Partners, Team Members and Friends of Damascus Way,
I want to thank all for the work and support you provide to those we serve. So many neat things are happening of which we can be proud of and thankful for! As many of you are aware, we have been working through a period of Strategic Planning and organizational changes, which has included bringing on some new hires. With this said, I want to formally welcome Roy Watkins and Marlin Meszaros to our team. I have learned Roy to be a very humble and insightful man. He has served in this field for a number of years, most recently at Union Gospel Mission. Roy will be at our Golden Valley site two days a week and three days at our Scott County Sites.
Marlin, who is our new Director of Reentry Services (at Golden Valley), comes with a wealth of personal experience. I so appreciate the pieces of Marlin’s transformational story that he has shared with us! He comes to us from the peer organization, Freedom Works and of course he too, brings great wisdom to the work. I am personally excited to see him build off the years of service Craig Fruen has provided to Golden Valley as he leads us into this next season.
As many of you may know, we have also successfully opened our Prior Lake Home! This is the second home we are operating in Scott County in partnership with the Community Corrections.
With this news and the new hires has come some organizational changes –
These changes include; Craig Fruen moving to oversee our Scott County Community Corrections Contracts. This means Craig will now oversee both the Shakopee and Prior Lake House and staff. Todd will move to an Associate Director role providing daily reentry coordination to all the men in the two homes, assisting Craig with certain administrative tasks as assigned. We believe that Todd’s experience combined with Rev. Wilder, Roy and ultimately Craig’s leadership will provide transformational services. Thank you Craig, for taking this task on!
In Rochester, we have moved Lawson Campbell into an Associate Director role. He will be helping Rochester Area Director Nick Abbott with administrative support and oversight of the Apartments where we can house up to 25 men. It is our hope that Lawson will be able to provide greater mentorship, create avenues for discipleship and ensure our apartments are operating in excellence. Along with this change, Cedrick Johnson will be the sole reentry coordinator at the Campus Facility. In addition to this he will be working toward standing up our Destiny Dads Support Group in our Rochester locations.
We hope to have the apartments fully paid off in the next 60-Days as an early payoff. Next is to develop a strategy to pay off the Golden Valley Facility. Please be praying with us!
Stacey (Director of Youth & Family Services) is currently co-located. It is very exciting that with our partnership with Scott County he is housed for a portion of his time at the Family Resource Center in Shakopee. Stacey along with the support of Josiah, has successfully launched our Destiny Dads program in the Scott County Jail. They have seen over 40 men since starting the group!
We are so thankful for Jacob Lusk and his contributions towards our recovery work! He has successfully gotten us approved as a Peer Recovery Academy. This means we can now prepare to start training staff with the tools to be more effective in the recovery realm.
For those of you that are conducting “business as usual” I cannot thank you enough either. Your work is significant and essential to the successful provision of our ongoing and expanding services.
Thanks again and God Bless!
Executive Director
Tierre Webster