absolutely love working here and when I was applying just the concept that this was a faith based community, I was so excited to be working here and it means that any time I can pray with folks when they’re having a difficulty or a struggle or her day. Um, I can talk about it with my colleagues, I can encourage others as we read the word together. Um. It’s it’s such a freedom to be able to live what we believe instead of having to hold it back depending on where you work or Um, and even you know, of course, we have residents who might not be believers but yet reaching out in kindness and acceptance and they love to come just to even hear the music and the worst and they’re intrigued and are it’s been amazing to see our community as we’ve filled up and grown, to see our room filling up to where we’re even thinking about, Gosh, we might have to add a different room here because our room is full now. Yeah, well, and I think the other thing what’s really interesting, and it’s certainly worth noting, as I think as we age, Um, we’re looking for more connection in a little bit more of a something that has more meaning in our lives and I think one of the things that Um, you know, as we age, I’ve watched I’ve seen it within myself. There’s things that you quiet within yourself. You don’t have the same sense of priorities as you did when you were younger. There’s things it’s more like I love the term that you used about reflection, because it is a lot of times it’s what do you stand for? What your legacy? Who are you going to be when you’re you know, when you know your life is gone? Is like. So a lot of those thoughts are happening with our seniors at the end of their lives. I’m starting to have those feelings at sixty six. So certainly, Um, you know that pieces is a big part of it. So tell us a little bit, Um you know. I want to talk a little bit about if somebody’s interested in your community, Um, and you know, maybe there might be a way, and I’m just gonna put you on the spot, would they be invited to participate in one of these just to see how it would be for them to be a part of that? We would absolutely love that. In fact, I really enjoy a lot of our residents will invite their family members to come on Thursday mornings to attend Bible study with them. Are we are open for anyone and all residents and community members and in fact we do have a gentleman who lives in some apartments a couple of blocks away and he is going to be attending. His daughter is going to bring him lovely because it seems to be something that is lacking for our senior community. Um a lot of churches may they might not be having the outreaches to reach the seniors, especially during the last couple of years we’ve had difficulties, social issues with covid and such, and has really been difficult for seniors and for them not being able to go to congregation or not having churches that are doing Bible studies where they come to their home, as we have folks who maybe aren’t driving anymore or have access to a car, for us to have an in House Bible study available for them where we are reading God’s word together and gathering together in fellowship and uplifting at each other through our just difficulties, depression, through the aches and pains of our bodies and just the sadness and loneliness Um a lot of covid has brought to a lot of our communities. It has been so essential to to offer this, for us to join together still and be reading God’s word and growing together feeling his comfort through these hard times. Exactly. So how do we read you, denise? Well, if you are looking on the web, you’re going to search for Morning Star Living Dot Com and it will bring up multiple different communities that we have in Oregon, some different locations, but we are the Happy Valley location and if you go to Oregon, if you click on the state of Oregon, you’ll see that Oregon has several communities in the Greater Portland area and happy value is one of those wonderful dots on the map. I’m we’re so excited to connect with you and share your math message of faith. So thanks so much, denise. You are welcome. Thank you for having me. We at answers for elders. Thank you for listening. Did you know that you can discover hundreds of podcasts in our library on senior care? So visit our website and discover our decision guides. That will help you also navigate decision making. Find US AT ANSWERS FOR ELDERS DOT COM