St. Paul's Chapel in Iowa City

I Have Three Brothers and
Five Sisters … Sort of
By: Katie

The last issue of the IDE TODAY talked about the Home Away From Home program at St. Paul’s Lutheran Chapel, in Iowa City. I want to tell you about how the program is going from the point of view of a kid, age 12, whose family “adopted” some college students

At first, my family “adopted” two college students. Then we "adopted" three more, so we ended up with a family of eleven. But that's ok. We have so much fun when they come over. Dad and Mom always cook something really nice. It's either steak or chicken. Last time, Dad smoked a turkey on the grill. We always have ice cream sundaes, something we usually don't get. When dinner is done, the college students clean-up, which means I get a night off! After dinner we do something fun: if it's raining or snowing, we play a board game, but when it's really nice, we go outside to play Frisbee, football, or a game of whiffleball.

In my opinion, it's just plain fun to have everyone over. I am the oldest in my family, but it sure is fun to have five older siblings for a couple of hours. My siblings and I have become good friends with the college students, and they are fun to be around. They are funny and nice. Everyone enjoys our time together.