Fall greetings from all of us at Good Works who form the Community of HOPE!
We continue to have so many reasons to be grateful; indeed, one of them is for everyone who supports our vision to love and serve our vulnerable neighbors here in rural Ohio. We have also found good reasons to remain thankful for the hard and difficult things that we go through when we serve others, both as individuals and as a community.
Fall is a wonderful time to walk the Good Works trails and visit the Carter Cabin for a day or overnight! The Good Works property on Luhrig Road has many walking/hiking trails. Some are flat and others are on hills. We welcome visitors to walk the trails and also experience a time of solitude in the Carter Cabin!
DAY IN THE LIFE
DAY IN THE LIFEis an annual event we sponsor to share some things we have learned about how to better understand and love people in the situation of homelessness and poverty. Our staff and volunteers are preparing several different learning experiences for Saturday, December 7th starting at 9:00 am! Please join us as we learn how to better understand and love our neighbors. Our financial goal is to raise funds to support as many “days in the life” of the GW Timothy House as possible. Each day requires about $500.00. To donate, you can send a gift to Good Works, P.O. Box 4, Athens, Ohio or click here to arrive at the MAKE A DONATION section of our website. Please mark your gift DITL.
GOOD WORK’S GARDENS
Gardening is intended to be life-giving, as large plants and nourishing food grow from small seeds. Some of the life that comes through gardening at Good Works has little to do with what we plant in the ground, however. I was restarting our garden initiative after it had been mostly on hold for a few years. Because of the time lapse between gardening programs, many of our former gardening neighbors told me that they didn’t think they would be able to garden again this year when I reached out to them in the spring. However, others heard about the garden help we were offering and became excited. When I met with a few people in the spring, I heard from them, “I didn’t think I’d ever be able to have a garden again!” or “I just didn’t think I was going to have it in me to do a garden this year until you all came.” Helping people to garden again, when they are passionate about it but are no longer physically able to do it themselves, is life-giving. When one of our neighbors started to harvest many vegetables from the garden we had been helping him with, he sent some back as a donation for our Summer Lunch community meals. He also told me that he was taking some of the produce to share with people staying temporarily nearby who were experiencing homelessness. Sharing his abundance of food with his community is life-giving for this neighbor and the community. Even in the middle of a very dry summer, when plants have been struggling to survive, we have experienced life of all kinds growing from our gardens.
—Sophie Mather-Smith did her first Appalachian Immersion Internship in 2018 followed by several more before she joined the Good Works full-time staff in 2023.
IN THE NEWS
In July we welcomed Tim Ling who serves on the Timothy House team and is living at Sign of HOPE. Tim helps to oversee all of the good things happening in this new house! Sign of HOPE serves adults with a housing crisis who have a disability and/or who have a service or companion animal. We are so thankful for everyone who provided financial support and time to make this house happen! Our new initiativeLoads of HOPE was launched in September. We are grateful to open up this new opportunity to love and serve our neighbors who do not have access to a washer/dryer.
Saturday Service is in full swing. We are welcoming individuals and groups to consider making a commitment to a Saturday or weekend service visit to Good Works this fall or in the Spring of 2025.
We welcome notes and letters of encouragement you send us. We read them in our Friday staff time.
Good Works hosted another neighborhood/porch concert in September at Sign of HOPE. It was GREAT! Our co-worker Sydney Teagarden shared some wonderful music and local musical Steve Zarate shared many of his original songs! We were so glad that some of our neighbors from the west side participated.
Keith provided this 10 minute update on Good Works to one of our supporting Churches.
CURRENT NEEDS
We are seeking used/working vehicles and used/working appliances for the Transformation Station: Stoves (gas and electric) Washers/Dryers (gas and electric), refrigerators & freezers. If you have one of these items and can arrange to have them transported to us, let us know.
We are also seeking the donation of ground beef, chicken, venison (deer meat), canned foods (soups, fruit, vegetables), paper towels, toilet paper, and zip-lock storage bags (all sizes). We always welcome the donation for breakfast cereals (all kinds),13 and 39-gallon trash bags, and sanitizing wipes.
The Transformation Station provided vehicles #204 and #205. It is truly wonderful to participate in the lives of those volunteering their time to earn vehicles! We are able to continue the TS because people donate cars, trucks and vans to Good Works! Please pass the word about our need for vehicles!
Every time we provide a participant in the TS with a vehicle, we gather for a photo and then for a time of affirmation and gratitude. This was vehicle #204 (of 205 provided). We are thankful to every family and individual who has donated a vehicle!
We are seeking small groups of 5-10 people to sponsor ONE Friday Night Supper. We have a few open dates this year and many open dates in 2025. Contact us at 740.594.3339 or through email@good-work.net
BEST PRACTICES
For many years we have found that these 4 “best practices” shape our mission both individually and as a community.
Our ministry is always about building relationships, not programs
Trust is our focus. How can we build trust with each person we are learning to love, especially those wounded and hurt by others and life’s circumstances
We seek to meet a particular need. These include temporary shelter, food, transportation, home repair, companionship ... and especially the need to be needed
We seek to find a way for each person to move from being a recipient to a participant where they have purpose, ownership, nurture and accountability. All of these practices are built on a foundation where people feel safe, heard, and respected.
THE NIGHT SHIFT
When I started working overnight at the Good Works Timothy House (TH), I was a sophomore in college and received an invite to apply from a friend who served there. When I applied, I had a very stereotypical idea of what a shelter may look like, I had ideas of what the community looked like from the Good Works website, and I thought I had an idea of what loving your neighbor looks like from my Christian faith. However, there is only so much you can learn about community and service from reading and prayer. As Pope Francis says: “You pray for the hungry. Then you feed them. That’s how prayer works.” Before my time at Good Works, I didn’t truly understand the depth and the truth to this quote. Soon after starting at Good Works, I learned that the TH is no stereotypical shelter. I quickly learned the strength, faith, and love of the community that makes up Good Works, and I rapidly grew in my faith and understanding of service. One of my favorite lessons that I experienced was that you can give no matter how little you have. The residents at the TH obviously have very few possessions and yet time and time again they seem to be some of the most generous and giving people. Residents often loved to help each other whether it be offering a ride to work, sharing their snacks, or giving some sort of recommendation on how to get through a tough situation. Residents would even do each other’s chores when someone had to get to bed early and they even offered to help me with some of the things I had to do. Experiences like this make it hard for me to come up with an excuse to not help others myself. As I move on, I can only hope to find more opportunities to grow in my faith and love for others as I did with Good Works. My understanding of service, work, and loving my neighbor has been positively changed so that I can then bring these same values and lessons to wherever I may end up next. I continue to love and pray for the Good Works community and all the people that have been positively impacted by the organization.
– Ernie Rowoldt served on night staff at the Good Works Timothy House for 2+ years while attending Ohio University. He graduated with a degree in astrophysics last Spring.
Click here to watch a 3 minute video about the Good Works Timothy House made in the summer of 2024
IN CLOSING
IN CLOSING this month, I want to share something I wrote last year that I think is worth repeating.
Loneliness is something we all must learn how to navigate. Seasons of loneliness are a normal part of our life journey. Long term loneliness deforms us, impacts our identity, and pushes us towards depression. In Genesis 2:18 we read that “it is not good for human beings to be alone”. At Good Works, we care for and invest ourselves into many people whose lives have been shaped by long periods of loneliness. For some, they have lost the memories of the good times they experienced in community. Their hearts are broken, and sometimes hardened. For some, they have learned (often out of fear) to resist change. Others have found denial to be a daily part of their coping mechanism. The community of Good Works intentionally reaches out to and attempts to build community with people who are struggling with isolation, exclusion, and loneliness. So many times we feel ‘looked down upon’ because we struggle with loneliness as if there is something wrong with us. We all need community, and with it the life-giving nurture and accountability which enables us to see a place for ourselves; and a broader purpose in our lives which then fuels purpose and meaning. Yes, people need us to reach out to them and love them. But maybe more importantly, we all need to extend ourselves into the lives of others because something good happens in us that anchors our mental and emotional health, sustains us, and fuels our motivation to love. And that is one reason I do good works. Thank you for supporting us as we extend ourselves intentionally in love and service.
PS – I wrote this reflection in September. I am sharing it with you in the hope that I can offer you some increased perspective and encouragement as you learn to love strangers.
STRANGERS AND INVISIBILITY
Love the stranger. I was a stranger, and you invited me in. Do not forget to entertain strangers. (Deuteronomy 10:18-20, Matthew 25:31-46, Hebrews 13:1-3).
As a community, we put a lot of thought, planning and energy into welcoming strangers at Friday Night Life, Loads of HOPE, The Transformation Station (and other Good Works initiatives), but especially at The Good Works Timothy House. I think it’s safe to say that hospitality is our paradigm. Our intention is to see our relationships with strangers start with kindness and move through service towards friendship. WE ARE BRIDGE PEOPLE. We seek to practice good communication, respect, listening, while facilitating trust between people who may not naturally be drawn to one another. We also seek to be peace makers, always trying to find ways to connect people in healthy life-giving relationships.
These days, I am sensing both in our neighborhoods and beyond a growing apprehension and fear towards strangers. Because I see the Good Works community as peacemakers, bridge-builders and bridge people, our sincere desire is to make safe connections between people and people groups. And so, when I hear about the various levels of apprehension, I become concerned. While it is true that not all strangers are safe or should be trusted (and Good Works has a lot of practices and structures which aid our discernment), it is also true that God often brings us life-giving gifts of love, beauty, and perspective through strangers; and especially when strangers become friends.
Darlene and I welcomed strangers in the basement of our home from 1981 to 1984 and then Good Works opened what we now call The Timothy House. Then, from 2013 to 2019, Darlene and I again opened a space in our home to the growing number of adults and children whom the Timothy House had to turn away because lack of space. Because we had structure and understood our limitations, this too went very well. Today, Good Works sets up and facilitates structures and seeks to establish safe environments through all of our initiatives, so that there is a possibility for strangers to both receive help and also to enter friendships. And we do see this happening!
These days, I feel more aware that while we must wear kindness as our clothing in our interaction with everyone, we cannot help everyone. We have limits. Indeed, to sustain what we are doing to love the strangers in our community, we MUST have limits. And when someone asks us to do something for them beyond our existing structures or limits (and capacity), we “err to the side of consultations” with one another. This means we make time to talk with one another to discern if there is something more we need to consider beyond the limits we have set. At Good Works, we call this "the ethic of inefficiency". We know our limits and we are slow to respond to some people in areas beyond our limits, but we often do seek to see if there is an exception we can consider.
This kind of work – caring for people both in their crisis and in their poverty of relationships requires a community in order to be sustained; a group that has learned how to work together over time with integrity, trust, good communication, respect and love for/with one another. The hard work of love is especially difficult when someone has been violated or experienced a combination of situations which have left them physically and emotionally ill, alongside broken relationships, addictions and decisions that continue to keep them stuck. May the LORD give us wisdom, grace and mercy as we do our best to love God and love our neighbors, especially strangers. (Psalm 68:4-6)
