It has been almost a non-stop work assignment since arriving! Thursday was our first day off, and the first time our car had left it's parking place -- what a change from the long drives every day coming across the country. It was also the first time we've even had a chance to go grocery shopping! We eat in the dining hall if there are meals being served, but if there are no meals, we are able to go into the walk-in refrigerators and help ourselves to the leftovers on the "volunteer" shelf. We do have a small kitchen in our one-bedroom apartment, but other than heating up leftovers, we've not cooked anything yet! Not my style! But we have helped with the set up, serving, clean up in the dining hall.
We have a furnished apartment, which is quite comfortable. New Windsor is a very small town, but the siren for the volunteer firefighters does go off at times, about 3 times one of our first nights, and along with the trucks that somehow need to barrel through this rural community, we are awakened in the night some. So far, not for emergencies we've had to be responsible for in our guest rooms, though! We have had the air conditioner and fan on the last few days because it has been in the upper 80's during the day.
This is turning out to be a bigger job than we realized. We're not just "hosts," checking in guests, making sure they have coffee/tea/snacks when requested for their meetings, but we're also housekeeping (cleaning the guest rooms on weekends if there are guests who arrive the same day other guests leave and we need to have the rooms clean, beds made, etc.) and laundry staff (using the commercial washers/dryers in another building to do all the sheets and towels from the guest rooms), kitchen and dining room help, driving the van to do mail deliveries to the various offices, and miscellaneous other tasks.
We're also responsible for locking/unlocking the main doors at 7:00 a.m. and 10:00 p.m. The evening lock-up is the hardest -- we have been so tired by early evening we've had to set the alarm to make sure we don't sleep through the 10:00 duty!
The ministry that happens here, though, is very impressive. This is the headquarters for a number of Church of the Brethren Ministries: SERRV, Brethren Volunteer Service, On Earth Peace, Disaster Ministries, IMA among others. Heifer Project International started here, interestingly, but no longer has offices on this campus.Many of the guests who come for overnight stays at the Zigler Hospitality Center are here to volunteer for a day or two at SERRV or Disaster Ministries. SERRV handles the sale and shipping of orders for their fair-trade handicrafts, coffee and chocolate from third-world countries. Many local churches provide SERRV items for sale as fund raisers. Their store here is quite impressive -- we've already started our Christmas shopping. (You can order on-line, also.)
The Brethren Disaster Ministries distribution center receives relief packages (layette kits, flood relief kits, etc.) and prepares them for shipping to areas where they are needed. Its a huge operation. They send teams, like our Volunteers in Mission, to help after disasters, and have a team now in Colorado. They also have a home rebuilding program.
On Earth Peace is the ministry that Barb Sayler, the choir director at Christ Church United Methodist in Santa Rosa, was co-director of here for a few years. She and her husband Mark, a UMC minister who also has connections to IMA (an international medical ministry) are the reason we are here in the first place -- they suggested a couple years ago we might be interested in the volunteer host position, and here we are!
The Volunteer Brethren Service program has a 3-week training right now for 24 young people who will be going to various places around the world on one or two year assignments. We were invited to have dinner with them one night last week -- a simple meal where they are learning to cook meals for their whole group on $1 a day meal allowance. They were finding out this week where they were being sent, so as they introduced themselves, we were impressed to hear they were going to places like Belfast, Croatia, England, Guatemala, Haiti, Japan, as well as communities all around the United States.
The area around us is beautiful with rolling hills, farm houses, corn fields. More pictures later as we do more exploring.
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