A church nursing home is under renovation in Liaoning Province to improve its facility.
Surrounded by mountains, Boai Elderly Center, run by the local Wenhua Road Church of Pulandian District, Dalian City covers an area of 13,210 square meters (3.26 acres), with a building area of 3,200 square meters (0.79 acres) and 200 beds. The Center is equipped with independent canteens, heating boiler rooms and other facilities. The initial total investment was more than RMB five million.
In recent years, the Center once served as a base for spiritual cultivation and training of Christian pastors and workers in Dalian, with the tenet of "being a real person, telling the truth and doing truehearted business."
In mid-October, I learned that in order to further improve the environment of the nursing home, Wenhua Road Church of Pulandian District further invested about two million yuan to carry out large-scale maintenance on the basic facilities such as homes, canteens, and courtyard areas, and to build a corridor to connect the dormitory of the elderly with the canteen, so that they can directly enter the canteen for dining.
Every week, Elder Zhou Fenglou goes to the Center to check on the progress. Sometimes, he arrives at the site at six o'clock in the morning and does some things himself. He told that the best quality raw materials are being used in this repair and decoration, such as waterproof layers, insulation layers and coating.
When I went again to Boai Elderly Center in the autumn, I found that the early stage of the internal and external maintenance had been completed, and the brand-new external buildings were in front of me. By next spring, the home will continue to invest about 1 million yuan to do interior decoration.
As a member unit of the Dalian Elderly Care Welfare Association, Boai is a nursing home founded on the biblical teachings of "loving your neighbor as yourself" and that "you shall rise up before the hoary head and honor the face of the old man" (Leviticus 19: 32).
In addition to the seniors in Dalian, the elderly in other provinces and cities, including those who are non-Christians, can also reside in the center for nursing services with low costs.
(The writer is a special contributor to the Gospel Times.)
- Translated by Oliver Zuo
