When stewardship is a way of life
Moe Wosepka chooses action, learns faith

By Glenna Obie

For 20 years, Moe Wosepka was a successful business and government executive. His career had encompassed sales and merchandising for a young and dynamic KOA in an environment that he said “radiated excitement.” He advanced to director of sales and marketing for Crissafulli Pump Co., then later to marketing for the Montana Department of Agriculture.

By 1995, Wosepka was the high-profile director of the International Trade Office for Montana through two administrations. He worked closely with the governor and others at the top levels of state government as well as the state’s congressional delegation and business executives to promote Montana products in world markets.

He traveled frequently throughout the Pacific Rim, Europe, Mexico, Canada and the United States meeting with government officials and foreign businesses.

“I loved it,” Wosepka admitted. “It was challenging and interesting.”

Where his career might have taken him from there is anybody’s guess and of absolutely no concern to Wosepka. Instead, he said, “I felt called to do something for people in my own community.” So he hung up his suit, threw his passport into a drawer, took a giant cut in pay and hired on to run the Good Samaritan, a thrift store operated by the four Catholic parishes of the Helena area.

By any measure, Wosepka’s success at managing the Good Samaritan has been phenomenal. In the last eight years, the store has moved twice and is now in much larger and more visible retail space.

Sales have doubled and then quadrupled and the amount provided in direct aid to those in need has gone from $18,000 in 1995 to $139,000 last year. Services have expanded far beyond a simple thrift store operation to include personal counseling, nursing home and home-bound visitation, prison and jail ministry, advocacy and government affairs and job training.

Perhaps the most profound change is that the Good Samaritan programs now involve 50 to 60 regular ministry volunteers on many levels plus hundreds of volunteers for special events such as the Christmas Empty Stocking project.

Wosepka has taken time to develop leaders among his volunteer cadre and his expanded staff and even more far-reaching ministries are in the planning stages. Still, he said, his greatest accomplishment is his own personal growth in faith.

“I just get to watch the miracles happen,” he said. “The rest has been the Lord’s decision. He tells me, ‘There are people out there who need somebody who cares. Go care for them.’ ”

Wosepka acknowledges that not everyone has the opportunity to work full-time for a program like the Good Samaritan, but he says God only asks of us what we can do. Everybody can do something but we each have to make a decision to take the first step.

He said he once heard that a Biblical scholar studied the story of Moses parting the Red Sea. The scholar’s premise was that Moses didn’t stand on the bank and command the sea to part as is the vision of Hollywood. Instead, when God told him to part the sea and save the people, Moses simply walked out into the water and when he was in up to his neck, the sea began to separate.

“If you think you’re being called, go do it. What have you got to lose?” he said. “The Good Samaritan is a big place and it touches a lot of people but it is no more successful nor important a ministry than the lady who goes across the street to have coffee with her shut-in neighbor. It’s all the same.”

“We all have gifts,” Wosepka said. “The Lord gives us gifts we don’t even know we have and we won’t fully understand until we put them to use to serve others. Then our gifts are fully revealed in all their glory.”

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Published in The Montana Catholic, Vol. 20, No. 1, January 16, 2004.