Back in 2014, Chris Jacobs and Quinn Jacobs had only lived in Ogden, Kansas for four years. In those four years they had seen some pretty sad things. According to Chris, a high rate of kids were dropping out of school.

The Family Celebration consisted of many family friendly activities, such as pumpkin carving, raffles for goody baskets, free pie samples and a tour of the new Learning Center across the street, due to open in January.

“[The Family Celebration] is the anniversary that we’re open,” Chris Jacobs said. “The goal of [The House] is to bring community and family together in Ogden. And so it’s called Family Celebration instead of our anniversary because… with the activities we do, our hope is that teenagers and their parents come together and do stuff.”

Billie Anttila works at The House Tuesday and Friday mornings. Until last year, she worked at Ogden Elementary as a secretary.

“I originally started working with Chris and Quinn at the Youth Night on Thursday nights,” Anttila said. “And then they shared their vision about what they were doing with the cafe and how it was to help the youth learn how to have self-confidence and learn how to work hard and what that looked like to overcome obstacles and I just really thought that was something I wanted to be a part of.”

She comes in Tuesday and Friday mornings to help bake, and also helps out with extra events, such as the Family Celebration.

“[In the beginning] I thought, ‘I can’t do anything during the day because I work at the school, but I can give up a couple hours of my time in the morning,” Anttila said. “I can get up earlier and come bake. I can do that to help [Chris and Quinn] be successful [in what] God’s created them to do.’ That’s how that all came about.”

Jessica Anschutz works at The House as a barista, a cashier and does anything else that needs to get done and has worked since The House was opened.

“God says to care for people and he talks about it as like a life style and not just like a one-and-done kind of thing, so I started looking for places to volunteer my time where I could care for people in the community,” Anschutz said as she explained  I felt that’s [what God wanted me to do.] And so I heard about The House Cafe from a friend… and then I got to Quinn and I heard about what they do here and how it’s much more than just a coffee shop, it’s giving people work skills… and building relationships with students and just being invested in their lives in every way, so I just wanted to get involved. So that’s why I started here, and this was where the need was. The need wasn’t at Youth Night, we didn’t have the Teen Center or the early learning center, so I just wanted to help out where there was a need.”