|
| |
MISSION STATEMENT:
The Counseling and Education
Center provides professional affordable counseling services to individuals and
families.
“Counseling with a Difference”
The Counseling and Education Center is committed to our
CORE VALUES
of:
Affordability:
by ensuring that counseling is available to all regardless of
income level.
Dedication:
by committing that our counseling services available to all
who are in need.
Meeting
Emotional Needs:
by providing affordable professional counseling
Community:
by maintaining an environment of respect and hospitality for
all.
Who We
Are -- Our
History
 |
CEC has served the
Grand Junction community since 1982 to troubled individuals and families
in need of counseling services. [For more details, see
STORY]
|
|
The Center for Enriched
Communication initially began in the home of Sister Faye
Huelsmann and Sister Pat Lewter, Sisters of Saint Joseph of
Concordia, Kansas. [For more details, see
The Sisters]
|
|
With the help of grants and donations, CEC purchased the Center's present home, at 2708 Patterson Road.
|
|
CEC continues to
provide affordable counseling services to low income and uninsured
individuals of Mesa County.
|
|
Clients seek treatment for depression, anxiety, post-traumatic
stress disorder, marriage counseling, family dysfunction and behavioral
problems.
|
What
Makes Us One of a Kind?
|
We provide affordable counseling services. We are able to see
families and individuals from all income levels.
|
|
We charge on a sliding scale and do not turn anyone in need away.
|
|
We do not have any requirements, limits or income
criteria on who can come for services.
|
|
Our emphasis is on situational, life crisis problems.
|
|
We are open Monday thru Fridays AND on Sundays,
including evenings.
|
|
Our location is convenient not only by car but by public
transportation. [See Where]
|
|
Our emphasis is not on the chronically ill.
|
The longer STORY...
 Sister Faye, Sister Pat, & Executive
Director Penny Frankhouser
It all started in the living room of a house on Hill Avenue. In 1982, Sister Faye Huelsmann and Sister Pat Lewter, who at the time were living in Montrose,
decided to start a counseling service in Grand Junction.
"A friend suggested that if we
moved to Grand Junction, we could keep busy," said Sister Faye.
Little did they know just how busy they were going to be. Business
was slow at first. "We stayed home and prayed for clients, she said
half-jokingly.
But shortly after opening the
doors of their in-home business, Exxon Corp. dropped its oil shale
extraction plans on May 2, 1982. Jobs were lost and bankruptcies and
foreclosures ensued. The financial woes resulted in many people in
need of affordable counseling.
Sisters Faye and Pat were there
to fill that need, and they've been filling it ever since. Now
called the Counseling and Education Center (Center for Enriched
Communication, Inc.), counselors have been working for more than 26 years
to provide emotional, psychological and spiritual intervention based on a
negotiable fee structure.
Services are provided to
families, groups, and individuals of all ages. Fifteen people work
at the Center to try to make sure anyone in the community who needs
counseling services gets it. A total of twelve counselors now work
at the Center, all of whom have Masters degrees and advanced training in
the field.
"We don't want to just make it
affordable," Sister Faye noted, "We want to make it quality and
professional." More than 280 people are served annually by
counselors. There's usually no waiting list.
Not bad for two women who saw an
opportunity to help decades ago and went after it. Both Sisters were
high-school teachers in the Midwest during the 1970s.
When young teenagers got pregnant
in the schools at which the two taught, the responsibility of going home
with the girls and breaking the news to their parents somehow fell on the
shoulders of Sisters Faye and Pat.
They were alarmed at the
explosive, angry reactions some parents had and decided many families had
some serious issues and needed help. "We left the classroom and got
degrees in counseling," said Sister Faye.
For the past 25 years, they've
tried to help anyone who needed counseling, including couples in
struggling marriages, traumatized children, and children with behavioral
problems, to name a few. They also work with families who have
adopted children, as well as children and adults who have been sexually
abused.
And of the thousands of people
who have been in their offices over the past 25 years, the Sisters say
every situation has been different. "There's not one treatment plan
to follow," noted Sister Faye. "It's so disrespectful to bring a
person in and tell them what's wrong with them," added Sister Pat.
So they listen.
And most importantly, they
believe that everyone can be helped. They have to in order to be
able to help. And after more than 26 years in the field, there's not
even a hint of cynicism in the Sisters. "I've learned that all
people are good, and they all want to be good," said Sister Pat.
Jeanette Benson, who serves on
the CEC Board, said she does so because she's inspired by the service
provided by the Center. "The environment here is better than some
other places," she said of the Center. "It's a more open, inviting
place to come."
Benson isn't a counselor, but she
said she thinks a way for her to contribute to an excellent cause is to
serve on the Center's Board. "I like to see people be able to
improve their lives emotionally."
Providing affordable counseling
isn't always easy financially for those providing the service, and CEC
relies heavily on community donations and grants. (Until 2008, one evening each
fall CEC held a dinner, performance, and silent auction at the Caberet
Dinner-Theatre, and the proceeds benefitted the Center to help allow
affordable counseling to continue. Read about other fund-raisers elsewhere
in our website...Art Shows, Garage Sales, etc.)
[Josh Nichols, Grand Junction Free Press Staff Writer,
8-10-04] [TOP of page]
The Sisters Faye and Pat
Sister Faye Huelsman
Downtown G.J. For MLK Day Gathering
Sister Pat Lewter
|
Sister Faye Huelsman, CSJ
Sister Faye co-founded The Center for Enriched Communications, Inc., in
Grand Junction, Colorado, in 1981. She still works at the counseling
center, where she is able to help people through psychological struggles
while answering the call she feels to work with young children, providing
them with a good foundation of mental and emotional health.
She joined Sisters of St. Joseph of Concordia in 1958 when she had just
begun college. "I sensed a deep peace and a commitment that I wanted to be
a part of," Faye said of CSJ.
She taught grade school, high school and became a director of religious
education. She then helped found the Manna House center for prayer. While
teaching high school in Colorado, talking with children about their
difficulties, she and Sister Pat felt drawn to counseling and believed
they could more effective in a setting where counseling was the sole focus
and parents of the children could be involved.
"One of the primary things about CSJ is that we are to find what the needs
of the times are and address that," Sister Faye said.
CSJ has allowed her to reach her personal goals in the context of a
spiritual commitment that is liberating.
"I think it's a freeing experience in the sense of being able to serve the
area we feel called to minister to," she says, "and we have a lot of
support and freedom to fulfill our commitment to that calling."
|
Pat Lewter, CSJ
Sister Pat's hometown is Las Cruces, New Mexico. She spent her early years
in community as a secondary teacher. One of her more humorous memories was
in Grand Island, Nebraska, when the pastor approached her and Sister Faye
about coaching a girls’ track team.
"He told us they had no money to pay for a coach and the state required
girls’ athletics," said Sister Pat. "We had no idea why he asked us but we
said, ‘Okay.’ He gave us an extra study hall as a benefit for doing it.
Neither one of us knew anything about track. The male coaches sent some of
the senior boys to teach us what to do and then we taught the girls. We
did not get first choice for practice times so we had to practice very
early in the morning! We were in good physical shape ourselves at the time
and did everything we asked the girls to do. They were amazed that we
could do it!" Sister Pat adds, "The track team didn’t win any ribbons but
the girls did learn some things and we all had fun!"
Sister Pat was working on a graduate degree in biology when the research
field she was basing her research on burned down. It was going to be at
least two years before she could complete her studies. She wasn’t in a
position to wait that long. Instead, she opted to earn a degree in
counseling. She said, "I really got interested in counseling because of
our work in the high schools. Many adolescents were in turmoil and often
came to Sister Faye and I for help. We would go with them to talk with
their parents. We saw some horrible things happen in those situations.
Later when we went to the Manna House of Prayer, we discovered people
trying to solve really serious problems."
"We started the Center For Enriched Communications in our living room.
There was still a stigma attached to going to counseling and we hoped it
would make it easier to go to a home and not an office. We moved into an
office because we needed more space. We moved into our current location
(in Grand Junction, CO) when someone generously offered to fund the
building and provide a loan for renovation. We provide services for well
over 400 families a year. We work with attachment disordered children,
sexually abusive adolescents, couples, families and parent/ child
relationships and offer parenting classes. Our clients are either
court-ordered or self-referral. We get many clients who come on the
recommendation of other clients."
Sister Pat is a master practitioner of neurolinguistic program training.
She explains, "It takes two years to be trained but it makes a difference
in how you approach mental health issues and in your philosophy of mental
health."
Sister Pat says, "There are two things that are most rewarding for me. One
has been seeing CEC grow from just the two of us to something that is
pretty vital to the Grand Junction community. We are the only agency that
provides counseling for people who cannot afford the regular fee.
"The second is knowing that people have come to know Catholic nuns in a
different way. We have changed the image of those who think that Sisters
carry rulers. That has been really rewarding for me. We present a spirit
among our staff that we want everyone treated equally with fairness,
dignity and respect. We have always been collegial with an open sharing of
information and all staff making the decisions. People enjoy working
here."
In her spare time, she enjoys mountain biking, hiking and camping. She is
energized by learning new things.
|
History
- Sisters of St. Joseph of Concordia
Graced Through the Years
The sisters of St. Joseph was formed by Fr. Jean Pierre Medaille, S.J.,
in1650 when he called six women to form a religious community in the
village of Lepuy, France. They lived communally in union with God, each
other and their neighbors, ministering to those who suffered at the
fringes of life: the homeless, the orphans, the sick and the dying.
The congregation quickly grew in number and purpose as they began
instructing people in Christian doctrine and establishing confraternities
of mercy, which incorporated married women into their communities.
When the French Revolution broke out, however, five of the Sisters were
executed by revolutionaries and the congregation disbanded. The dispersed
members reorganized after the revolution under Sister St. John Fontbonne
in Lyon, France. The congregation flourished and the Sisters worked in the
fields of education and health care in the French bureaucracy.
The New World
In 1836, six Sisters were sent from Lyon to St. Louis, Missouri, where
they established a school for the deaf in what was then frontier
territory. The Sisters quickly branched out around the United States and
Canada. It was from the Rochester, New York, branch that the Sisters came
to Kansas.
The Kansas Connection
In 1883, Mother Stanislaus Leary, former superior of the Sisters of St.
Joseph of Rochester, New York moved to the diocese of Bishop Louis Fink of
Leavenworth in Kansas. They set up a school in Newton, Kansas, and another
in Concordia, Kansas, which became the Motherhouse for the new Sisters of
St. Joseph community.
As towns sprang up throughout the frontier the Sisters of St. Joseph
followed, staffing schools, hospitals, orphanages and homes for the
elderly.
The Century of Change
During the first half of the 20th century, the congregation enjoyed its
greatest period of expansion as the Sisters of St. Joseph of Concordia
were called to many new opportunities. The establishment of the mission in
Teresina, Brazil was among those opportunities. This era of growth was
followed in the 1960s by a period of reassessment and renewal in the
Catholic Church ushered in by Vatican II. The challenge, of the Council,
to all religious congregations was to return to their original spiritual
heritage and to an intense living of the Gospel in the contemporary world.
For the Sisters of St. Joseph of Concordia, this brought an awareness of
their distinctive charism as an active apostolic religious community.
Faithfulness to this charism required them to be women steeped in the
spiritual life with an authentic sense of self, willing to serve the
"neighbor" wherever God might call.
The Present and Future
As the needs of the late 20th and beginning of the 21st century have changed, so have the ministries
of the Sisters of St. Joseph. Today, the Sisters of St. Joseph of
Concordia are drawn to missions of mercy, social justice and human rights,
working for change in the world wherever cries for love, help and mercy
may beckon.
|
Back Up
to the TOP
Back to Home Page
|
Counseling & Education Center..Counseling
With A Difference
