Email: Katie Mohr

Friends,

Hi Second Presbyterian family! My name is Katie Mohr. Six months ago I applied to a program called Young Adult Volunteers, which is run by the national offices of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.). Jump right to the chase. I got the job and I moved to Tennessee to serve as a missionary with the Nashville Epiphany Project.

With your kindness, love, and overwhelming support my blessed life is at a place where I can only describe it as esprit: my mind and spirit are alive and excited for each new day here in Nashville. I feel confident in the transition and have had a pleasant adjustment so far.

Blair and I have settled into the tool shed and now contentedly call it home. We have started vocational discernment with Susan Brantley, our site coordinator, and Janet Salyers, our spiritual advisor who works with our vocational discernment program. I am finding out that life is not just a fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants adventure but if I take the time to listen, God truly guides my decision-making. We’ve joined the church choir, which is a new adventure for me. I’d participated in many choirs throughout my schooling but never in the church. I had never heard a church choir that sounded so strong and had such a confident men’s section! After the first time I heard them sing I knew I had to join in the fun. I also started helping with the youth group. The time I spend with them on Sundays reminds me how much I loved youth group when I was in high school and how important that brief time spent in a supportive, loving community is at an age where so many things pull you in so many directions. The youth are great, and I am excited to get to know them all better over the course of the year.

My work at TCASK has been a developing process.  Each day I am learning about: the broken capital punishment laws and the efforts for policy reform, the struggles of the victim’s families and the struggles of the families who have family members on death row, the lives of men and women who sit on death row and the lives of those who have been exonerated because of their innocence and now walk the streets free.  I am finding the TCASK staff to be very supportive and friendly and very passionate about the death penalty issue.

This year I will be working with the Nashville Student TCASK Chapter, the Clarksville TCASK Chapter and organizing a new program called FUSE (Families United to Share and Empower). “TCASK” stands for “Tennessee Coalition to Abolish State Killing.” For most families, when a loved one dies, their communities provide needed care and support. However, for families whose loved one is executed or lives on death row, there is usually no such outpouring. In fact, most of these families suffer in silence, rarely sharing the painful feelings with which they struggle. FUSE will be a retreat program for these families to come to Nashville, receive counseling, meet other families who are living through the same struggle, and possibly visit their loved one on the row. It will be a challenging year, but I have faith that the start of these programs is important to the progression of the anti-death penalty movement.

I cannot thank you enough for your smiles and your words of encouragement. I am enjoying getting to know you all and hope to have many more opportunities to share my stories with you.