TEARS rolled down Susan Gunderson’s face as she watched a team of volunteers give up their time to take part in a four-day working bee to paint her family home in Greenslopes last month.
Susan, a wife and mother of two young children, suffered a brain haemorrhage in the kitchen of her Greenslopes home on Brisbane’s southside in May 1996.
Since then she has been a quadriplegic and is unable to speak.
Friend, Nicole King, organised volunteers to paint the house to mark the 10th anniversary of Susan’s condition.
The first night Susan was admitted to hospital after the haemorrhage, doctors did not believe she would survive as she stopped breathing three times and had to be revived.
She had a near-death experience and later told others that God had told her she was still needed in this life.
For the past 10 years the family have lived in their Greenslopes house and it was in desperate need of some exterior paintwork.
Mrs King said the task was completed during a four-day working bee.
She said about 20 volunteers from the Latin Mass community at St Luke’s, Buranda and other volunteers gave up their time to sand and paint the house.
The Gundersons’ family friend, Jenny Davies, has also written to Cardinal Stanislaw Dziwisz of Krakow, Poland, praying for a miracle for Susan through the intercession of Pope John Paul II.
Cardinal Dziwisz, who was the late pontiff’s private secretary, has replied to a number of Mrs Davies’s letters.
