To the editor:

Recently the four new women residents of Gateway to Discovery/Hope Sweet Hope Studios prepared and shared a wonderful meal with the Gateway board members. Along with it, they wrote this letter of gratitude to share what being in the Gateway program means to them.

Dear Gateway to Discovery board members, donors and volunteers:

We want to express our gratitude and appreciation for absolutely everything you have done for us, this program, and this house. We know a lot of thought, time, money, prayer and love went into preparing this new home for us and we want you to know that we do not take it or any of you for granted. Thank you so much for caring enough to get involved in a program like this that is giving us all a fresh new start. We women, and the women to come, are now able to come to a home where our needs are met all the way from toiletries and food to a rent-free roof over our heads and love is provided and waiting specifically for us. All of us women came out of pretty dark places to be here, some of us from the streets and others of us paroled straight from prison with nothing but our prison blues on our back and hope in our hearts for a new start. That is exactly what you have done for us. Because of all you have provided, you allow us the luxury of being able to concentrate on ourselves, our addictions, our pasts, and to begin healing from the inside out, and for that, we cannot thank you enough.

P.S. Thank you for Mary. She really is a blessing and we just love her. (Mary Berry is the program coordinator of Gateway to Discovery.)

The letter was signed Forever grateful, The Gateway to Discovery House Women

Gateway to Discovery “offers women a sanctuary for recovering in community.” Its social enterprise, Hope Sweet Hope Studios offers “hope in recovery through living and working together.”

The Studios recently moved into a new building at 1900 Fifth Ave. S. and will be celebrating their Grand Opening on Wednesday, April 27 from 3 to 7 p.m. The public is invited to hear about Human Trafficking in Iowa, with speaker Mike Ferjack representing the Human Trafficking Division of the Iowa attorney general’s office. Schedule: 3 p.m. will be a meet and greet time, 4 p.m. is the ribbon cutting by the Greater Fort Dodge Growth Alliance, 4:30 p.m. is speaker Ferjack, 5:30 p.m. is hors d’oeuvres. Please come.

Gateway board members

Chris Helton, chair

Pat Reed, vice chair

Joyce Garton-Natte

Secretary, co-treasurer

Karen Kaiser

Co-treasurer

Megan Moore

Monica Shelly

Barb Kolesar