Friday, December 28th, 2012
After our first shift we went back to our little church home for a wholesome PB&J lunch. Which, as an fyi is still weird to me, because churches are outside my comfort zone.
While eating my alternative PB&J (PB with banana on a whole grain cracker...), Pastor John came in for a spur of the moment get to know you session which was helpful for not only him, but the whole group as well. He asked all our names and a fun fact to help him tie the name to something. My fun fact was that I am obsessed with Argentina. Shocking, I know. Then he told me he knew an Argentine and they would drink mate when he stopped by the church. Because other fun fact, Pastor John also helps Latinos get legalized by finding them work and getting their finances and papers in order. After everybody's introduction, he seemed to have some kind of connection or story to go with it, including things like how he biked all over the US, helped former criminals start businesses and fun facts about Mennonites.
Some fun facts including:
--They sometimes don't sport mustaches because centuries ago, a mustache signified that a man was mature enough to go to war and being that Mennonites do not support war, they shaved their mustaches in protest. They still grow some epic beards, though.
--In addition to not supporting war, they also do not use the legal system, police, insurance, among a few other things.
--They're somewhat anti-government because of the previous belief. This also means they have their own form of group insurance, because they are community oriented.
--They are not Amish, with Amish peoples representing a broken off sect of the Mennonite church.
After a long chat, it was time to get to work and Tony and I lucked out because we had previous painting experience so we started taping things off to paint a hallway leading to a nursery room. While taping, we listened to some good tunes and talked about, well, life. Spanning from relationships to Seattle to traveling. The usual. After taping, we wanted to get started but we realized that we were missing some key shades of paint as well as some rollers. John said we could just use brushes which made us both do that nervous "yeah...maybe...orrrr how bout not?" look. A trip to Wal Mart later, we had our rollers. Additionally, I got some work boots, anticipating ruining my only tennis shoes that I brought. But my baby feet still fit into s boys' size 3 so I got a good deal. Even if they make me look like a baby.
But our work for the day was already done. Meanwhile, some of our crew was out clearing trees, logs and sticks, during which, they found some charred remnants of dolls. I only saw photos but saying it was terrifying was an understatement...the rest of our crew was raking leaves for another burn pile. This raking was tedious and difficult considering the debris was all kind of wet and had they just dumped it in the right spot the first time, we wouldn't have had to use our deteriorating rakes to begin with.
The piles were supposed to be burned and despite a boatload of gasoline, they didn't seem to catch. Not to mention that burning is prohibited within city boundaries...I started getting cranky because in addition to being a terrible rule breaker, the smoldering fire was starting to smoke out my contacts which were now suctioning to my eyeballs. I couldn't see and didn't want to smell like a campfire for 3 days so I went inside and started writing. I felt like I was abandoning my team and didn't want to be alone, but at the same time, it was a good moment to just take a step back and enjoy some personal space.
No comments:
Post a Comment