Come meet the new Johnson Interns and celebrate the start of a new program year.
‘Pounding parties’ welcome new neighbors by bringing them a pound of something they might need in their new homes, i.e., a pound of sugar, a pound of flour, a pound of nails, a pound of ice cream ....

Directions to the Johnson Intern House from the Chapel of the Cross: Turn left onto Franklin Street. After passing Carr Mill Mall, turn right onto North Greensboro Street. Turn left onto Oak Street just before the traffic light at Estes Extension Road. The Johnson Intern House is on the left behind the house at 504 Oak Street.

For additional information or suggestions about what to bring, contact Mary Agnes Rawlings.

The Johnson Intern Program was named for Margaret Johnson, a long-time parishioner who died in 1998 and left her entire estate to the Chapel of the Cross. A portion of this generous bequest was utilized to fund, in part, a program to enable post-baccalaureate students to devote an academic year to deepening their understanding of social ministry while increasing their personal and spiritual development within the context of Christian fellowship and living. The idea for this program emerged when a number of Episcopal UNC graduates found that there were few opportunities for community service in a faith-based setting.

As a consequence, several concerned parishioners and clergy developed a proposal for such a program that was presented to the vestry in August 1999 and discussed at a parish dinner meeting in September of that year. An exploratory committee was appointed to address concerns and advise the vestry on the funding that would be required for such a program. By January 2000 the vestry had approved the development of the program for up to five interns, authorized $38,500 per year for three years from the bequest of Margaret Johnson to partially fund the program, and hired Elizabeth Shows as program director. Elizabeth had recently been a participant in a similar program in an Episcopal parish in Los Angeles.

The goal of the Johnson Intern Program is to blend social ministry with spiritual study and education in a way that serves our community and enriches the lives of the interns. The Chapel of the Cross is one of a few parishes in the country positioned to accomplish such a program. To achieve this goal each intern works at a community service organization that provides a small stipend. The educational component involves courses in the departments of religion at UNC and Duke along with weekly seminars with parish clergy. An important aspect of the internship is living in community with one another in a home that is rented by the parish. Other opportunities for spiritual growth include Bible study within the household, corporate worship with the congregation, and four weekend retreats each year. In addition, each intern is matched with a parishioner who serves as a mentor throughout the year.

Membership in the Episcopal Church is not a requirement for the Johnson Intern Program, and the interns in the first two years of the program came from a variety of denominations and church affiliations. By means of their involvement in the parish and their work in social ministry, the Johnson interns enrich the life of our congregation and increase the outreach of our parish in the community.

The Johnson Interns have an exciting year ahead under their new director, Mary Agnes Rawlings, whose experience, energy, and love of God will serve her well in this role.

Along her spiritual journey, Mary Agnes completed a master’s in social work and another in Christian spirituality. She has experience being in the role of volunteer in a variety of community agencies and organizations, including the Mental Health Association, the National Leukemia Foundation, the Brain Tumor Association, and as a Crop Walk volunteer, to name a few. In her professional role as a licensed clinical social worker, she has worked with a variety of populations, including adolescents in a public school setting as well as providing clinical social work services to adults suffering from chemical dependency. In the early ‘90s she volunteered at the Chapel of the Cross as a spiritual director and facilitator for the Discernment Committee.

"How do I live my life in the world as a Christian?" has been the driving question in Mary Agnes’s life. She believes that dialogue with parishioners and the sharing of issues brought out in the interns’ social justice work in the community will be an important part of the learning experience for the Johnson Interns. She is excited about working with young people who are concerned with making their lives meaningful as Christians.

Her energy and love of challenges are evident in her choice of pastimes as well: ceramics, guitar playing, singing, camping, hiking, swimming, running, and boating. Over the next few months she will be training to run in the 26-mile Disney Marathon in January with one of her daughters.

A rich Protestant and Catholic background is evident in the origin of her name. Her great-grandmother, Mary, was Protestant and her great-grandmother, Agnes, was a German Catholic.

Her husband, Jim, is a member of the United Methodist clergy and currently serves as the Director of Pastoral Services at the UNC Hospitals. Jim will also be working with the Johnson Interns twice a month, facilitating an interpersonal group aimed at communication skill building within the community. He and Mary Agnes have raised five children who now live in Florida, Louisiana, and North Carolina.

We are fortunate to have Mary Agnes back at the Chapel of the Cross, now as our Johnson Intern Director.

As one of their first assignments, Mary Agnes asked the five new Johnson Interns to introduce themselves to the parish.

Carrie Fesperman
I grew up in North Wilkesboro, North Carolina, in a family of five. I am the oldest of three sisters. Mary, the youngest, will graduate from high school this year and Rachel, the middle sibling, will be a junior at UNC this year. My dad, Joe, is a family physician, and my mom, Sarah, is a pharmacist.
I graduated from NC State this past May with a Bachelor’s degree in industrial design and a minor in French. For those who do not know (and most do not) what industrial design is, it focuses on the aesthetic design of products ranging from silverware and lamps to cars and clothing. However, I’m afraid that I fall into the category of college graduates that do not plan to use their specific degree after graduating.
I have spent this summer traveling and studying Spanish in Antigua, Guatemala. It has been absolutely wonderful!!! I followed in the footsteps of my uncle, who had a similar adventure in Guatemala when he was around my age. Learning languages, art, traveling, and meeting new people are some of my passions.
I am looking forward to living in Chapel Hill (although I will remain a true Wolfpack fan) and working with the Johnson Intern Program next year.

Beverly Kyle
I moved from California in 1992 and attended middle school and high school here in Chapel Hill, so I am actually a native. In 1998 I graduated from Chapel Hill High School and then immediately went to college in St. Petersburg, Florida. The college I attended was a small liberal arts college called Eckerd College, and I majored in international relations and German. I spent eight months in Germany prior to and during my junior year, completing an internship and studying for a semester at a German university. While in college I was active in campus ministries, volunteer work, and water skiing. In my free time I enjoy reading, jogging, water skiing, and dancing. I have two brothers, aged 20 and 24, and they are also living in Chapel Hill.

Andrew Highland
Hi! My name is Andrew Highland, and I am very excited to be one of the Johnson Interns. I was born in West Virginia and lived there until 1986, when my parents and I moved to Ithaca, New York. We have lived in Ithaca ever since then, although I have spent the past four years in Durham. In May, I graduated from Duke, where I studied history and religion.
I grew up going to church with my parents and was very active in the youth groups at our church when I was in middle school and high school. In college, I was very involved in the Wesley Fellowship, the United Methodist Campus Ministry at Duke. Through Wesley, I have been able to be a part of weekly worship services and fellowship events, Eucharist, small groups, and social justice projects. Some of the most meaningful and formative experiences that I have had over the last four years have taken place on work trips to Western North Carolina, Washington D.C., New York City, Atlanta, Honduras, and the L’Arche community in Stratford, Ontario, Canada.
At Duke, I was blessed to be a part of a program called Service Opportunities in Leadership (SOL) and had two wonderful, powerful, and challenging internships in the summers of 2000 and 2001. Through SOL, I worked in Albuquerque, New Mexico, at All Faiths Receiving Home, a home for children who have been abused, neglected, or abandoned. Last summer, I worked in Brooklyn, New York, at the East New York Urban Youth Corps, a non-profit organization that serves people who live in the inner-city neighborhood of East New York. These experiences have challenged my faith, as I have had to reconcile my belief in God with the suffering that I have seen around me, but I have come away from both experiences with new friends, wonderful memories, and the sense that God works in small, mysterious ways.
I am grateful for the support of everyone at this church, as the five of us begin our year with you. It is very comforting to know that I will be a part of your community, having just left a community that I loved so much for four years. I am looking forward to meeting all of you!

Megan Sanders
Megan Sanders was born 25 years ago and spent her early childhood in Washington, DC, with a two-year adventure in Panama as a toddler. She learned to sled and ride a two-wheeler on Capitol Hill and played soccer on every military field in the DC area. She ventured to Niceville, Florida, for her high school years, where she was a leader in the varsity soccer and diocesan youth communities.
Upon high school graduation, Megan migrated to the east coast of Florida, where she attended Flagler College in St. Augustine. She majored in psychology with a triple minor (religion, youth ministry, and gerontology), graduating in 1998. During her Flagler years, Megan was extensively involved with Young Life, in interdenominational fellowship community focused on mentoring junior and senior high school students and encouraging spiritual formation through personal relationships with college-aged role models.
After graduation, Megan was off on her next adventure to Sicily, Italy, with Young Life International. She worked with and for the military chaplaincy and was responsible for the youth ministry program involving the 250 junior and senior high American young people at Naval Air Station Sigonella. Highlights of that year included a mission trip to the Czech Republic and international conferences in Heidelberg, Germany; Majorca, Spain; and Mittersil, Austria.
Back in the states, Megan had the privilege of serving for a year as director of Youth Ministry at St. Mary Magdelen Church, one of the largest Roman Catholic parish communities in the country. Moving her back to the Florida Panhandle, God’s next challenge for Megan was in the prison ministry arena, where she spent two years as a case manager working with 14 19-year-old juvenile delinquents committed to lock-down facilities. Concurrently, she was the volunteer youth minister at St. Jude’s Episcopal Church in Niceville, Florida, where she officially began her journey toward discerning a vocation to the priesthood as a member of the Anglican Communion.
Upon meeting with Bishop Phillip Duncan of the Diocese of the Central Gulf Coast, Megan was encouraged to seek out and apply to discernment communities around the country. She has been blessed with the opportunity
to spend this year with the Chapel of the Cross parish family!

Meredith MacAskill
My name is Meredith MacAskill. I am from Northern Virginia, outside of Washington, DC, I graduated in May from James Madison University in Harrisonburg, Virginia, with an honors degree in psychology and communication sciences and disorders. I have a 19-year-old sister, Heather, who attends William and Mary. I am thrilled about having this opportunity to serve and grow throughout the next year. Following this year, I am planning on attending graduate school to pursue a career as a speech pathologist.

Johnson mentors are one of the most essential, yet least visable components of the Johnson Intern Program. Mentors are individual parishioners who are willing to share their time and talents with the young adults who come to live in community each year at the Johnson Intern House. In the past, mentors have had the opportunity to reflect upon the meaning of what this role has meant for them. Here are a few of their comments.

"I found the experience to be spiritually stimulating both intellectually and devotionally. Preparing for our weekly meeting was a pleasant stimulus to think about and explore my own spiritual life." Another mentor describes the experience in the following reflection, "The experience challenged me to examine my life-decisions and to be more willing to attempt to change some of my priorities."

The initial members of the steering committee spent considerable time in envisioning the role of a Johnson Intern mentor. Listed in the job description for being a mentor are some important characteristics of an effective Christian mentor:
- Maturity (spiritually and emotionally)
- Patience/tolerance of mistakes
- Ability to listen
- Awareness of his/her own process of becoming
- Lifestyle consistent with beliefs.

Mentors have been asked to serve in the capacity of a trusted companion.
I would like to take this opportunity to introduce the mentors for 2002-2003 year and say thank you to them for accepting this role. Bob Chase, Trenna Corey, Peg Rees, Mary Lou Liverance, and Ann Terhune.

I hope that parishioners will take the opportunity to learn first hand from these folks what mentoring means to them.

Margaret Johnson, a long-time parishioner of the Chapel of the Cross, bequeathed a relatively large sum of money to the Chapel of the Cross upon her death.

Her bequest was not designated or ear-marked for any specific purpose and the vestry entertained a number of possible usages of the money. In June 1999, the senior warden, Syd Alexander, obtained endorsement from the vestry for a post baccalaureate intern program at the Chapel of the Cross. The vestry also authorized an exploration committee to determine the specifics of a program to provide an opportunity to recent college graduates to develop a spiritual foundation for Christian social outreach.

Ultimately, the exploration committee developed a program consisting of three parts:
- Experience with social outreach
- Living in an intentional Christian community, and
- Course work devoted to an educational project leading to spiritual growth.

Over the next few months, the components of the intern program and the relative roles and responsibilities of the participants (i.e., interns, director, mentors, clergy) were defined and approved by the vestry. In the winter/spring of 2000, the director (Elizabeth Shows) was hired and three interns recruited. The first class of Johnson Interns (Annmarie McCaig, Amanda Townsend, and Sara Wells) started in August 2000. A second class of interns (Robert Cristobal, Dania Ermentrout, Amy Grizzle, Marsha Hamilton, and Jack Mitchell) started in August 2001. A new director was hired in May 2002, and five new interns have just arrived in Chapel Hill.

From the first, it was expected that the Johnson Intern Program would be supported by money from the Johnson bequest, private donations, contributions from the non-profit agencies that employed the interns, and foundations. It was never anticipated that money from the operational budget of the parish would be used to support the intern program. For three years of operations, it is projected that the program will cost approximately $120,000/year. Almost 50% of those costs will be associated with stipends, taxes, and pension for the interns and director. Another 14% is projected for health insurance, while the remainder will be used to support costs for retreats, transportation, publicity and recruitment, education, and program costs. Of the resources used to support the intern program, about 44% of the income will come from the Johnson bequest, as approved by vestry, while about 25% will come from private donations. Contributions from the worksites that employ the interns will provide about 22% of the revenue, while the rest will come from foundations and grants or gifts from the Diocese of North Carolina.

After the third year of operations, additional resources from the bequest will not be available. Several options are now being considered by the Johnson Intern Program Board to finance the next class of interns. As in the past, no funds from the operating budget of the parish will be used to support the program.