Faithful Hospitality at Mount Zion 2024

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Sign Up!During the month of June, Mount Zion will offer overnight shelter to six families in our classroom wing. It’s easy to get involved and help build a generous community together.

A few words of background. In many ways, this volunteer program mirrors our congregation’s longtime participation in Project Home—another partnership with Interfaith Action. The name for this new program is “Faithful Hospitality.”

In March, Mount Zion’s Board of Directors voted unanimously to participate in Faithful Hospitality, along with a dozen other congregations in the Twin Cities.

The families who will be staying at Mount Zion in June are asylum-seekers (likely from Ecuador and other Latin American countries). All of the families have legal status to reside in the United States.

This is a special opportunity. We are blessed at Mount Zion with the capacity to offer a safe place to stay for people who are experiencing need and privation, and who have no other options (we’re helping others). Doing this work also matches our Jewish commitment “to perform acts of loving kindness” and “to seek justice in our world.” (We’re helping ourselves.)

In seasons past, Project Home represented Mount Zion’s largest collective volunteer effort of the year. Thanks for reading and for helping to build a generous community together at Mount Zion.

Mount Zion needs overnight volunteers, evening volunteers (for weekends), move-in support teams, and help with sundries and supplies.

How many volunteers? Think 60 overnight slots and roughly 16 evening slots. It’s easy to sign up and easy to do. Just follow this link to a sign-up form and information about dates, timing, responsibilities, training, and whom to contact with questions. (Please note: Unlike the shelter schedule at Mount Zion in years past, Interfaith Action has designed this program to rely on overnight volunteers. This reflects their needs and staffing capacity.)

Questions? Please reach out to Michael Tortorello, a Mount Zion member who is coordinating this shared effort.