I'm a person who likes adventures. When I found out that I would do my civil service abroad, I thought it would be my next adventure. Of course I assumed that it would be a great experience, but it's more than that.

After already more than one year of service I have realized that this time has helped to build my personality and strengthen my faith in God. I have also explored more abilities and discovered little miracles.

One never stops learning, but it's never been so intense for me before I did my service with Brethren Volunteer Service. I started working at the San Antonio Catholic Worker House October of last year. I read the file of this BVS "project" at the orientation in New Windsor, Maryland, but I had no idea what would be expected of me.

Today I feel more like a Catholic Worker than a BVS volunteer in spite of the fact that BVS made this service possible. The Catholic Worker House in San Antonio was founded about 14 years ago. It's a part of the catholic worker movement, which was created by Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin in New York City in the 1930's. This movement has spread all over the world. The philosophies of this movement are simple living (we have no air conditioning and no central heat), non violence, personalism and "green revolution," also known as recycling. Since we recycle in Germany, all the rest of these ideas have affected my life in new ways.

But back to the CWH. Our main focus is to provide homeless families a transitional home until they move out on their own. It's really a home for them, because we try to get to know them and work on a more personal basis with them. This can sometimes create problems when they feel too comfortable in the house and stop working on their goals. The CWH is run by only volunteers. We only have BVSers here right now. We do not have supervisors, directors or a priest who says what we have to do. We have a coordinator who checks on how we are doing and gives us useful advice when we need help. We are our own bosses, but we make very important decisions by consensus. This does not make it easier of course. But it has worked the past 14 years. That's amazing for me.

Things work out in very strange ways. We call them little miracles. We have a couple big problems during the course of the year. The biggest one is not having tax exempt status. We believe the best way to serve the poor and those in need are to live as close as possible to them. That means simple living and not having tax exempt status, since the homeless have to pay taxes, too. The fact that we want to have people giving us donations because they want to give and not only because of a receipt for the tax makes it harder to get donations. We receive no government funding and nor are we supported on a regular basis by a catholic church. That makes our big bills like house tax, house and car insurance and the 1500 dollar insurance for BVSers each year problems which are sometimes solved in strange ways. Who knows, it might happen that you send us a check and we will be able to get a truck, a new bathtub, or afford a new volunteer from BVS.

Here is a little story: We got a bill for the house insurance about one week ago. After paying the bill, I opened a letter which contained a check for $1600. This one covered the bill and provided us a couple extra dollars for the house. That is how it also works with smaller things. For example when we were looking for a bed for one of our families, we got it the very next day. All these things and experiences make me believe again. It's amazing in how many ways God provides us with what we need.