Originally published on wpta.com: Nov. 12, 2021 at 7:24 PM EST

Story by Mary Eber

St. Joseph Hospital was born out of the former Rockhill House Hotel in the mid 19th century, becoming the first hospital in Fort Wayne.

Construction began on the hotel in 1838 by William Rockhill, one of the leading pioneer settlers of Fort Wayne. It was built as a luxury hotel and took almost 20 years to construct before the doors opened in 1854. But the hotel wasn’t successful and didn’t last long before closing in 1867.

Bishop Luers saw a need for a hospital to serve those in need in the city, so he got a group of people together to donate items for an auction that people could buy tickets for and purchased the old hotel for St. Joseph Hospital in 1868.

“Somebody would donate a pig, somebody donated a watch, all these people together, and they had a big auction and that’s how they raised the initial funds,” said the Executive Director of the St. Joe Foundation, Meg Distler.

With the building secured, Bishop Luers needed people to run St. Joseph Hospital. He contacted Catherine Kasper, who founded The Poor Handmaids of Jesus Christ, a religious congregation of women, in Germany in 1851. She chose eight sisters to come to America. They arrived in the summer of 1868, and after crossing the ocean and taking a train from New York, they landed in Fort Wayne.

One of Fort Wayne’s newest food trucks, Same City food truck, is delivering more than just free Latin American-inspired dishes to people experiencing homelessness. Its chefs are also serving up a big side of compassion along with entrees like Peruvian fried chicken with a pineapple molasses syrup.

Same City is the brainchild of Joshua Gale, executive director of Just Neighbors Interfaith Homeless Network, the only local shelter providing emergency housing for homeless families.

Just Neighbors introduced the food truck this summer as part of the agency’s efforts to support and develop relationships with people who don’t have a place to sleep at night.

“What leads to homelessness in the first place is a disconnection with the community,” says Gale.

“Unless we’re building community, you really can’t solve the issue.”

McMillen Health has released a new app called Healthy Tomorrow, which offers important information for pregnant women or new mothers with opioid use disorder (OUD). Development of the app was supported by the St. Joseph Community Health Foundation; it’s available for free through Apple or Google Play.

According to McMillen Health, when pregnant women use opioids, whether through a prescription or illicit use, the drug and dependency passes to the baby. The majority of these infants face sudden withdrawal at birth and experience neonatal abstinence syndrome (NAS), which is characterized by tremors, screaming, seizures, breathing problems, poor feeding, and low birthweight. More than 15% of all babies born in Indiana test positive for opioids and experience some symptoms of NAS.

For many of us, the Thanksgiving season is a time of abundance: We have more than enough turkey, mashed potatoes and pie. But while we see our own tables filled with stuffing and cranberry sauce, many of our neighbors have far less on Thanksgiving and every other day.

When Ruth-Anne Rigby heard about the Our HEALing Kitchen cooking class, she thought it would be a good opportunity to hone her meal preparation skills for herself and her family. What she has found in the first few weeks of the class is that it is so much more than that.

“Everyone is friendly here,” Rigby says. “You make new friends, and now they’re like a family away from family.”

 A ministry sponsored by the Poor Handmaids of Jesus Christ.

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