By Kirste Richards,  LIFE Recovery Intake Counselor, UGM Center for Women and Children

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One of the first things a woman hears when she comes to a program orientation at the UGM Center for Women and Children is that the goal of our recovery program is to “provide a safe and healing environment for life transformation.”

Do not forget to show hospitality to strangers, for by so doing some people have shown hospitality to angels without knowing it. - Hebrews 13:2

Patti and Kris are the women behind Encouragement Ministries – an endeavor that is equal parts detective work, prayer and paying it forward.

The ministry was birthed out of equal parts tragedy and love.

“I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.” – Ephesians 3:17-19

Getting “out of our comfort zone” is a chance to be challenged and grow, to do things differently in order to make progress. One of the best examples we’ve seen of that is Rooted.

A 10-week Christian experiential process, Rooted brings church members together in small groups to learn and grow in godliness together. Many different groups from local churches have partnered with UGM as part of participating in Rooted.

What in the world do the Union Gospel Mission and an extreme Spartan race have in common? 

Jonathan Bonetti.

Jonathan is a husband and father. He is the Ministry Operations Director for Redemption Spokane, a church on the corner of Division and 2nd Avenue – smack dab in the middle of Spokane’s homeless crisis. He loves UGM, and he’s training for an Ultra Spartan race in Kimberley, British Columbia on July 13. Jonathan wants to use his training and competition to raise awareness and funds for UGM.

"Change"  is one of UGM's distinctives. It defines our piece of the pie. We are here for people currently living in addiction or homelessness who are ready to change their lives, and we believe that life transformation is possible for everyone. But, make no mistake, it's not just the residents who are changing. Life transformation is happening across the ministry, in the lives of staff members as much as anyone else. Ask any of our employees how UGM has changed their lives, and we’re pretty sure they’ll respond with something along the lines of what our senior leadership and communications team share here.

We talk a lot about the impact of volunteers across our ministries. Here’s a group of partners we don’t often refer to as “volunteers,” but they still freely give their valuable time, energy and resources behind the scenes: the UGM Board of Directors. Talented, influential and caring people from right here in our community, they serve by providing godly oversight, vision and leadership for UGM.

...and not always just the people you think. 

“In the interviewing process for potential staff, I always communicate that if they choose to accept employment at the Union Gospel Mission, the person who will grow and change the most will most likely be them” – JoAnn Zajicek, Director, UGM Center for Women & Children.

Linda Cook, Community Engagement Coordinator for the UGM Center in Coeur d’Alene, has an ambitious goal: “enrich the life of everyone in the community who partners with us.” Linda is convinced that UGM doesn’t just change the residents. It changes everyone who takes the time to engage.

“It’s not like I’m doing anything special, because I love it so much.”

Ask Jenny Gasperino why she volunteers at the Union Gospel Mission, and you’ll always get a humble answer like this. She calls her work at the Crisis Shelter for Women & Children part of her “addiction to UGM.”

“I love to ‘love on’ broken women. I feel like I’m totally where I’m supposed to be.”

And while “addiction” might be too strong a word, it isn’t far off the truth. If she didn’t have other responsibilities, Jenny would be at the Crisis Shelter even more than three days a week. But she says she’s even grown in her roles as a wife and mother because of her time at the shelter.

She’s learned a lot about accountability, about boundaries. She’s also learned about God’s grace and how he’s created and blessed her in a unique way.

Words to Direct Our Paths

There's something about a new notebook, a blank calendar, a freshly tilled plot of soil that beckons us. It's a fresh start, an opportunity to create, to fill in the blanks and forget past mistakes. A new year is like that for many of us. We see it as an opportunity to plunge forward with new resolve. We asked staff and residents to share words or verses they had chosen to guide their paths in the year ahead, and several of them obliged. Below you will find their name and UGM association, followed by their answer. We'd love for you to add to this post by sharing your own words and verses in the comment section below.

I’ve never been big on making new year’s resolutions.

It’s partly because of a general fear of failure with which I’ve struggled most of my life – I don’t usually start things I’m not already confident I can finish.

Somehow, a “resolution” in my mind had come to mean, “Something I’m going to do every single day to work toward improving myself and/or my environment, because a little effort repeated 365 times ends up being a big accomplishment.”

The reasoning wasn’t bad. Breaking down large goals into little pieces is a good strategy. The problem was that I am unable to keep a commitment to do even one tiny little thing every day. The few times I’ve tried it, even with “realistic” goals in mind, I failed, whether in the second week of January or just a random day in August when something unexpected came up.

If I’m going to make a resolution for this year, I need a better idea of what a resolution is.