SHILLINGTON, Pa. \u2014 It’s not something you see every day. Sister Helena Hyo Sunkang climbed into construction equipment Thursday morning.<\/p>\n
\u201cJeff was working on that, but such a gentle way, moving the big, huge things,\u201d Sister Helena said. \u201cI said ‘wow, I’d like to try that.’\u201d<\/p>\n
And she got the chance. Helping move dirt on land where a dream years in the making is finally taking shape.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe prayed and we discussed,\u201d Sister Helena said. \u201cAnd the sisters said ‘there is no renewal center retreat house in five counties of the Allentown Diocese.’ Many people were asking to come here but we don’t have enough space.\u201d<\/p>\n
That’s why members of the Missionary Sisters of the Precious Blood decided to build a new retreat center on their campus near Shillington.<\/p>\n
Construction crews with Turnberry Construction Group recently started excavation work. The vision includes a 24-room retreat house, chapel, community room and kitchen.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt’ll face the pond, and that was a big part of planning for this project,\u201d said Kevin Kozo of Turnberry Construction Group. \u201cWe wanted an area by the kitchen and dining space with an outdoor patio where guests can enjoy the pond. There’s a beautiful fountain there and it really takes in the tranquility of the space and surrounding property.\u201d<\/p>\n
Crews say the goal is to finish the project in about a year.<\/p>\n
And even though Thursday focused on construction, Sister Krista Mary Jones says the vision goes beyond the building itself.<\/p>\n
\u201cEven things like what kind of flooring are we going to put,\u201d Jones said. \u201cIt’s going to be quiet. Making sure between the rooms there’s very little sound, so if someone wants to pray, meditate, think or simply be quiet, there’s space for that even within the structure of the building.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SHILLINGTON, Pa. \u2014 It’s not something you see every day. Sister Helena Hyo Sunkang climbed into construction equipment…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":199339,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[88347,28,128,130,129,1114,88344,88346,88345],"class_list":["post-199338","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-reading","tag-kevin-kozo","tag-pennsylvania","tag-reading-city","tag-reading-city-headlines","tag-reading-city-news","tag-shillington","tag-sister-helena-hyo-sunkang","tag-sister-krista-mary-jones","tag-turnberry-construction-group"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/199338","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=199338"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/199338\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/199339"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=199338"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=199338"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=199338"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}