October 2007
a monthly e-news publication

New in October: Koinonia Catalog 2007-2008!

New items in this year’s catalog include Pecan Butter, Fair Trade Chocolate Advent Calendars, Fair Trade Dark Chocolate Bark, and more! Special limited edition items such as Blue Jean Mugs, T-Shirts and Wooden Handicrafts are available online only.

Watch for your catalog to arrive soon. If you are not on our mailing list please visit our catalog request page. You can also download a copy of the catalog and order form here.

Reaching Out

Kurt, Kathleen, J. and Ann were the Koinonia contingent at the 2nd Annual Millard and Linda Fuller Center Blitz Build in Shreveport, LA. We spent a week with hundreds of other volunteers, hammering, painting, flooring, and sweating. The results were nine new houses and five remodels, for many wonderful families. Pictured, Kathleen helps raise the roof!

We’re excited to share that the Sumter Area Ministerial Association’s food pantry won the 2007 Agency of the Year award from the Food Bank of Southwest Georgia. The pantry was opened just 3 years ago, but now distributes approximately 58,000 pounds of food annually. Koinonia community members and our interns and visitors periodically answer the call for help with bagging and distributing food packages to families and singles, and we’re glad that the work of all the food bank volunteers is having an effect in the wider community.

This month, the Circle of Friends lovingly cooked a repast for the memorial of Joseph Jones. Joseph, a longtime friend and local Boy Scout leader, passed away from pancreatic cancer in early September. For years, he brought his scouts to the farm to practice “Leave No Trace” camping, do service projects, and to learn Koinonia history. Joseph was involved as a youth in the Americus Civil Rights Movement and often came out to Koinonia, despite the risks, with his cousin, Collins McGee, to listen to Clarence and enjoy farm life. Joseph, we will miss you.

We again teamed up with Friends of Prison Families to provide a meal for families with loved ones in Macon State Prison, to nourish their bodies and spirits midway through their monthly trek from Atlanta to Montezuma, Georgia. A vanload of Koinonians brought and served the meal, highlights of which included four different kinds of from-scratch brownies, and juicy watermelons from our organic garden.

At the Farm

The Florida State University Social Justice Living-Learning Community flooded our farm for a fruitful weekend, bringing 49 students and counselors to fill every free bed and most of our couches. Our dining hall served as their meeting space, and they covered its walls with inspirational quotations and their own deepest truths. This very special residence hall, in its first year, will be focused on issues of service and justice among like-minded students. Best of luck and come again!

Art in the Koinonia chapel! Our friend Jack Harris Bonham from Austin, Texas (pictured left) visited recently, to work and play and pray, but also to perform his one-man, spiritually themed show about Stonewall Jackson, The Leavening. What a treat! Jack wasn’t our only artistic visitor—a couple of RV Habitat Care-a-Vanners, Darrell and Joy Faires, led us in song and played guitar at morning chapel… and Darrell surprised us with a song he had written specially for us, before he’d even met us! His song “The Koinonia Way,” inspired by a book titled Live in a Gentle, Simple Way: to Love, to Learn, to Laugh, to Pray, had the perfect lyrics to brighten the day.

Community member of the month: Sally Ann Brown. Sally Ann Brown has faithfully served Koinonia as cook and now as head of the kitchen in our community. Mother of 3 adult children and a flock of bright grandchildren, Sally Ann lives in Koinonia Village in a house built in the 1970s by Koinonia Partnership Housing. Also an expert pecan-sorter who puts the rest of us to shame during the harvest, her slow laugh is prized by all who coax it out of her.

Special thanks to our outgoing summer interns, Beth, Havilah and Chris. And a hearty welcome to our new fall interns, Pete, Ana, and Ana’s two children Ana-Laura and Adrian! We are so lucky to have them all this fall.

Diana Leafe Christian, author of several books on how to maintain healthy intentional communities, conducted a workshop for us this month. Diana is the editor of Communities magazine and a resident of Earthaven ecovillage in North Carolina. Her good-humored but firm approach was much appreciated, and the contents of her workshop were very helpful. We named what fosters community—and what weakens it; we learned tools for living and working together and for resolving conflicts; we did activities to strengthen our group connections; and we ended with prayer, a “gifting circle” and (of course!) a potluck dinner.

Coming Soon

Our expanded phone hours for product season begin on October 11. We’ll be taking orders from 8:00 a.m. to 10:00 p.m. Monday through Friday, 9:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. on Saturdays and 1:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m. on Sundays. Call soon and speak to one of our community members standing by to give you a warm hello and to take your order. Watch for our new catalog in your mailbox soon! Please let us know if you have friends, churches, schools or other organizations that would like to receive our catalog, and we’ll be glad to send one out. You can also download a pdf version of the catalog and order form.