Kate Tkacik was a member of the 2008-2009 MercyWorks Community and worked on the Boys Campus as a School Resources & Tutoring Coordinator. Below is her reflection on her MercyWorks year.
My first visit to Mercy Home was a whirlwind overnight visit which began with an eight- hour drive and ended the following morning with an interview and six inches of snow on top of my car. Regardless of the interview anxiety and ice on my windshield, Mercy Home presented a wonderful first impression – a beautiful lobby, smiling employees, and youth homes which easily rival my college apartment.
Wonderful, yes, and absolutely confusing. Shortly after I arrived, Ian took me on a dizzying tour up staircases and through doorways. Each door opened to another row of offices, another room of people, and another fundamental part of the agency. And then, of course, there was the long hallway of doors of the MercyWorks apartment; doors which would soon open to thirteen of my future friends and roommates.
It’s now been over four months. Months filled with retreats, community nights, forty-hour work weeks, a Thanksgiving dinner, a few days off and a few nights out. As MercyWorkers, the fourteen of us have two full-time responsibilities: to work for the youth of Mercy Home and to live in conscious community with one another. Two distinct tasks, two distinct challenges in one big maze of a building.
Each day, we leave our shared apartment and enter separate offices and programs. When I arrive at my office door, I join another community, a community of youth and co-workers. Here we serve a group of young people who are some of the most diverse and deserving individuals I have ever encountered. Youth who have experienced crisis, abuse, fear and loneliness. Some have never known love, some have never had undivided care and attention from an adult. Over these months we’ve begun to learn how to positively influence these kids, how to give them what may have been denied to them in the past. What we give to these kids in program is the respect, love, honesty, and hope we’re learning how to give one another as a MercyWorks community.
As Christmas approaches, I’m reminded of our commitment and our covenant. These snowy days have also reminded me of that first visit and all those foreign doorways and stairwells. Over time, the confusion has lessened and Mercy Home has become comfortably familiar. With time, working in the agency and living in community, too, has become familiar. In our separate roles, we learn together. We learn to give and to share. Giving is simply becoming part of ourselves.
