Arlington Heights leaders gather to celebrate faith

Community, business and political leaders gathered Thursday morning in Arlington Heights for the 29th annual Mayor's Community Prayer Breakfast.

The event - an offshoot of the national event started in 1952 - is a morning for leaders to come together, discuss their faith and pray for a peaceful and prosperous year ahead, said Village President Tom Hayes.

"I'm so proud of Arlington Heights for hosting a community prayer breakfast that demonstrates that we are community of varied, but strong faith," Hayes said.

The Rev. Corey Brost, outgoing president of Saint Viator High School, delivered the invocation, and other prayers were read by Ken Nielsen, former Arlington Heights Elementary District 25 board member, and Darin Anderson, pastor of outreach from Orchard Evangelical Free Church.

Lifelong Arlington Heights resident Bridget Meskauskas read from scripture and spoke about how the community prayer breakfast changed her life.

Meskauskas said she attended her first prayer breakfast in her early 20s, when she was figuring out her career and life's direction, and heard from Mike Hatch, leader of Northwest Cook Young Life, a faith-based organization for young people.

"My attendance that day gave my life purpose and my soul peace," she said. Now, she is finishing graduate school to become a school counselor.

Wheeling Township Supervisor Michael Schroeder delivered the message of faith and discussed how he has learned to focus on God during times of crisis in his life.

Schroeder previously served as an Arlington Heights village trustee, village president and Wheeling Township Republican committeeman while also running a dental practice in town and exploring real estate development. He said he's realized that striving for professional and political achievement is not more important than his family and faith.

That's why he said he resigned the committeeman position in 2002, just three months after being elected to the post.

"Whatever I was chasing was never going to be enough," Schroeder said. "I had been climbing the ladder of success to find my ladder was against the wrong wall."

His life was changed again by his mother's illness and death, as well as his own health scare last year.

"None of us knows how many chapters we have left," he said. "Life is short, so focus on having an eternal perspective and personal relationship with Jesus Christ."