Email: Joshua Newton

Hello,

Summer has arrived in Atlanta, and the weather has started to turn warm. This month I started playing in a summer league for ultimate Frisbee, volunteering at an intentional community in Atlanta, and had a chance to go caving. I joined the ultimate Frisbee league with a few of my housemates; it is a Saturday league and we will play two games each week for the rest of the summer. I also played in a league this spring and really enjoyed the experience.

This month we began volunteering at the Open Door Community every other week. The Open Door is an intentional community modeled on the tradition of a Catholic Worker house. The Catholic Worker movement was started in part by Dorothy Day and is based strongly on the ideas of hospitality and resistance. The hospitality part of their ministry includes serving breakfast on Monday and Tuesday, lunch on Wednesday and Thursday, providing free bathrooms and showers to the homeless, a weekly foot and medical clinic, and taking family members to visit with relatives in prison. The resistance part of their ministry is primarily focused on speaking out against policies on all levels of government that hurt people living in poverty. They do this through education, attending government meetings to speak against legislation, and protesting laws that target the poor and homeless. We have been helping them serve breakfast on Monday mornings, and it has been a great experience.
 
My work has been going well. We have started to feel the strain of summer because a number of our volunteers, many of which are students, have left town or gone on vacation. Since we are low on volunteers, sometimes we all have to do a little bit more to make sure that everything is ready to go. I would encourage you to find a nearby non-profit organization and see if they are in need of any volunteers. Many of our volunteers only come in for an hour or two a week, but each one of them is very helpful, especially when many of our regular volunteers are unable to make it in. Becoming involved in a non-profit organization in your community is a great way to get to know people who live near you and also a great way to invest in individuals and in your community.

I was able to see the shelter from a slightly different role a few weeks ago when our shelter manager, Sybil, took a few days off. Since she was not here, I had the responsibility of opening up the shelter and making sure that everything ran smoothly. The staff person who is overnight host was also on duty, but there is a gap between when the shelter opens and when her shift starts. I had opened the shelter for Sybil a few times when she had meetings, but this was the first time that I opened the shelter when she did not come in. While I know of all of the things that have to happen, I found that opening the shelter up and doing those things was a very valuable experience. Instead of just working with the kids in the shelter, I had the responsibility of making sure that everyone was in the shelter, that the dinner group got in and set up on time, and making sure that all of our clients got the things that they needed for the night.

Once again, I would like to thank all of you for all of the support that you have offered me throughout this year. I would ask that you keep me and the people that I am working with in your prayers in the coming months while I finish my year of service.

Sincerely,

Joshua Newton