The proposed home of The Fields Retreat and Learning Center was originally built in the 1860s in the Swedish Lutheran village of Vasa, Minnesota. The local pastor, Reverend Eric Norelius and his wife, Inga, adopted more orphans than the church basement could hold. The local community built a 5,000 sq. foot house and all the necessary outbuildings to run a 300 acre farm and opened the Vasa Lutheran Children's Home. Additional houses were added and at its peak, the Vasa Childrens' Home cared for 80 children and youth. In the late 1920s, the Home, now under the auspices of Lutheran Social Service, changed its mission and moved to a new building ten miles away, becoming a residential facility for mentally handicapped young adults. The farm sat empty and deteriorated over the next 40 years.
The story continues in 1969, when Reverend Laurie Bushbaum was a teenage girl and her parents bought the original farm. Over a period of four years they renovated the orphanage building into a home for their family. They created huge vegetable and flower gardens, raised horses, and nurtured back the old orchard. Laurie, along with her brothers and sisters, helped tear down rotting outbuildings nail by nail to salvage some of the beautiful weathered wood.
The Bushbaums held a reunion every summer for all the living orphans and their families. Laurie loved the house but it was the surrounding land that spoke to her soul, instilling in her a deep respect for the inspirational power and healing that sacred space offers. Although her family moved away when she was 16, Laurie's profound connection with this piece of land continued to inspire her into her adult years. Laurie became an ordained minister, married and had children of her own. She dreamed of the farm often and vividly.
When she learned from a childhood friend that the property was for sale again, she knew immediately that the home and land that had nurtured and fed children was again inspiring action. This time it was calling her.
Could this be a retreat and learning center that would again inspire hospitality and community for generations to come?