NUNDAY with a Catholic Sister creating “New Life” for Foster Children

Monday is NUNDAY with today’s guest blogger, Karol Bartlett.

For fifty years, Sister Claire LeBeouf, CSC, a member of the Sisters of the Holy Cross, has been working hard in Tampa, Florida to find homes loving and safe homes for foster children. In the past five years Sister Claire had been dreaming and praying about building a place that would be a “multigenerational community for foster children, where people who are willing to adopt kids over age 8 can rent homes at a reduced rate, and seniors who don’t have family nearby can move into their own subsidized homes to help with babysitting, cooking and playing ball.” According to an August 30th news item in the Tampa Bay Times by Lane DeGregory, those prayers have paid off!

Five years ago, Sister Claire created a non-profit called New Life Village and raised $20,000 towards her dream. Not bad but when your dream is a whole community, you need much more. Last fall one prayer was answered in the form of an email telling her about a 12-acre “development of Townhouses that had been foreclosed upon. More prayers were answered when “an anonymous donor contributed $500,000 and a bank offered her a 1 percent loan.” In this case, the townhouses were almost ready to move into and more affordable than starting a community from scratch; Sister Claire  “signed papers to purchase 30 townhouses, plus a playground, pool and a 3,000 foot clubhouse. Already she has had a number of volunteers come forward to help, many of them adults who are former foster children she helped in the past."Sister Claire says of her project, “It takes a village, and that’s what we’re building.” (Tampa Bay Times)

What have you been “dreaming and praying about” that you can take a step toward making happen?