Good Works, Inc.

I grew up in Nelsonville, just down the road from Athens. My parents got divorced before I was two years old, so for most of my life I drifted from one house to the other on a weekly basis. We didn’t have much. Though my parents didn’t tell me at the time, they both were probably receiving government assistance for most of my life.

When I was in middle school, my dad got cancer. It eventually went into remission, but the chemo wrecked his body so badly that he wasn’t able to work again. This led to our house ending up in foreclosure. From then through most of high school, living with my dad meant staying at my uncle’s. Around the same time, my mom started getting diagnosed with health problems too, so she was also not able to work anymore, either. Because she had a very keen and administrative mind, we continued to get the assistance we needed. In both households, though, I had to become much more responsible than many of my peers, which led to growing social isolation.

As my high school graduation neared, my mom and I both developed a belief that our issues were locational; if we could just get out of southeast Ohio, everything would be better. I see this in many people, both in southeast Ohio and elsewhere.

To cut a long story very short, we moved south, but it didn’t go well, so we ended up packing our things into a storage unit and driving back to Ohio with our Dodge Neon packed to the brim with what we could fit. We were officially homeless. I stayed with my dad for a little while, but he was by then living in a HUD-subsidized studio apartment, so I wasn’t legally allowed to stay there for long. I also stayed on the couch of a friend’s family. My mom went to live in a shelter called The Timothy House.

I suppose, in many respects, I had experienced kinds of homelessness before. Shifting from one house to the other is very transient, but it was routine, and I had never really known any different, so it seemed stable to me. When I stayed with my dad in my uncle’s attic, we technically didn’t have our own home, but, again, it was family, so that felt “fine.” But being evicted after only 4 months and feeling the shame of driving back to Ohio from more than four hours away as an 18-year-old after not being able to find a job that would hire me (it’s not like grocery stores only hire people with extensive experience) and not getting to go to the college I’d been admitted to because of the prohibitive cost (though I’d gained nearly $40,000 in grants, scholarships, and even loans)… This was different.

My mom and I found community at Good Works, something that we had been sorely lacking for years. We were accepted, and we had hope and help. We started volunteering and going to Friday Night Life after we got an apartment. My mom’s health eventually worsened to where she was unable to continue volunteering, but I kept going. When I started going to Ohio University for math education, I got involved with the student organization that Good Works led on Ohio University’s campus, Service Living. Then I did two Summer Service Internships with Good Works in 2015 and 2016, during which I began to have a relationship with Christ. When I graduated in 2018, I applied for teaching jobs, but nothing really felt right. I started to feel over the course of that season like God was calling me to Good Works, so I began working at the Timothy House.

Now, I am the Director of Caregiving at the Timothy House. Basically, I oversee the day-to-day side of the Timothy House. My role is to help make sure we are maintaining a safe, clean, and stable place for everyone to be, to make sure our residents are getting connected to the resources they need, to make sure our staff and volunteers have the supports they need to do their job and not be crushed by the heavy weight of the things our residents are carrying, and to lead all those who come to the Timothy House in learning to better love those around them.

Outside of ministry at and through Good Works, I spend my time playing video games, building community with friends through tabletop games, and reading. In 2020, I met at Good Works the woman who later became my wife. In 2026, we welcomed our first daughter.

“The LORD passed before him and proclaimed, ‘The LORD, the LORD, a God compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in loyal-love and faithfulness, keeping loyal-love for thousands of generations, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children’s children, to the third and the fourth generation.’” —Exodus 34:6-7

“For those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.” —Matthew 23

​“Returning hate for hate mul­ti­plies hate, adding deep­er dark­ness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness can­not dri­ve out dark­ness; only light can do that. Hate can­not dri­ve out hate; only love can do that.” —Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr, Loving Your Enemies