Nutrition center opens at Mount Wesley

By Claudia Williams
Staff Writer
The new Health, Wellness and Nutrition Center at Mount Wesley Conference Center is now open for business.
Mount Wesley staff members celebrated late in the afternoon Feb. 24 after moving equipment from the old dining hall to the new 12,000-square-foot facility in Kerrville.
No date has been set for a consecration service and grand opening. Sidewalks, parking areas and landscaping have yet to be completed. Still, there’s no missing the facility that crowns the hillside along Methodist Encampment Road.
After the move was complete—and before feasting on pizza delivered by a local restaurant—workers bowed their heads in prayer. With damp eyes, they asked God to bless the food—and the beautiful new facility they were eating in.
Bianka Alvarado, kitchen manager, surveyed the food preparation area where new ovens now share space with Mount Wesley’s well-used grills.
“I’ve been here for 10 years,” Alvarado said. “Ever since I walked in, they’ve been talking about a new kitchen, and now it’s finally here. We’re excited and a little bit nervous.”
By 7 p.m. staff, plumbers, electricians and movers had finished installing appliances and stocking the shelves in the kitchen and pantry. The staff had started moving at 7:30 a.m., pushing carts and pulling wagons of plates and canned goods through the all-day drizzle that fell along with the temperature.
“We got a little bit moved,” said Patti Zaiontz, Mount Wesley administrator. “Then a little bit more, then a little bit more and a little bit more. They [the staff] kept on bringing things until the old kitchen was bare.”
Zaiontz called moving into the new facility significant for both the Southwest Texas Conference and the Mount Wesley staffers.
“They had been working in a pretty primitive kitchen, and now—finally—they have a truly commercial kitchen,” she said.
The first official meal prepared in the new kitchen was dinner Feb. 25 for a group of nurses from Methodist Healthcare System in San Antonio.
“It’s significant that Methodist Healthcare is the first group to break bread here,” Zaiontz said.
Half the profits from the Methodist hospital system in San Antonio go to Methodist Healthcare Ministries of South Texas. That’s the church-related partner that owns Methodist Healthcare System with Hospital Corporation of America.
A $600,000 grant from Methodist Healthcare Ministries during the 1998-2000 Stepping Out In Faith capital fund-raising campaign for Mount Wesley helped pay for the health and nutrition center.