A former nursing home in Stratford being renovated to serve as a home for young women aging out of foster care and other at-risk women and children is nearing completion, thanks in part to a global ministry that recently helped decorate and furnish the facility.
More than 50 women from across the United States gathered at the 99+1 Foundation’s Stratford house last month to put finishing touches on the property as part of a mission retreat with BIG Life.
“We are here to live the big life God has for us,” said BIG Life creator Pamela Crim, who produces the BIG Life Devotional Podcast for Women and regularly hosts BIG Life weekend adven-ture retreats for women at locations around the world.
“Once a year we gather to do a special mission retreat. Something bigger than ourselves,” said Crim, who estimated 15 to 20 different states were represented by women attending the retreat in Stratford April 21-23.
Crim said she felt led to add an outreach or mission retreat to the BIG Life schedule about two years ago. She began praying that God would point her to an existing ministry she could partner with.
When she ran across a post on social media from the 99+1 Foundation sharing their hope for what the 14,000-foot nursing home building they had acquired could become, she knew she had found her partner.
“The moment I saw it, I thought, ‘THAT is what we want to partner with and be a part of,’” Crim said.
The 99+1 Stratford house will provide a home, a safe environment and a variety of other resources for young women who need a place to live as they age out of the foster care system, as well as for women with small children who may be in dire situations, or widows in need. The work of renovating the building, which sat vacant for nearly a decade before 99+1 acquired it, has taken more than a year and a half.
BIG Life held its first mission retreat at the 99+1 Stratford house last fall, taking a day to decorate and furnish rooms on the north end of the building. For April’s retreat they scheduled two days and worked to complete the remaining rooms at the south end of the building and the lobby area, which will eventually be a café and coffee shop open to the public.
Their work included furnishing and decorating bedrooms, suites, and specialized areas to be used by residents including a classroom, gym, music room, counseling room and craft room.
BIG Life’s online community included a designer who volunteered her services for the project. Crim created an Amazon wish list for décor and furnishings, and BIG Life’s podcast listeners from around the globe were given the opportunity to donate items to the project by shopping from the list.
The décor in each of the apartments is unique and the single rooms bear names like Treasured, Renewed and Enough, while the suites for women with children are named for women of the bible, such as Tamar, Miriam and Naomi.
“I love that our designer has made every room so individualized and special,” Crim said.
Loretta Abney, who works with the 99+1 Foundation, said the designs fit well with the philosophy and mission of the 99+1 Stratford house.
“We want each of these women to know how special and unique they are,” Abney said.
As the rooms have come together, Crim said they’ve had the opportunity to watch God work through the retreat participants and other volunteers. Often they’ve been surprised to learn certain furnishings or small touches in the rooms have held special meaning for a few of the future residents, details that were completely unknown to volunteers who placed the items.
“We’ve just seen God in the details like that over and over again,” Crim said.
Gail Priest, co-founder of the 99+1 Foundation, said there are already six young women in transitional housing at another 99+1 property waiting to move into the house, and she expects to begin taking applications for additional residents later this month.
The public café and coffee shop in the lobby of the house is expected to open later this summer. It will provide the women who live at the 99+1 house employment opportunities and the chance to develop new skills.
The foundation is working with The Red Bird Coffee Shop in Yukon, which has a similar mission of helping those aging out of foster care, to get the Stratford shop up and running.
Crim said the coffee shop embodies part of what she loves about the mission of the 99+1 Stratford house.
“It gives them an opportunity to be productive and to start a career for themselves, to get their feet under them,” Crim said.
Crim and Abney said the 99+1 Foundation has overcome seemingly insurmountable obstacles just in renovating the building – both in terms of the sheer amount of work needed and in funding.
“God has just opened doors,” Abney said. “To see the crews come in and the money come in – it’s been incredible.”
What the foundation did have in abundance was obedience and faith in God’s instruction to them, Crim said.
“I’ve never seen someone with so much faith in action,” Crim said about 99+1 co-founder Gail Priest and her family. “They are just such a fantastic example of radical obedience.”
The building’s transformation from its original state to now, Crim said, is simply a reflection of what God is doing with the mission as a whole.
“It’s a beautiful picture of restoration, and that’s what God does in our lives,” Crim said. “It’s a picture of all those things we see in our lives that we think are too far gone, but God says, ‘No, I’ll restore this.’”
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