Laughter is the Best Medicine

When Juniper Village at Lebanon resident Palma announced that her cousin Sister Josephine was visiting her for a few days, little did we know that we would have a comedienne in our midst!

Starting out on a more serious note, Sister Josephine told us about the founding of her order by a very wealthy philanthropist in 1672 in Italy named Lucy Filippini.  Lucy eventually gave up all of her wealth to start 40 schools for girls in 40 small villages in Italy, which actually helped to raise all of these towns out of abject poverty.  Today the Filippini Sisters serve 8 countries and continue to do the good works that St. Lucy started so long ago.  But Sister Josephine had another hidden talent!  Her father had been a professional comedian, and Sister Josephine must have inherited that talent as she has written two Joke Books, which raised over $30,000 for her order.  Sister Josephine had everyone laughing as she told jokes with the perfect timing of a seasoned stand-up comic.  We have many Catholic residents at Juniper Village, who are happy that Father Michael comes to do Mass and Communion each month, and several volunteers bring communion and do the Rosary once or twice each week.  We also have some faithful volunteers from St. Cecelia’s, Carole and Helen, who have been providing an in-depth Bible Study bi-weekly for many years.  We also like to visit the local Catholic churches for their fabulous Fish Dinners in the Spring and Fall, and especially for their Faschtnachts (a type of donut) in February.