Bonfire

Our Parish Nurse

In 2009, representatives from the Bonfire Churches (First Lutheran Church of Crystal, House of Hope, and St. James) have formed the Bonfire Health and Wellness Team.

The mission of the Bonfire Health and Wellness Team is to bring together faith and healing in order to promote the emotional, physical, and spiritual wellness in the Bonfire community.

The team has developed a Parish Nurse program and has installed a volunteer registered nurse, Debbie Haney, as our Parish Nurse who will be up and running by this fall. She will hold office hours at each church. Members may visit her at any of the Bonfire churches.

Volunteers are needed to do blood pressure checks and new blood pressure equipment will be provided. The Bonfire Health and Wellness Team also need another volunteer to represent First Lutheran at the meetings. If interested, contact Janet Howe at 763-420-9101 or the church at 763-537-4576.

Welcome Deborah “Debbie” Haney, Bonfire Community Parish Nurse

Debbie is a registered nurse and certified women’s health care nurse practitioner. She grew up in west central North Dakota and graduated from the University of North Dakota College of Nursing and began her career as a public health nurse. “I thought I would do that type of nursing forever,” Debbie said. “I truly loved it!”
Just a few years into public health, she was given the opportunity to go to the University of California Los Angeles Women’s Health Care Nurse Practitioner Program by the North Dakota Department of Health, Maternal and Child Health Division. “It was too good an opportunity to pass up!” She said.

The North Dakota Department of Health was building a state-funded family planning program. In the beginning, Debbie worked with the Public Health Nurses to help women, in the isolated and sparsely populated areas of the state, who had no health care insurance, in establishing and/or preventing pregnancy.

It wasn’t long before there were clinics in the larger communities as well. Debbie traveled hundreds of miles a week for a long time.

Debbie came to the Twin Cities in 1990 when her husband, Tom, transitioned from being a police detective with a specialty in arson investigation, to a fire origin and cause investigator with an insurance company.

Debbie has two grown sons (both graduated from Cooper High School) and three grandchildren, all living in the metro area. Debbie enjoys working on and learning about her genealogy; spending time with her children, grandchildren and large extended family; photography; gardening; and occasionally reading a mystery novel.

By this fall, Debbie will have regular office hours at First Lutheran Church of Crystal, House of Hope Lutheran Church, and St. James Lutheran Church in Crystal. Plan to stop by and visit her once those hours are known.