| House offers safe haven for mission workers BY MELISSA LAUBER UMCONNECTION STAFF  The Mission House at 1000 W. 38th Street in Baltimore was once the parsonage for Good Shepherd UMC. Today, it houses hope in the form of two missionaries and the first black woman pastor to be active in deaf ministries. I could have chosen to live in a normal apartment, said Denise Donnell, a student pastor at Christ UMC of the Deaf in Baltimore. But I chose to live in community. I dont know if youve ever lived with Christians before, but people of God live differently. Theres hope here, and meaning. The newest resident to the house is Allison Kyser, a US-2 missionary from Tennessee who is working at the Hampden UMC Family Center, where she provides referrals and resources to people in need, and at the Hampden-Woodberry-Remington-Mount Washington Community Center in an after-school program with children. The US2 program, part of the General Board of Global Ministries, trains and commissions young adults for two years of mission service in the United States. Living in Baltimore and in the Mission House since September has been a transition for Kyser. Its a whole new world, she said. I grew up in the Bible Belt, and its hard to see past that. For example, prostitutes, drug addicts and prisoners would be shunned if they came into church. But here theyre not condemned, theyre welcomed. However, the churches here seem to Kyser to have no young people. In fact most have very few people at all, she said, even though census data indicates that the neighborhoods are brimming with teenagers and young adults. Kyser says she already learned the importance of outreach and acting out the love of God. I had to learn to go outside my comfort zone. The church does too, she said. We need to be a part of Gods world. For Jennifer Wynkoop, a US-2 from St. Louis, Mo., who has lived at the Mission House for a year, ministry means going to where people need God. In a typical week of being a missionary in the deaf community, she leads Bible Study at a prison in Jessup, plays games with residents of a mental hospital, teaches American Sign Language to a late-deafened woman and swims with a deaf-blind woman to help her exercise. Ministry is about meeting peoples needs in the name of Christ, said Wynkoop, who felt so called to service that she became a missionary with the deaf before she had even learned American Sign Language. Im different because of this, said Wynkoop. In her work, which has included a mission trip to Kenya with others from the Baltimore-Washington Conference, she has been exposed to a number of transformative experiences. My eyes have been opened in a way that they cant ever be shut again, she said. The three residents of the Mission House, which sits next to Good Shepherd UMC in Hampden, are convinced that they were called by God to their current situations. God arranged it all, said Donnell, an African Methodist Episcopal seminary student who heard the Rev. Peggy Johnson and the choir from Christ UMC for the Deaf speak at her school in Dallas. In that instant, I felt God tapping me on the shoulder, she said. I didnt know about deaf culture, but I knew I had to be here, doing ministry outside of the box. My calling came in a series of doors that just kept opening and I kept walking through, Wynkoop said. Each of the women believes their time at the house is an opportunity to work for justice. As housemates, they often lament that there is only one full bathroom. But such concerns pale when they consider what they get up for each morning. Its sometimes hard, said Kyser. Missionary is not an easy job. But everyday we learn something new, she said. Theres always a way we can help. | 
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