THERE’S SOMETHING TO BE SAID about the importance of family reunions. They allow us to reconnect, to celebrate, to reminisce, to build new memories, to support, encourage and appreciate one another and our shared histories.
THE BODE FAMILY
My first reunion of the summer was a small gathering with a maternal aunt, uncle, cousins and my youngest brother and his wife in south Minneapolis. Aunt Rae, my godmother, was in town from Missouri. Over a table laden with breakfast foods, we talked and laughed and then afterwards moved to the screened in porch for more catching up and a discussion about the current state of affairs in this country. Mostly, though, we talked family. Since my mom’s death in 2022, I’ve felt even more the need to stay connected to her siblings and their families.
THE KLETSCHER FAMILY
The next reunion happened on the last Sunday of July. The extended Kletscher family met in Echo, a small southwestern Minnesota town some seven miles north of my hometown. There, in a community center, we filled tables with homemade foods for a noon potluck. Afterwards, I circulated in an attempt to talk to nearly everyone in attendance. This reunion has been going on annually for probably seventy years or more. I don’t always make it. But I try to because I’d rather see my cousins and my remaining aunts and uncle at a happy event rather than at a funeral.
THE HELBLING FAMILY
And then there is the Helbling reunion, held last weekend at a nephew’s rural Faribault acreage. This gathering brings my husband Randy’s family together from all across Minnesota and the country. Our son flew in from Boston. Our second daughter and her family arrived from Madison, Wisconsin. Others came from Michigan, Missouri and North Dakota. This event happens annually. And each year family members travel from all over to see each other, which says a lot about just how important family connections are to all of us.
This year organizers changed things up a bit by replacing BINGO with a raffle of homemade/home-grown foods and goods. There were cookies, banana bread, multiple jams, wine, honey, engraved stones, crocheted animals, garden fresh potatoes, salsa and more, including canned rabbit meat. I brought an anthology that included five pieces of my writing. Randy brought a bottle of Cry Baby Craig’s hot sauce, an allowed raffle item given it’s made in Faribault.
Everyone went home with something. But perhaps the best part of the raffle was the money raised for the Community Action Center in Faribault via the sale of $5 raffle tickets. With $300 in raffle ticket sales and a company match by an employer, the CAC will be gifted with $600 from the Helbling family. This family cares.
I love my husband’s family. They are a genuinely loving, kind, caring, compassionate, generous and supportive group. During the reunion, we shared family updates while the kids bounced in a cow-shaped bouncy house. During a corn hole tournament, Tristan and his teammate once again walked away with the “trophy,” a mini corn hole board. My six-year-old grandson showed me how to pound nails into a round of wood in a game of hammerschlagen. My granddaughter and I watched baby ducks swim in a pond next to a menagerie of poultry, goats and two black sheep. Kids shot rockets high into the air. Adults gathered in lawnchair clusters to chat. Slowly, as the sun set, family members began to leave. I left feeling so loved.
The evening prior, the siblings and their spouses met at the Craft Beverage Curve in Faribault for food, drinks and conversation. The new addition to the reunion proved popular. Family raved about the setting. I felt a deep sense of pride in my community. But mostly, I felt the love of the Helbling family which I have been part of for 43 years. Tom and Betty Helbling would be proud of the family they started. And they would be happy that, on the second Saturday in August each year, their family reconnects at a reunion.
© Copyright 2025 Audrey Kletscher Helbling
Minnesota Prairie Roots 
Clearly I needed to write about homelessness & housing insecurity in Faribault…read on August 6, 2025
Tags: church, commentary, Community Action Center, donations, emergency housing, faith, Faribault, homelessness, housing insecurity, Minnesota, mission, Ridgeview Heights, Trinity Lutheran Church, Vacation Bible School, workforce housing, writing
ON MY WAY TO SUNDAY MORNING church services, I missed an opportunity to live my faith. Reflecting on that moment, I’m still uncertain what I could have done. But the guilt I feel about doing nothing at the time remains.
Let me set the scene. While driving to church, Randy and I dropped off some mail downtown. Up the hill from the post office, I noticed a parked car crammed with stuff. Someone clearly lived out of the vehicle, one I’ve previously seen. Then my eyes shifted to the adjacent street corner and an individual, cocooned in a bright gold blanket, sleeping atop a bench. And then we turned the corner.
“I should take a picture,” I told Randy, my mind already creating a story that would enlighten others about homelessness in Faribault. But then I quickly realized that taking a photo wouldn’t be particularly kind. And so we continued on to church.
Still, I couldn’t shake the image of that person stretched atop a bench along Central Avenue. I wondered about his story, why and how he found himself without a home. And I considered how vulnerable and exposed I would feel sleeping like that in a public place. Those thoughts followed me into church.
“HOUSING FOR THE HOMELESS”
When I stepped inside the sanctuary, I immediately noticed a “Housing for the Homeless” poster near the organ. There are coincidences and then there are what I term “God moments.” And this, in my mind, was clearly divine. I’ve seen enough of these occurrences in my life to distinguish the two. God was assuredly nudging me to write on the topic of homelessness and housing insecurity in my community.
That sign in church was a promotional for the chosen mission of this year’s Vacation Bible School, which started that very evening at Trinity. Participants are donating their monetary gifts to Ridgeview Heights, an accessible, sustainable housing community to be built in downtown Faribault just blocks from the slumbering man on the bench. The VBS fundraising goal is $500.
That $500 may seem inconsequential considering the $2.5 million project cost. But every dollar helps in constructing the two buildings aimed at housing families with children, including those experiencing homelessness. Two of the eight units will serve as free emergency shelters and the other six will be market rate workforce units.
A COMMUNITY ACTS
The Community Action Center, which works collaboratively to alleviate hunger, homelessness and poverty among individuals and families in the community, is the lead on Ridgeview Heights. With an in-kind land donation from the city of Faribault, two grants, gifts, community donations and financing, the CAC is able to break ground at 4 p.m. today, August 6, for the much-needed two and three-bedroom units.
So first I saw the sleeping man, then the poster. And then came the sermon…with a directive that congregations ought to think, plan and act in ways that bless people. The guest pastor encouraged us not to think less of ourselves, but to think of ourselves less (a loose quote from C.S. Lewis). In other words, turn the focus outward on the community rather than inward to the church’s needs. The VBS kids will be doing exactly that this week with their “Housing for the Homeless” mission focus.
A FAMILY THAT CARES
Now you may think my story ends here. But it doesn’t. On July 28, I received a mass email about an upcoming Helbling family reunion. Organizers are changing things up this year by raffling items made by family members. One of several ways to qualify for a raffle entry is via a $5 charitable donation. All donations will go to the Community Action Center in Faribault with a dollar-for-dollar match from my eldest niece’s employer.
Truly, I was meant to write this story. I may have bypassed the man sleeping on the bench. But I got the message, loud and clear, that I needed to write about homelessness and housing insecurity in Faribault. I’ve seen the tents pitched along the river, beside train tracks, behind evergreen trees, next to a park. I’ve seen the homeless in the library, sleeping in the Central Park bandshell, biking and walking about town, including past my house. I am aware of the long waiting list for emergency shelter. Even if I failed to “do” something, I can raise awareness through my writing. And by doing that, perhaps I am helping in some small way to bless my community, including the man sleeping on a bench in the heart of downtown Faribault on a Sunday morning.
© Copyright 2025 Audrey Kletscher Helbling