Hope Chaplaincy
Hospital Chaplains Offering Prayer
and Encouragement
We are a Christian non-profit
non-denominational ministry serving local hospitals and nursing homes in
Las Vegas since 1973.
WHO WE ARE
We are Christian volunteers lay and clergy from local churches who are called to minister to the sick, infirmed, elderly, their families, and hospital staff. Chaplains currently represent over 40 local churches in Las Vegas.
History of Hope Chaplaincy
Reverend
Russell Stukas
Russell Stukas was a building contractor. He built the first community of tract homes having built sixty houses. Being a builder, he moved his family to new locations wherever demand for house building lead him. His son shared that although the new church where they moved to had a small congregation, eventually the church increased in size once they left. Mr. Stukas was an active lay Christian.
At the age of fifty, Mr. Stukas retired from contracting to begin full-time ministry. He helped or was involved in establishing more than fifty churches. He told how God directed him into full-time ministry through a telephone call at 2:00 AM offering a job at a summer camp for $50 a month and a cabin to live in. Mr. Stukas became Rev. Stukas.
At the age of seventy, he retired again and moved to Las Vegas where he believed God wanted him to begin a Chaplain ministry in the local county hospital, Southern Nevada Memorial. He joined the Las Vegas Ministerial Association and with their assistance was allowed to minister as Chaplain at SNMH beginning in early 1973. He ministered by himself for approximately six months before obtaining approval to train lay chaplains in June of 1973.
Rev. Stukas' teammate was his wife Priscilla. She was with him every day in the office. She took pictures of the new babies before most hospitals began offering that service. Rev. Stukas was a very disciplined man and he encouraged and rebuked chaplains to be the same. At the time he spoiled the chaplains by doing all the support work. When he passed away in July of 1983, the Chaplaincy found out just how much behind the scenes work was needed to allow chaplains to minister to the sick and elderly.
Rev. Stukas was at the hospital ministering to the sick the day the Lord took him home. He went home around 12:30 P.M. for lunch. He lay down to take a nap. After some time, Priscilla went in to check on him and found that the Lord had called him home.
Remembered by June Oke, Chaplain
