Friends,
As you probably know, I will be spending the next few months interning at the London Catholic Worker Farm.

Their mission statement as swiped from their website:

The Catholic Worker Farm is located at Lynsters Farm, Old Uxbridge Road, West Hyde, Hertfordshire. It is situated on a working farm in a rural setting with 2 acres of land and lake frontage. At present members who comprise the community are Scott, Maria, Christian, Justin and Francis Albrecht, and Roo Kenney (Scott, Maria, being the core members).

We are a Christian community within the Catholic Worker tradition. The Catholic Worker movement began simply enough on May 1, 1933, when a journalist named Dorothy Day and a philosopher named Peter Maurin teamed up to publish and distribute a newspaper called The Catholic Worker. This radical paper promoted the biblical promise of justice and mercy.

Grounded in a firm belief in the God-given dignity of every human person, their movement was committed to non-violence, voluntary poverty, and the Works of Mercy as a way of life. It wasn't long before Dorothy and Peter were putting their beliefs into action, opening a house of hospitality where the homeless, the hungry, and the forsaken would always be welcome.

We are committed to the Aims and Means of The Catholic Worker. `The aim of the Catholic Worker movement is to live in accordance with the justice and charity of Jesus Christ. Our sources are the Hebrew and Greek Scriptures as handed down in the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church, with our inspiration coming from the lives of the saints, men and women outstanding in holiness, living witnesses to Your (God's) unchanging love'.

We are a community of the London Catholic Worker. It is through the fellowship, dialogue, commitment and love of all those past and presently involved in LCW that we are strengthened. And we in turn commit ourselves, the space and time that we have available to us at The Catholic Worker Farm to strengthen others in Faith and Resistance.

We are committed to Prayer, Personalism, A Decentralised Society, A Green Revolution, Non-violence, The Works of Mercy, Manual Labour and Voluntary Poverty.

http://www.londoncatholicworker.org/CWfarm.htm

Pretty sweet.
I have told most of you that my responsibilities will be split between doing advocacy work for the women seeking asylum in the UK who are living on the farm and doing manual work on the permaculture farm (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permaculture).

For my own sake, I should write about this experience. But, many of you have expressed interests in updates on my adventure. Therefore, I (hopefully) will accomplish both with this blog!

I leave in 12 days...and would really appreciate your prayers, thoughts and general good vibes while I'm on this adventure. I know I will be stretched far beyond my comfort zone intellectually, emotionally, and spiritually. We all know what amazing growth this can inspire, but also the pain one feels along the way.

I love you all lots and will far more enjoy swaping stories in person once I return!
Shannon