![]() Lamina's roommate in New York Mills this year was Kenny Abudu, who is also from Nigeria the two met at a church in the Twin Cities, and Lamina convinced Abudu to leave the technical college he was attending in Red Wing and enroll in Wadena's nursing program. "They were so much help to me - they provided furniture, a bed, sheets, everything for the apartment. "This is the nice guy who helped me move everything to my apartment," Lamina said, introducing Jim Kopponen. Highway 10 Community Outreach Ministry, which accepts donated household goods and distributes them to individuals and families who need help setting up apartments and homes. Lamina's apartment became a home when Uselman connected him with Jim and Sandy Kopponen from U.S. "The residents would wake me up and ask, 'Don't you have class this morning?'" he said. He laughed when he recalled that his neighbors would occasionally wake him in the morning when they found him sleeping there. The apartments are largely rented to senior citizens, and Lamina sometimes slept on the sofas in the hallway before he got a bed. Lamina, who grew up in the West African nation of Nigeria, soon found an unfurnished apartment in the Kaleva Apartments in New York Mills, a more manageable 18-minute commute from Wadena. ![]() But there were no vacancies, and he found himself driving 3 hours and 30 minutes - each way - for classes when they began that August. One of those students was Murphy Lamina, who enrolled in the nursing program and planned to move to Wadena from the Twin Cities in the fall of 2009, anticipating that it wouldn't be a problem to find housing in a smaller community. Many of the connections between community and students were prompted by Dave Uselman, an instructor in the M State-Wadena nursing program who heard of students driving up to six hours a day to attend classes or living in apartments with no furniture. Wadena area residents have opened their hearts and their homes to welcome students from Minnesota State Community and Technical College who are far from their own homes.
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