Sarah Ann Jelgerhuis, at 35 yrs. old, a resident of Wheaton, Illinois, died in a car accident on Wednesday, October 23.  She was an incredible person and we will miss her immensely.  She was born on February 5, 1989 in the Minneapolis, MN area.

Please join us in celebrating the life of Sarah Jelgerhuis on Saturday, November 2, 2024 at Glen Ellyn Covenant Church, 277 Hawthorne Blvd, Glen Ellyn, IL 60137

Visitation 10:00 am

Memorial Service 11:00 am

Lunch 12:00 - 2:00 pm

A livestream of the 11:00 am service will be available on Glen Ellyn Covenant Church's YouTube channel .

A second visitation and memorial service will be held at Calvary Christian Reformed Church, 5300 France Ave S Edina, MN 55410 the morning of Saturday, November 16. Visitation will be at 9:30am, Memorial Service at 11:00am, Lunch immediately following.

If you wish to make a contribution in Sarah's memory, we prefer that you not send flowers but instead consider a donation to one of the following charities:

• Serve for Hope Uganda via Life Church https://www.getalifechurch.com/giving/ Life Church will collect the gifts and distribute to https://www.serveforhope.org/ . Sarah was passionate about Serve for Hope Uganda, sponsoring several children's education personally.

• Superior Hiking Trail (SHT) - https://superiorhiking.org/donate/ Sarah loved the outdoors, the natural beauty of Lake Superior and northern Minnesota. She backpacked 55 miles of the SHT in October, 2023.

• Avail Academy - https://availacademy.org/donate Sarah's parents, Elmer & Shar, are deeply invested in Avail Academy. Sarah received a great education there, had wonderful teachers and made great friends.

Sarah grew up in Bloomington, MN with her sisters, Rachel & Laura, and her parents, Elmer & Shar Jelgerhuis.  She attended Calvin Christian School (now Avail Academy) in her K to 8th grade years.  Her teachers were awesome and she got a great academic and great Christian education there.  Thank you, CCS teachers and staff, for all you did for Sarah!  She attended Holy Angels High School in Richfield and then Calvin University in Grand Rapids, MI where she received a degree in biology.

She did very well academically except for the fourth grade.  Sarah loves animals and in 4th grade she was seated in the back near the hedgehog's cage.  Sarah spent much more time watching the hedgehog than paying attention to her teachers.  Academically, her 4th grade year was not good.  However, she had an awesome 5th grade teacher (you know who you are) who supported her, lifted her up, and got her back on track.

Sarah always had a heart for those in need and worked part time in nursing homes during college.  After Calvin University she went to nursing school and then worked for several years on Loyola's heart-lung transplant floor.  The work was intense but Sarah thrived there.  She had always talked about serving as a hospice nurse and later accepted a position with a hospice provider and served in that role until October 23.  We have heard from her company's CEO, Sarah's direct manager, HR director, and through many Facebook posts from families she helped – that Sarah was an awesome hospice nurse.  And it completely fits her personality.

Sarah was very loving, very caring, and always ready to help.  She was feisty at the right times, and on occasion, she was unnecessarily ornery (but aren't we all).  I've been telling everyone who will listen that we need to find a way (eventually) to get back to living life to the fullest.  Because if we don't, Sarah is going to ask God to send a host of angels down to kick our butts!!

Sarah's faith in Jesus Christ was solid.  Very solid.  Life Church, her small, intimate, eclectic church in Wheaton, was very precious to her.  She was a big part of Life Church and Life Church and its members were huge in her life.

Sarah loved to spend time with us, her family, she loved to spend time with her friends, loved to make new friends, and generally loved people.

She was adventurous and had traveled all over the upper Midwest, spent time in Boston on two college service trips, spent a week with Elmer on a service trip to a small church in California, taken a solo trip to the Pacific NW hiking and exploring, hiked the Grand Tetons, spent a week hiking the Lake Superior Hiking Trail, spent a week hiking the Appalachian Trail, visited the UK and Ireland, spent 10 days with all of us in Iceland, and was always ready for an adventure.

We never had a chance to ask her but we firmly believe that given all those travels, she would still say her favorite place on God's earth is the North Shore of Lake Superior.  As a family we have been going to the North Shore almost every fall to enjoy the fall colors, Lake Superior, the waves, the hikes, and the waterfalls - since before Sarah was born.  And Sarah was with us on so many of those trips.  As an adult, Sarah made every effort to join us whenever possible.  The last several years she has packed up after work on Friday, driven until about 11:00 pm to some crazy, unknown (always different) campground in WI, cooked dinner on her backpack camp stove, set up her hammock between a few trees, slept for a few hours, and arrived at our rented condo on the North Shore by noon the next day.  She wanted to spend as much time with us on the North Shore as possible!

Sarah had become an avid rock climber.  She visited her rock-climbing gym at least once a week.  She loved it.  She was not into glory or fame but had recently met the requirements and been accepted as a member of the Chicago Mountaineering Club and she thought that was pretty cool!  She went on rock climbing weekends with them and she went to Winona to do ice cliff climbing a few times.

We must make one more tribute to our incredible daughter Sarah before we end this.  Sarah had proactively (as a young, vibrant, got lots of life to live person) signed up with Gift of Hope as a donor.  Gift of Hope is an organ, tissue, etc. donor organization.  Gift of Hope called us and we were able to approve them to take skin tissue, bone marrow, ligaments, cornea, etc. from Sarah's body to help possibly 70+ people.  Sarah would LOVE that.

Sarah is survived by her parents Elmer & Sharlene (Shar) Jelgerhuis; her sisters Laura Jelgerhuis and Rachel & Ben Dekker; her niece & nephew Thea and Henry Dekker, and her grandmother, Nelma Byker.  She is also survived by many loving uncles and aunts, cousins, and a host (a host) of friends.  Sarah had many very deep and long friendships and she kept adding to her list of friends.