My children are grown

Elaine and I were married in the Raphael House Chapel 23 years ago. Our two children were born right here on the third floor of Raphael House and we raised both of them right alongside all the other families. My son and daughter joined in the art and play activities, went on the outings, and had timeouts just like everyone else. This is the basic concept of Raphael House- to run the kind of program we would be willing to raise our own family in, and that's what we did. It wasn't much of a sacrifice, either. Good food. Short commute.

At long last, though, both children are in college. Elaine and I enjoy the change. Victoria is 19, a freshman studying Architecture at Wentworth Institute of Technology in Boston. Gregory is 21, in his third year at St. John's College in Santa Fe enjoying their Great Books curriculum.

Elaine and I are looking at what we will do next. We are not leaving Raphael House just yet, but at 61 I am ready to start looking for one more project that Elaine and I can enjoy doing together.

And no, a 19 year old girl is not fully grown up yet, and she still loves Raphael House. But by the grace of God, we're getting there

He looked up at her and smiled.

A few weeks ago 15 very happy folks from Raphael House saw Jonathan Sanchez pitch a perfect game.

Today 52 parents and children were given free tickets to the ballpark, and in the pre-game ceremonies Raphael House was given 5,000 dollars from the Giants Community Fund. Our ChildReach coordinator, Anna Hurtado went out onto the field with an eleven year old former resident who still comes back to Raphael House every week for tutoring. Anna told me, "this is a boy who never gets excited, never shows any sign of emotion, even though he loves the activities, always joins in everything we do. I once asked him why he never shows any excitement. He said ' whenever I let myself get excited, I'm disappointed afterwards.'" She took him out through the Giants' entrance onto the field. He looked into the dugout where are the players were standing; he looked at home plate and all around the park. She could tell he was happy as he stood there holding her hand. "Are you excited now?" she asked. He just looked up at her and smiled.

Back To School !!!- August 2009

Three Hundred and Fifty backpacks filled with school supplies were given away to cuurent and former resident children today! Thank you to everyone who helped with the give-away!

Sixty Families Housed in Four Months (April-July 2009)

We have good news . In the past four months Raphael House moved 60 families into their own apartments. The biggest part of the credit goes to the Charles and Helen Schwab Foundation who gave us a grant to move families directly into housing by paying security deposit and other move-in costs. The approach is called "Housing First" and it is working beautifully.

Forty-three of these families (161 individuals:66adults/95 children)were direct recipients of these Housing first monies. The time period was April 6 through August 6 and the total expense was $66,236.00.

There are big advantages to this approach. Without the benefit of Housing First monies, the average length of stay for a family at Raphael House is three months. We have 17 private bedrooms for families. Quick calculations in your head show it would have been impossible to shelter so many families all at once without Housing First monies. This grant essentially tripled our capacity during these past four months. The cost came to a little over $1300 dollars per family- less than it would have cost to shelter and feed each of these families on a temporary basis.

Our thanks to the Charles and Helen Schwab Foundation !

Kayaking, White Water Rafting, Summer Camp , and a trip to Lake Tahoe (7-31-09)

This has been a great summer for the former resident children in our ChildReach program. More than 150 children participated in at outings, camps and trips this summer. The summer kicked off with a splash- a whitewater rafting and camping trip down the American River with thirteen teens. Two weeks later a different group Had an experience of kayaking in the Bay while another group went camping in the redwoods at Samuel P. Taylor park, out towards Point Reyes. This weekend we have a large group of younger children, ages ten to twelve , on their first trip to Tahoe.
And with the help of generous donors we are sending more than 60 children to summer day camps around the area. Thank you to all our donors who made this possible!!

Toddlers in Fairyland

We had a large group of parents and their toddlers romping through Fairyland. The children enjoyed magical fairytales, fun rides, arts and crafts, and learning about the various animals on site. Fairyland is located in Oakland, which allowed many families who reside in the East Bay to join us. One of the great aspects of these outing is that they allow Raphael House to stay connected with families who live outside of San Francisco, and also create an opportunity for families to reconnect with one another.

Defend yourself !

A day of self-defense! A group of teen age girls got together to learn about self-defense both verbally and physically. It was a great team building activity and the girls learned a lot about themselves and one another. Many of the girls did not know each other before the activity and were a bit shy at the beginning, but by mid afternoon the instructor said "get a partner-someone you do not know" one of the girls responded "We know everyone!" It was great to see them bond quickly and have a great time. This is definitely an exercise we will continue to offer.

Lake Tahoe Trip

Anna Hurtado Reports:
A FUN and Fabulous weekend in Lake Tahoe. Saturday morning two vans full of children headed out to Lake Tahoe. The children laughed and chatted the whole way over, except when the vans became suddenly quiet as we drove down the snowy decline into to Tahoe City. The kids silently took in the amazing view of the snow covered mountains. With the freshly fallen snow the sight was magnificent. The weekend was spent having snow ball fights, looking for animal tracks in the snow, sleighing down a small hill, making hot chocolate and ice cream sundaes, and ice skating. All the children agreed that ice skating outside while it was snowing was the best part of the weekend. For most of the children this was their first time seeing or touching snow, so it was a really special experience. When I asked one boy why he liked eating the snow he said "Because it's such fresh water!"

Overall a great success! This same group of children will head back in August so that they can experience Tahoe in the summer.

Obama was here

Last Spring the families met and shook Obama's hand when he visited the Hotel Carlton, next door to Raphael House. Today the families and staff gathered around two T.V.'s ( normally kept in the closet) to watch President Obama's Inauguration, one of the most festive and memorable political events in our lifetime. Doesn't matter whether you voted for him or not. The moment is special.

The way we like it

A three ring circus at Raphael house this morning. The Chess Club had a dozen players in the dining room. Next door we had a huge clothing give-away for former residents- lots of you fine donations!!- while our Child Reach staff took a dozen children to the San Francisco Art Center for a hands on experience of...well, I won't know for sure till they get back. In addition the Thrift Store is open,and down in the kitchen we have a group of volunteers from a local church preparing a meal. This is the way we like it. Lots happening for all ages.

All over the world

We have a traveling staff. Elena left for Russia last week, Olga returned from Russia today, Ralitza made it back from Bulgaria a few days ago, and before Christmas Carmela arrived from from Costa Rica where she had been doing a Spanish immersion program. Flavia visited Brazil, Randa was in Lebanon, Stephanie is in London and our volunteer coordinator Carol Field is hiking through India.

Two reasons for all this travel. The first is that Bulgaria, Russia, Lebanon, and Brazil are the birthplaces of the staff who continue to visit family there. The second reason is that because so many of our staff live and work at Raphael House, it makes sense to encourage staff to take a month off every other year, sometimes six weeks. Carmela has lived and worked at Raphael House for 23 years, so after her six weeks in Costa Rica , she came back ready to speak some serious Spanish, ready for action.

One of the reasons we have staff who work here for year after year is that we want them to do something besides work. Come back refreshed.

Blessed and Refreshed

After the Liturgy for Theophany we blessed Raphael House, ready to start a new year.

Christmas Day 2008

Last night the families put out their stockings ( hung on the door knobs with care), and sometime later that night they were filled and overflowing.

I got up at 4:45 a.m. to get ready for the Divine Liturgy, which I served in our Raphael House Chapel at 6a.m. Only the Orthodox live-in staff attended, about a dozen of us, and the service for the Nativity was completed at 7a.m. By that time the families were up and headed down to breakfast before Santa returned in person at 8a.m.

Santa this year flew in from Harrisburg, Pa. in the form of Michael Ennis who retired there in 2005 after serving at Raphael House first as a volunteer almost 30 years ago , and then as our Vice-President and Treasurer for many years. Santa passed out five gifts to each child. No family staying at Raphael House lacked for anything this year, except perhaps their own home,but most of them have apartments lined up for January, so we will be having a lot of going away parties after the new year.

At 10 a.m.sixty-three seniors from the neighborhood joined us for a Christmas brunch. The children performed the Nativity play for the seniors, the staff sang. The brunch was great . Every senior got a fresh baked loaf of Christmas bread.

As we cleaned up from the brunch, Eliot Katz , family and friends, came in to prepare Christmas dinner for the families. They have been cooking Christmas dinner at Raphael House every year since 1997. Delicious, elegant meal, candlelight, lace table clothes, piano playing in the background.

Francis Rigney joined us for dinner as he has every Christmas dinner since we opened at this location in 1977. It was Francis' mother, Ella Rigney,who had the wisdom and good sense to design the program we have today. Ella was born in 1892 (Benjamin Harrison was still President)and made good use of the century God gave her. She built the educational and fundraising foundation of the American Cancer Society starting in the 1920's. She was 85 years old in 1977 when she became the Director of Raphael House, and she lived right here in the shelter until her peaceful death in 1992. She was my mentor when I came to Raphael House in 1986. She was 94 at the time and full of spunk. She refused to wear a hearing aid, said young people just needed to learn to speak up.

Francis, by the way , is 85 years old himself and spent most of the day working on his book, a thesaurus of knowledge. He is the retired Chief of Staff at Presbyterian Hospital which is now known as California Pacific Medical Center, and always an interesting dinner companion.

I'm hitting the road for a few days to speak at a conference, will be back right after New Year's. Have a safe, peaceful and blessed New Year. !

Lots of presents

Presents have been poring in all week as donors adopt families for Christmas. It is amazing to walk between the mountains of carefully stacked presents. 247 former resident families are receiving gifts in addition to the families staying here at Raphael House now. Families are streaming in , picking up gifts. Our very sincere thanks to all of you who are helping our families this year.

A hundred years old today

Volunteer Ola Carlson is 100 years old today, still lives in her third floor apartment on Pine Street. She walked over here last month to join us for our feast on Thanksgiving Day.
Happy Birthday Ola !!!

Letter from Alaska

Nice letter today from a woman in Alaska who sent $200 “on behalf of my mother and I who stayed at Raphael House many years ago when I was a young girl (about 7 or 8). She said “I remember the facility and the people and the sit down meals. Thank you for bringing stability into our lives when it was temporarily absent. Thank you for the work you do and the many families whose lives you touch. Your service is never forgotten.”

Out and about

A very busy weekend at Raphael House we ventured over to the Chabot Science Museum. The children were able to try on space suits, look through gigantic telescopes, and learn about the make-up of each planet. On our way home young girl said "I think we should be happy to live on Earth, the other planets are either too hot or too cold."

Also, on Saturday October 18th several families headed across the Golden Gate Bridge to the Discovery Museum in Marin country for the museum harvest celebration. The museum generously provided families with amazing activities including, face painting, mask decorating, and lots of FUN games. The children came home excited and the parents exhausted! Everyone agreed that it was a great day!

Sunday October 19th was a Day on the Bay. Another generous donation to Raphael House by Pier 39. Twenty families gathered together for a wonderful cruise on the San Francisco Bay. For everyone this was their first time on a boat- so there was lots of excitement and some nervousness! Everyone loved touring under the Golden Gate Bridge and around Alcatraz. It was wonderful for children to get different view of their city and historic landmarks. After the boat trip we enjoyed ice cream on the pier.

Is that the ocean?

Another great ChildReach Field trip to end the summer- a family day at Pt. Reyes beach. Four former resident families and staff spent the day at the beach playing beach kick ball, running in and out of the waves, watching a family of elk walk along the marsh, and burying one another in the sand. This was a great day for everyone. As we walked towards the beach one of the kids said "wow that sounds nice, its the ocean isn't it?" I said yes and he replied "I have not been to the beach since I was six years old" I asked him how old he was now and he answered that he would turn seventeen in a couple of months. He has lived in San Francisco since leaving Raphael House over ten years ago. The only other time he was at the ocean was when he stayed with us ! This was also his first time driving over the Golden Gate bridge.

Kids are climbing the walls

Our rock climbing trips are fabulous for the kids. Every month or so, we take a new group. On Saturday, ten girls and boys spent the afternoon on the UCSF Mission Bay rock climbing wall. This was the first time any of these kids had rock climbed. After getting the hang of it, several of the kids took turns racing one another to the top.

This kind of adventure gives children the chance to challenge themselves, physically and mentally. From never having done this type of activity before to making it to the top gives the kids a great sense of accomplishment.

These were all former resident children, in families with single parent mothers, now stably housed. It’s not only the children who love it. The mothers are grateful, too.

Camping in the Calaveras Big Trees

Carol Field, our volunteer coordinator , took former residents a camping trip last weekend and she lived to tell us about it:

Three Raphael House staff members and three AfterCare families set off for a 2-night camping trip over Labor Day weekend at Calaveras Big Trees State Park in the California Gold Country. Our twelve-person van was loaded from top to bottom and back to front with all the food and gear and it still wasn’t enough for this all-boy trip, fishing included. We walked the trail through the grove of giant sequoias and spent one afternoon at the river, where two of the boys learned how to pan for gold. They each collected a vial of black sand, which one of the seven-year-olds said he was keeping to give to his grandchildren. He also told his father that the trip was the most fun he had ever had in his life. One of the mothers heard a bear outside her tent, but how can you have a camping trip without a taste of the wild?

Appomattux

A mother who stayed here several years ago came by to drop off a donation. I happened to run into her at the front desk, so we caught up on her son's acting classes. Turns out she and her son were both in Philip Glass's Appomattux which premiered here in San Francisco last October. Wow! I saw it on opening night with my son Gregory - what a performance that was! Very moving. Turns out the mother and son were part of the scene where Richmond is destroyed by the Confederates as they leave the city. A mournful, moving, heroic, tragic opera. An incredible evening.

Truckee River

Another great outing last weekend - a Tahoe trip to the mountains for ten of our most dependable, straight A afterschool children. This same group of children went on the snow trip last February, and our program director wanted them to see the same area in the summer.

Last winter, one of the nine year olds had never seen snow before. The first thing she asked when they got out of the van was "can I touch it."

The children were amazed how different everything looked in the summer. They stayed in a cabin, swam in a pond, and went rafting down the Truckee River.

The ropes course

Ropes course in the hills above Lafayette: ten children between the ages of 9 and 14 spidered their way up a 30 foot pole using ropes and pulleys.

What do you do at the top of a thirty foot pole? Anna Hurtado says, “some of them sat there for a while looking out at the San Francisco Bay. Some of them looked down and broke into tears.” The only way down was to jump, the ropes and pulleys anchored by staff ensured a soft landing. Everyone who cried at the top, laughed when they were back on the ground, Anna said.” This is really the kind of growth adventure we want for the children of Raphael House – something that takes them outside the city and outside themselves. In some way, they feel changed afterwards.

He learned it at Raphael House

Thirty-three year old father of two dropped by to say hello. He stayed at Raphael House when he was 12, and was suprised I remembered him. "Every night I have a story time with my two children. My daughter is 13 and she is really into it. We take turns telling stories some that we have read, but we make them up, too."

This fellow grew up in a chaotic home. "I want my children to feel safe and secure every night." He said everything he knows about being a parent he learned at Raphael House as a boy.

Kayaking in the Bay

Anna took ten children kayaking this weekend in Sausalito Bay, with the help of ETC – Environmental Traveling Companions. Ten Two person kayaks – one very experienced adult paddling with one very inexperienced child paddling into the Bay. They saw Sea Lions and very large fish. The wind picked up near the end part of the day, so paddling back to the shore took some energy. The children helped clean up afterwards, washing and stacking the kayaks properly. These children were so happy with the adventure. First time out. Never done anything like this before.

More people than can fit

260 parents and children, plus another 30 staff and volunteers gathered in Golden Gate Park for our annual Fourth of July Picnic. We reserve the same spot every year in the picnic area above the children’s playground.

Twenty Five years ago we gathered at Raphael House rooftop garden for this event, but by 1994 we had too many people in our AfterCare Program. That’s when we made the move to Golden Gate Park.

Most of the folks who showed up have stayed at Raphael House within the last few years, but we had a few come back who stayed with us in the 1980’s and early 1990’s. It’s a chance to re-connect, and show how well they’re doing. Good looking bunch of folks.

Horse riding at Half Moon Bay

Ralitza, our after school coordinator, is in charge of horse camp all week long at the stables near Half Moon Bay. The Square Peg foundation donates the use of the horses and their staff who supervise the children.

Riding and taking care of horses is a great experience for children, though hard to come by these days. Ralitza says there is no silliness when that children are riding or brushing the horses. Full concentration, total engagement in the work at hand.

Now she's a grandmother

A new grandmother – still in her youthful middle age years –dropped off a donation for Raphael House. We recognized her right away – a stalwart volunteer from 20 years back, and a resident of Raphael House before that. 'I asked her when it was that she had stayed at Raphael House." She said“My youngest daughter was two months old at the time. She’s 28 now, so that’s it – 28 years ago!” For the past 17 years she has been working as a nurse in Seattle. Just down for a visit and thought she would drop in.

We pray

Served Liturgy for the Ascension in the Raphael House chapel early this morning. There are no religious requirements on the families we serve. None of them attended the Liturgy, nor were they expected to. Some people have a hard time understanding this. If the goal is not to get people to join the Orthodox Church – which it is not - then what’s the point? The point is prayer. At the center of Raphael House, we have a core staff who pray.

The Chess Club

The Saturday Chess Club had it's school year conclusion in May, and will start up again in the fall. The ten to sixteen children who participated regularly were children who also come to Raphael House for tutoring during the week - current and former resident children.

Ordering out for Pizza was a big hit as good food often adds pleasure to a celebratory event.

The Chess Club was started by the Damon family with the special help of twleve year old Sloan and his Dad Allan who wanted to enrich the lives of our children using a game that has provided many memories to their family. Our thanks to the Damon family for volunteering their time!

I grew up at Raphael House

Talked to a man who stayed at Raphael House twenty years ago, he now lives in the East Bay, is 32 years old, married with three children. He said " I grew up at Raphael House." He was twelve when he and his mother stayed with us in 1988. The family lived here for five months. It was a turning point for him.

Rock climbing from a wheelchair

Over the Memorial Day weekend, Flavia took 14 children rock climbing at Berkeley's Ironworks. This was the first time any of these children had done anything like this, and they had a blast. One of the young boys is in a wheelchair, but was able to get up and climbing because of the ropes and harnesses. The staff who supervise all this are pros, and made it one of the most thrilling adventures these children have had in years.

Flavia, by the way, is our Special Events Coordinator. She was in charge of our Annual Gala One Home,Many Hearts at the Four Seasons which raised $380,000 for Raphael House. Flavia loves parties and knows how to make them fun, but the real reason we do all this is for the children and families we serve. Flavia gives a day a week to plan and do outings with children. She is a fun person. You should know her if you like galas, special events, or doing something special for families.