Life Together Alumni: Where are they now?

Sam Angell, 2010-2011

While serving with Life Together, My site placement was with Alternative for Community and Environment (ACE), Working to organize community of faith toward environmental justice issues.

Life Together did so much to enhance my worldview and articulate my beliefs. It is hard to pick one important thing that I take away. I am currently serving with the Living with Purpose community in New Orleans, also part of the Episcopal Service corps. I am the Greenspace Coordinator with Jericho Road Episcopal Housing Initiative. Life Together gave me key community organizing skills I use in my job everyday, as well as in-kindling me with a stoic responsibility toward environmental stewardship. The future is a pretty open door right now. I plan on finishing my service year in New Orleans and then figure it out from there. Maybe move back to Colorado (my home state), or see where the Holy Spirit leads me!

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Megan Anderson, 2009-2010

I spent my Life Together year as a Micah Intern working for the Trinity Education for Excellence Program, a youth leadership and college preparation program for Boston Public School youth. Outside of work, I served on Trinity’s Hope in Action Leadership Team, worshipped with the Crossing Community at the Cathedral, and enjoyed spending time with my housemates and fellow interns in intentional community. My year spent in Life Together was such a blessing. I find that I draw on skills and experiences from the internship frequently. I am currently finishing up my first at Yale Divinity School, studying for a Masters of Divinity. Outside of the classroom, I work as a Seminary Intern for the Episcopal Church at Yale, and as a Leadership Team member for the Episcopal Evangelism Network. I am working with the Network to help organize students across seminaries in developing more resources for evangelism and entrepreneurial ministry formation. After Divinity School, I hope to be ordained as an Episcopal Priest.

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Natalie Elaine Finstad, 2009-2010

Natalie spent her Life Together year working at the Trinity Boston Foundation, helping start a program for court involved youth and as a community organizer with the Crossing, a community of St. Paul's Cathedral on GLBTQ civil/clerical rights.  Natalie's unique opportunity to work at multiple placements allowed her to be a part of systematic change as well as much needed clinical care.  This experience opened up her eyes to the many ways and avenues possible for faith based social justice work to impact our world.

This year, Natalie is living in Nairobi, Kenya and starting 'Be the Change - Kenya' (BTCKE) a capacity building nonprofit for local anti poverty initiatives. BTCKE organizes local young adults to effectively support local anti-poverty initiatives of their choice.  BTCKE utilizes the organizing skills Natalie acquired as part of her work with the Crossing in addition to the insight into nonprofit infrastructure she gained while working at Trinity.

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Adam Shoemaker, 2001-2002

My work site, as a Micah intern, was at St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church in Lynn and my ministry was primarily centered upon coordinating that parish’s outreach to a group of Sudanese refugees who lived near the church. The most important thing that I learned during my Micah year was both what it meant to live with others, in Christian community, and how best to faithfully live into those day-to-day realities. I currently serve as Rector of the Church of the Holy Comforter in Burlington, North Carolina and can say, with near certainty, that I would not be where I am today if it were not for my year as an intern with the Micah Project. Micah helped me to claim my calling to be a priest in God’s church and equipped me with many of the tools, both personal and otherwise, that I would need to make my ministry sustainable. My immediate hopes for the future are to help make Holy Comforter increasingly embrace the call to be a radically welcoming congregation open to all people. I am hopeful to help to deepen its spiritual practice and expand its outreach both domestically and internationally. Longer term, my hope is to have the opportunity to serve again in an urban congregation and to, perhaps, have another opportunity to serve as a missionary abroad (following my year with Micah, I was a Young Adult Service Corps missionary to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil).

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Sara Irwin, 2000-2001

Sara served as a Micah intern the second year of the program, in 2000/2001.  Working with the Church of St John the Evangelist and Ecclesia Ministries in Boston, Sara worked with homeless ministries, finding her call toward the ministry of the church on the margins. Jesus was always going to the edges, always pushing the acceptable bounds of where people expected him to be—10 years later, Sara is still trying to look toward those margins and places of challenge.  At Christ Church, Waltham, Sara is rector of a growing congregation that seeks to welcome all, looking for places to seek and serve Christ in all persons. Sara is still connected to the Micah Project, as supervisor of Micah Intern Paul Hartge, who works with Christ Church and their partner congregation, St Peter's Ugandan Anglican. She has two children (Isaiah and Adah, 4 & 1 ½) and lives in Medford with her husband—fellow Micah alum Noah Evans, rector of Grace Church in Medford.

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