Earlier this year, an American expat and his 10-year-old twin daughters farewelled their family in Australia and set off for the U.S. Over the next 40 days, they traveled to 36 states and provinces and were welcomed by 39 hosts. They stayed with some for a matter of hours, but most took them in for the night. Some were relatives, some were old friends or friends-of-friends, a few were people they’d met only in passing, or online. In 40 days they spent only four nights in a hotel.
Not all the hosts knew Peirce Baehr and his daughters well, but all knew the reason for their visit — and the reason they weren’t staying long. Baehr wanted to ask as many people as he could, in the short time he had, if they wanted to support Pilgrim Hill: the hostel he and his wife had founded in Tasmania’s Huon Valley, with the goal of sharing the gospel through hospitality and art. It took support from near and far to build it in the first place, and it was support from near and far that would allow them to expand: to go from sleeping a dozen guests to two dozen, and to build the artist’s workshop they’d been dreaming of for years.
On the road with his daughters, Dot and Bess, Baehr enjoyed reuniting with old friends and making new ones, giving and receiving encouragement. But he found the fundraising part difficult. “This is the hardest thing we do,” he told me.
“The hostel’s off-grid, and the toilet for the travelers is a composting toilet, and there are these huge chambers of human waste that I have to change every three to four weeks in the busy season. I actually prefer that to making presentations where we ask for support, because it feels so — it feels awkward. I’m fairly open about that. People would ask, at an event on the trip, ‘What’s the hardest thing?’ And I would say, ‘This is the hardest thing.’” People usually responded with enthusiasm about the opportunity to be a part of work they couldn’t do themselves. “It did encourage me,” Baehr says.
The trip reminded the trio, all well accustomed to hosting travelers themselves, what it’s like to be a traveler, to receive hospitality rather than offer it.
Welcomes when they arrived at a new place were sometimes tentative: a shy wave or shake of hands, while farewells were “very huggy,” and often saw the girls perform the song the family sings to long-term guests when they depart the hostel. The trio also gave their hosts the parting gift they present to backpackers — mindful of the fact they travel light, it’s a small and symbolic: a candle.
As for how the Baehrs greet their guests, a tour of the property is the standard ice-breaker. Years before they started the hostel, Baehr and his wife, Christina, stayed at one where guests were given a double-sided card crammed with a 10-point-type, single-spaced list of rules upon arrival.
“Christina and I were like, we don’t ever want to do this. … When guests come to our hostel, we show them ’round, then we walk through everything verbally, and then I’ll point out the bulletin board: Here’s where all the details are, and if you have any questions, feel free to ask.”
As a guest in people’s homes, Baehr appreciated it when hosts showed them around, showed them where to put their belongings, and invited them to make themselves at home.
“We were really blessed in so many little ways,” Baehr says. Beyond food to eat and beds to sleep in, many hosts showered Dot and Bess with snacks to eat on the long drives ahead and toys to play with.
Meanwhile, Baehr appreciated when people specifically asked if they needed to do any laundry. “That was always sweet, because instead of having to ask, ‘Can I run the laundry?’ just the fact that they asked first makes you feel less like you were an imposition.”
Most of the hosts didn’t just provide accommodation, they provided a venue and an audience eager to hear about, and perhaps support, the ministry. The first big presentation took place at Baehr’s family home, an hour north of L.A., and attracted about 60 people. The largest, held in a church, attracted around 200. Baehr left the details of these events up to the hosts, inviting them to plan around what would work best for their networks.
“We had two purposes. One was to share about our project, and the other was to encourage people in hospitality evangelism and the arts,” he says. “And we were able to encourage people. … We had one couple who came to the event in Vancouver, and they weren’t so interested in our ministry, they were trying to think through, should they do something similar [also in Tasmania] and that was fine. I wanted to encourage people: This model’s extensible, you can steal it, you can do it.”
Some in the not-for-profit space are very protective of donors, but “God owns the cattle on a thousand hills,” Baehr says. “What we’ve always felt is: God’s able to provide for all the work that’s his, so that’s been our strong conviction.”
Part of the hospitality the Baehrs offer guests at Pilgrim Hill is a shared dinner followed by a conversation about life’s big questions, and ways in which the Bible answers them. The dinners are entirely optional. “We love showing hospitality to the travelers … a sense of family, and a place where they can feel safe, where they take their bags off and rest,” Baehr told Australia’s Life & Faith podcast last year.
However, the overwhelming majority are interested. They show up for the first meal, then the next, then the next. Taking care of people is not “some sort of warm-up” to sharing the gospel, Christina added. “Taking care of people, for us, is the heart of what Jesus does, and if you look in the gospels, you see that Jesus has a holistic approach to humanity. He preaches, yes, but he also teaches and heals, and he breaks down social barriers, and he eats with people. It’s not always clear if he’s always preaching when he’s eating with people; sometimes it seems like he just sits down and has a meal with them.”
The way the Baehrs see it, it would be dishonest if they invited guests into their home and didn’t tell them about the book and the beliefs that lie at the heart of it. But they start by meeting people where they are.
“When you meet a need people know that they have, they’re much more willing to listen to a need they don’t realize they have,” Baehr explains. “Especially with backpackers, you’re dealing with people who are homeless; they’ve been away from family and friends for a long time; a lot of the hostels across Australia and Europe and elsewhere are soulless, or they’re party hostels, and even if you want to party, you don’t want to party all the time. You want to be able to take off your pack and feel like you’re able to rest and not always watch your back. It’s just very palpable, fundamental needs. Safety, a place to rest, food; if you’re able to meet those basic, basic needs, then people open up and are willing to listen to things, needs that they don’t think about very often. We love that part.”
