Testimonials

Greg & Jodie, Thank you so much for the wonderful place, I also love the name of the apartment: “Michael”. You guys are the best and I was able to heal and get past the multiple myeloma treatments with flying colors. God is good just like we said. My thanks to both of you for your professionalism and clean apartments. Much love to you both,

August – September 2015 Thank you Greg and Jodie for providing such a comfortable, serene and healing environment for us during the transplant. This is a wonderful ministry through which God’s healing happens. Bless you,

September 2015

Dear Tara, Jay, Ester, Adrian, Jenna and Lewis & Serenity House Network,

When faced with spending an entire month away from home, we were nervous about finding a place that would be accessible for my husband’s electric wheelchair and would also be a home away from home.

Thank you for making this beautiful home available to people having medical challenges. It is so nice to come home after a rough day at Mayo and have a nice place to cook a healthy meal and relax. I believe that this house helped my daughter with using the tools she learned at the PRC.

Thanks again,

August 19-26, 2015

What a wonderful, restful week by the river! Thank you so much, Heidi & Kevin, for letting us stay in your home. It was just what we needed for recovery from Richard’s surgery. Your home is beautiful and the landscaping is a calm oasis. It was fun to watch the squirrels & hummingbirds.

We enjoyed getting to know you, Heidi. You provide such a wonderful ministry to those in need. An added bonus was being close by to Flapdoodles Ice Cream! A fun splurge.

Many, many thanks.

We pray God’s blessing in return to you.

My husband, Dave, was in need of his third kidney transplant. He was highly sensitized which made him very hard match. On Friday afternoon, August 21, he got “the” call that there was a kidney for him, and it appeared to be a perfect match. Once we got to Mayo, everything continued to progress and on August 22 he went into surgery.

Once I knew this was really happening, I started looking at the lodging brochure. I saw Serenity House Network and recalled our coordinator telling us about it previously. She also mentioned it was very popular and hard to get. I sent off an email and said a prayer.

The next morning while eating breakfast, I had a response from Greg; he had a cancellation and had a house open that very day! By noon I met him at the house and had all our stuff with me. We had a home!

The best part about it was that our kids came for a visit and could stay with us at the house! This location is perfect. We are minutes away from Mayo, shopping, grocery stores, movie theaters, etc. We cook when we feel like it, and go out when we need a break. We felt extremely blessed to call Julianna Apartment our home away from home!

Thank you to Greg and Jodie for this ministry, for that is what it is.

uly 15 – August 21, 2015

Thank you Serenity House Network not only for the truly lovely apartment that was a home away from home, but for treating us as though we were dear friends. From the welcome gifts to being available for any questions we had to accommodating our very early departure time. It was a blessing to meet such caring people.

Thank you again,

My husband, Juan, and myself don’t have enough words to express the gratitude we feel for the kindness and consideration of Greg, Joanna, and Jodie whom we didn’t have the opportunity to meet but have heard how dedicated she also is to Serenity House Network. We pray that all of you are blessed with long life and health to be able to continue blessing as many lives as you are able to.

As for us, my husband was told that his heart surgery could not be done now due to other congenital defects they found on his heart. The doctors prefer to monitor him and then when his heart starts failing we will have to return.

We would like to wish the very best to all the families that live in this house after us, and please know that our prayers day by day will be with you always wishing you and asking the Lord for your full recovery.

God bless you all,

Dear Tara’s Place & Serenity House Network,

To say that our stay here was enjoyable would be an understatement. Despite the crummy circumstances for us being here, we have thoroughly enjoyed our time here. Having cancer is never easy, and having to stay in Rochester away from family for an extended amount of time makes it that much harder. Add that to the fact we had to be away from our two young children (ages 3 and 8 months at the time of check-out) for weeks at a time, there were times it was unbearable to be away.

However, thanks to this home, we do not take all bad memories away from this experience. In fact, we are comforted in good memories from our time in this home, we have felt so incredibly comfortable here and it was the ideal place to heal from my bone marrow transplant. We are actually somewhat sad to leave it! We have had such a wonderful experience with Serenity House Network and especially the Maier Family. Their hospitality, generosity and overall kindness has been so very appreciated. It will never be forgotten.

We are forever grateful for all that SHN and Tara’s Place have done for us and our family. It is the perfect place to heal and we would highly recommend this home to those who are in need of a long-term place to stay in Rochester.

Thank you so much SHN and Maier Family! God bless you all and all those who work with you!

Sincerely,

I cried for days thinking our family would need to be apart for five weeks, but thanks to Serenity House Network and Jodie & Greg’s inspiration of starting this business, we have felt right at home here in Rochester and have been able to be together as a family throughout our stay. We are humbled by the loving care we received from Greg and Jodie and by GreatDeeds.org. They have inspired us to pay it forward in any way we can.

My husband, Terry, was diagnosed with multiple myeloma (bone marrow cancer) earlier this year, 2015, and needed a stem cell transplant which requires a four to eight week stay within 10 minutes of Mayo Clinic. Terry is an outside sales person for Truck Country in Cedar Rapids, Iowa selling semi-truck parts to dealerships in northeast Iowa. I am a middle school band director in Dysart, Iowa. Our son, Carter, is nine and attends school in town where we live, Jesup, Iowa. One of the members of our transplant team suggested Serenity House Network so that we could have the freedom of having a house for our family and for the many caregivers we needed to rotate so that we could accommodate our family.

Living in a one room setting didn’t feel like a good option for our situation and SHN provided privacy for the patient and caregivers, a completely furnished home with quality appliances, furniture, bedding, linens, and many amenities as well as access to the outdoors where we could find healing and serenity. I was impressed that they even provided nightlights throughout the house so that guests could make their way around at night, particularly when patients sometimes need to get to a restroom quickly and safely when it’s dark. We had privacy and yet help was just a call away if we needed anything.

Receiving a guest gift bag through GreatDeeds.org when we first arrived was such an unexpected surprise. There were so many helpful items like maps, gift cards to Caribou Coffee and Hy-Vee which helped us in a pinch when appointments took up most of the day, a five-day Mayo parking pass which also allowed us to save lots of money when we upgraded to more days when needed, and Waiter Express food delivery when Terry was too sick to leave the house.

Lurene, a volunteer, delivered a freshly baked loaf of bread to welcome us when we first arrived. She informed us that if we would have a birthday, anniversary, or some other celebration during our stay to let her know and they would provide a nice pie or cake for the occasion.

Jodie and Greg arranged a fun fire truck ride for our family which Carter absolutely loved. John Deedrick, President and Co-Founder of GreatDeeds, drove us through the Flapadoodles drive-through in the fire truck and bought us ice cream. Then Flapadoodles provided a punch card which John gave to us so we could come back another time for a free ice cream. This fun they provided broke up the intensity of what we were going through at Mayo and provided a fun diversion for Carter and our family that was much needed and appreciated. It also correlated with a great accomplishment for Terry, harvesting nine million stem cells to continue onto the transplant process. Jodie and Jodie’s daughter, Hope, took pictures throughout this fun fire truck event and Hope put together a stunning album of our family with a Bible verse on the cover serving as a blessing on our family. Such a great memory for us all beautifully documented.

Should we ever need to repeat a stem cell transplant in the future, because multiple myeloma is not curable but is treatable, we will stay at Serenity House Network. It was a beautiful home away from home and we felt loved the whole five weeks we stayed. We have lifelong friends in Greg and Jodie and will value their helping hearts for as long as we live.

July – August 2015

What a God-send Serenity House Network has been for me and my family. God provided a restful home away from home when I least expected it. He’s full of surprises; we just need to never take our eyes off of Him and He will uphold us! An unexpected cancer diagnosis and major surgery necessitated a prolonged stay at Mayo. Praise God for your ministry! It has made a huge difference in my time of need.

May God bless and keep you as you continue to provide a wonderful healing home for those in need. You are doing God’s work on Earth!

Sincerely,