Crossroad Ministries brings hope to residents of Xenia nursing home By Avon/ea Brown and hand out devotionals, the previous ••• week's crafts or other materials before heading inside. The group meets Crossroad group in front of Xenia Health and Rehab The white halls of Xenia Health and Rehab are silent. Several nurses sit at the information desk and the echos of a TV channel trail from an open door at the end of the hall. Outside, a white van parks, and a group of 13 Cedarville University students unloads into the parking lot. They pray and divide into teams of three before quickly filing into the lobby, then head down the three hallways of the facility and begin visiting with the residents. "Hello, Tomi I came back to see you!" "I'm glad I get to see you today, Marilyn!" "Hi, Christiani Got any jokes for us today?" Their clear voices break through the gloomy atmosphere, and the halls are filled with conversation, singing and laughter. The recently renamed Crossroad Ministries is one of two ministries at Cedarville focused on reaching out to the elderly and sharing the gospel. Abby Albrecht, Julia Malander and Grace Cowell lead the three branches of the ministry which are prayer, crafts and visits. Every Monday at 5 p.m. the group meets at Chuck's for dinner before leaving promptly at 6 for Xenia. They meet briefly in the parking lot to pray two more times during the week on campus, once on Wednesdays at 4 p.m. for prayer and another time on Thursdays from 7 to 8 p.m. for crafts. Their goal is to pray through the residents' prayer requests and create decorations for the rooms. Often the only decorations in a resident's room are from past projects of the craft team. "Our goal is to brighten up the room a little bit," Albrecht said "One of the first things I noticed was how bare the white walls are. like a hospitaltype feeling. And so we try to create something nice that we can give them when we go In, just to show that we're thinking of them, we're praying for them" Albrecht and Malander joined at the end of their freshman year when Albrecht heard about the ministry from a friend while looking tor opportunities to get involved in local outreach. They were immediately put into leadership posItIons the next semester and began the efforts to resurrect the ministry on campus. "When we both Joined the ministry. it was kind of dying out," Malander said. "It was after COVI0 and they were not able to go inside during COVID just for health reasons And so there were really only a few people that were still part of the ministry, and most of them were graduating seniors." In the fall of 2022, the doors to the nursing home reopened and the students could begin visiting again and creating relationships with the residents. Cowell joined that fall semester after hearing from Albrecht about the ministry. The three students quickly began recruiting friends, classmates and curious passersby at the Involvement Fair to visit the nursing home and spend time with the quiet residents of Xenia Health and Rehab. Xenia Health and Rehab houses different types of residents, those who need long-term care and those who are recovering from injuries and cannot live alone. "I remember getting in the van to leave the first day I visited and just crying," Julia said. "It was just such a desolate place." After their first visit to the nursing home, Malander and Albrecht decided to take on the ministry and expand it. Crafts and prayer started last year as an effort to provide more care for the residents and give the students more time to meet with each other. The ministry seeks to have consistent members so that the students and residents can form genuine relationships and foster them every week. This ministry Is not just an opportunity for evangelism, it is about giving love and care to those that need it. Crossroad is centered around James 1 :27 which reads; "Pure and undefiled religion before God the Father is this: to care for orphans and widows in their misfortune and to keep oneself unstained by the world." "Going in, I had never been in a nursing home before," Albrecht said. "And I'm like, 'What am I doing?' And it Praying with a resident Fall 2023
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