Summertime greetings with JOY and gratitude from all of us in the Good Works Community of HOPE! We are well. We are grateful. We are getting ready for a full summer serving children, seniors at their homes, as well as families and singles who are experiencing homelessness.
The ministry God has trusted us with is people. In most cases the people we love and serve have a specific vulnerability. Our commitment is to be present in their lives in ways that protect them, bring dignity, show respect, and bring them HOPE. This is happening. Would you like to participate?
Appalachian Immersion Internship
We have been welcoming interns into the Appalachian Immersion Internship since the early 2000s. We are accepting applications now for the fall of 2026. Know someone who would be a good fit for this residential internship? Good Works provides housing, and a stipend; and the internship is structured in 4 or 5-month commitments. Interns are mentored in the way we love and serve our neighbors.
Photo on the left: KP Pawlowski is sharing a presentation with the GW staff about his year-long Appalachian Immersion Internship. Photo on the right, KP poses for a photo while working on the benches with one of our TS volunteers. KP has decided to join the full-time staff this summer to help lead our Teen Agricultural internship.
Over the past year of living at Good Works as an Appalachian Immersion Intern, I often found myself lingering in the front room of the Good Works Hannah House. The walls are lined with the photos of Good Works interns and staff as a visual history of the summer internship dating back to the year 2000. Many names and faces only appear once. Several others span entire sections of the wall—years or even decades of dedication to Good Works. I stand in the most recent photo alongside other staff members who I met in the summer of 2025. What does it mean to be counted among those who have called Good Works their home? I think a lot about what it means to have a home. The Good Works community has done a lot of thinking about the meaning of "home”. I am currently of the mind that "home" has much overlap with what might otherwise be called a "community." When I came to Good Works, I felt like I needed a community. I spent a lot of time and money on a college degree, and yet I found little connection among my peers. I felt I needed to change that, so I joined Good Works. The words of Psalm 127:1 (ESV) carry a new weight now: "Unless the Lord builds the house, those who build it labor in vain.” We are instructed to create an environment where people are not just sheltered or served, but known and understood. I can say for certain that when I look at the rows of faces in the front room, I feel like I was a part of building the "house”, a home for ourselves, and others who find themselves without one.
–KP Pawlowski. (KP, (Keith) first joined us as a volunteer in the spring of 2025 cooking lunches. After finishing his degree from Ohio University in Engineering, he served as a summer intern and then joined the AI Internship over the past year).
The Timothy House
Good Works has provided care and community to adults and children who experience homelessness since 1981. In 1984, we purchased what is now called The Timothy House on the west side of Athens. We are a busy place. Every day. This house has 15 beds and serves families and single adults every day. Want to volunteer?
One important goal propelling many Good Works initiatives is providing contexts for individuals to form relationships with a healthy community. These contexts should offer opportunities for people to both give and receive. Kerry entered the Timothy House for the first time with a history of mental health issues and autism. These challenges had made it difficult for him to develop and maintain relationships. He arrived at the Timothy House with little trust for others, and no real relationships to speak of. We provided Kerry with structure, boundaries, and numerous relationships. He struggled to trust and struggled to communicate his feelings clearly. However, over time he accepted getting medical help, and slowly became more open to a spiritual approach to his struggles. Once he moved into his own apartment, he continued to involve himself into our Friday Night Life community. Several months after he moved out, he called back to the Timothy House seeking to offer help as a volunteer. He has maintained relationships with a few staff members and is opening up about his feelings. What Kerry is doing, is learning to trust, and taking step-by-step movements into safe and encouraging community.
Isn’t that what we all are in the process of doing with God and with one another?
- Aaron Duncan (Aaron joined the Good Works staff in 2018, serves on the leadership team, oversees our technical needs, and serves at The TH once a week.)
The Transformation Station (TS)
The Transformation Station has been a place where people can get, through sweat equity, things they need. The material side of releasing food, appliances, or a vehicle is incredibly encouraging to us. That people have donated these items, trusting us to help build up someone’s life with a provision they need, is really inspiring! These same people get to invest into other people’s lives with the work they are doing with us. All of this is great. However, there is more. As people spend time volunteering with us for something they need, they are getting to use skills they already have, which can be uplifting. Other times, they get to learn new skills, which can be empowering. Then comes the building of relationships. It is organic. They are working alongside of us, and we all begin to find commonalities. They share about their families, and we share about ours. They learn Good Works offers other things like Friday Night Life and Loads of HOPE. When they come to Friday Night Life there is another layer of community building that happens. They also learn they can continue volunteering in another capacity, simply as a community member. Personally, I have enjoyed welcoming several volunteers back to help with our mailings once a month. They not only help with, the mailings, but they interact with new volunteers in very tangible ways which are life-giving, sharing personal experiences and bridging relational gaps.
Terri Woodson (Terri joined the staff in 1998 soon after finishing her degree from Hocking College. Prior to that she was a resident in the GW Timothy House).
Transformation Station (TS) volunteers serve alongside the GW staff often learning new skills. In this photo on the left, Jeremy is teaching one of our TS volunteers who to repair our benches using different tools. In the photo on the right, we are gathering for lunch with our TS volunteers in an effort to build community with them.
IN THE NEWS…
Summer Discovery Club and Summer Lunch begin June 15th. Both take place on the Good Works property 4 days a week. We are still seeking/welcoming fresh food (meats and vegetables), and gift cards. Summer week-long Work Retreats start June 14th. We have 6 week-long groups from Ohio and Michigan.
We are still welcoming ‘one-time’ presenters this summer to share with Discovery Club (K-6th grade) for about 40 minutes about something you know a lot about and find joy sharing with children!
Loads of HOPE, our free laundromat continues to thrive. We continue to welcome adults and children two days each week. This initiative is really helping a lot of people in very practical ways!
We finished up another season of Saturday Service (10 weeks) with many volunteers and people from several local congregations participating! We feel grateful for all of the gardens we were able to plant and the different home repair projects we were able to complete all over Athens County. Mostly, we feel grateful to “make the widow’s heart sing”! Maybe you know of a group who would like to come this fall on a Saturday to serve with us starting September 12th.
We are so grateful for everyone who has or is thinking about donating a vehicle to Good Works for the Transformation Station. We provided a TS participant with vehicle #215 in June.
WE are still looking for a volunteer interested in helping organize our archives into a display.
Kids Discovery Club will again take place on the Good Works property. These photos were from 2025. On the left, our teens are teaching the kids some things they learned about agriculture. The photo on the right the staff is leading the kids on a hike over the bridge. The focus of Faith Time last summer was on the wonder of creation.
Finally, I want to share this: since we started Good Works, we have been vision driven (Acts 2:17) and focused on the gaps, things in rural SE Ohio which simply didn’t exist before we started them. We began by providing shelter to adults and children who experience homelessness (1981). Then we started the first public weekly community dinner in our area, Friday Night Life in 1993. We added short-term service groups (Work Retreats) in the mid-1990s as we began to serve widows and widowers at their homes. Last year, we welcomed around 30+ groups. We started the Transformation Station to help people obtain vehicles (and other things) by inviting them to become volunteers to receive them. Most recently, we started a free laundromat, Loads of HOPE, and we are a very busy place two times a week. In every one of these initiatives, our vision is to build relationships based on trust over many years. This is the “soil” through which we can best share our witness, the collective stories of our own transformed lives. These days, we are seeing the immeasurable impact of that trust in our on-going relationships in our small community, and it is good.
This photo of most of the GW staff was taken during our annual staff retreat in May. We visited the Tablertown People of Color Museum in Tablertown (near Stewart, Ohio). Pictured with us is David Butcher, the Curator and Executive Director of Tablertown who gave the tour. Absent is Keith who was not feeling well that day.
IN CLOSING
IN CLOSING this month, I am asking for your prayers, words of reassurance and support. The season I am in right now is particularly difficult for me. I am persevering. I need your prayers, support, and encouragement now.
If you would like to participate in the mission and ministry of Good Works through giving,
