Heaven for Haven Reflections

Today's guest post is by Sarah Zoe Pike, a junior at Westminster College majoring in Communication and English. Sarah organized and lead a great group of students into the community to lighten the burdens of the women at Rescue Haven, a local Women's Shelter in Salt Lake City, Utah. Thanks Sarah and Rikki. And thank you to all of the students who made this event happen!


During the month of January I had the opportunity to help lead and organize an event for a group of women at Rescue Haven - serving them dinner and dessert, and making gift bags for them. We called it "Heaven for Haven."

The Center For Civic Engagement hosted a morning where we put together poetry books and handmade valentine's, and then we compiled the gift bags - 14, one for each woman - full of Valentine's Day cards, poetry books, a mix CD full of some mellow encouraging songs, fuzzy pink socks, shampoo, lotion, and a few other small treasures.

The day came, and after loading everything up in the cars, a group of ten Westminster students were on our way. A sweet younger woman invited us in, and we headed straight to the kitchen.

All of the women sat around the large table and we came around to take their orders - a bread bowl with two choices of soup, salad, and lemonade. Afterwards, it was game time - Apples to Apples, a simple, fun, funny comparison game. There were over 20 of us playing, so we teamed up in pairs. All of the women had a blast, and were smiling and laughing the whole time.

After Apples to Apples we served special Valentine's Day cupcakes and brownies and handed out the gift bags. The women were just grateful to have visitors, so the extra gifts were greatly appreciated. They quickly began reading the quotes out loud from the Valentine's Day cards we made, thumbing though the poetry books, and sniffing the scented hand lotions. Hopefully, there was some item in each bag that served a special smile for each woman. We ended the night with hugs and special thanks from everyone - students and women.

It was such a great experience to gather with a group of students from all over campus and enjoy a night with others in my community. I believe a few athletic teams on campus have even decided to team up for the Center for Civic Engagement in the future to go back Rescue Haven.

Initially I was a little nervous to how the evening would play out – Would it be uncomfortable? Would the women have fun? What would we talk about? To our surprise, all of the unknowns were wiped away the minute we began serving them dinner. To see such gratitude for doing so little was truly a gift.

One of the students that joined us that night was my roommate, Ulrikke (Rikke) Nicolaisen. Rikke is a freshman at Westminster, coming all the way from Oslo, Norway to be on our first year (and now nationally ranked) ski team. Below are some of her insights from the night.

“What a great night! As a student from Norway I am not used to be involved in volunteer work. I am impressed with the American society and how good they are at devoting time and energy to help other people in greater need than themselves. This is definitely a field where Norwegians have something to learn from the Americans, and something I want to do again. It was so nice to spend time with these women who all have gone through different problems in their past. We served them dinner and played games with them. The thankfulness, laughter and smiles they showed was very touching and it made me realize how little effort it takes to help and make other people happy. This is something that I will carry with me not only in these types of situations but as a reminder in my daily life and to the people around me."

~edited LR