I can’t believe this is my job—the privilege and responsibility of forming a community and nurturing home for people who don’t have a home.  My name is Andrea Horsch and I am currently serving as the Director of Care-giving, which means that I oversee the day to day operations of the Timothy House.  

For years I felt called to ministry with people the world might consider difficult to love and rejected.  Growing up in an economically depressed Appalachian Ohio county, the idea that my calling might take me to the other side of the world was very appealing.  In fact, I spent years looking forward to leaving.  I was studying missions at Kentucky Christian University when Keith shared in one of my classes.  He spoke about Southeast Ohio as a place that was oppressed but dear to God.  These were ideas that I had never heard before and I was glad to be invited into a summer internship in 2002 to explore what it might look like to try out my calling close to home. 

What I began to discover that summer is that I am often difficult to love and that everyone experiences rejection.  I began to experience the goodness of extending hospitality and care to people as part of a community. The staff helped me to learn to be kind and to listen more than I spoke.  This group, the staff, is made up primarily of transplants to this area and is here on purpose to be with people from here and invest in them.  Seeing them at work, earnestly and intentionally invested, I believed for the first time that it was good to be from this part of the state.  It was good that our residents reminded me at every turn of my family and that the Timothy House felt like home, that Friday Night Life looked like a family reunion.  It was good for me.

In the six years that I’ve been on the full time staff I have come to see the importance of safe places full of safe people.  In my personal life, my church life and inside Good Works I want to be a part of creating safe places; I want to grow in being a safe person and in helping other people create an atmosphere of safety.  I hope that we can be the kind of community that makes it easy for the people we welcome to believe that God is love.  The Lord provides endurance, wisdom, love and peace.  It is truly for freedom that Christ has set us free, and it is my continuing prayer that our community could lead the people that we love into this same experience of freedom. 

I enjoy this work—this act of worship—more today that I did when I first came.  I am grateful that my husband, Ben, who teaches 7th grade science, has been a part of Good Works in various ways.  He loves people with the love of Christ and opens his life to our neighbors in ways that inspire and encourage me.  When I am not working I find joy in friendships, painting, and growing and cooking food.