Tuesday, June 30, 2015

Poverty is not only a lack of money, it's a lack of sense of meaning.

-David Bornstein

Skies threatened for the work day, but luckily held off until dinner time when the sky opened up and dumped a lot of rain. Since both home repair sites were for the most part outside sites, we were very happy for lack of rain. Both sites were also in Clear Fork, about 1/4 mile away from each other. One site the volunteers put the EPDM rubber roofing material on a porch roof that had a pretty bad leak. This site was also a site that Northern Illinois University worked at a couple of years ago over spring break. The other site was also a site that we had worked at before, but many years ago when when we brought the young women from WEB (Womens Empowerment Brooklyn) on their spring break from high school. Then it was laying tile, but today it was a lot of different activities from fixing a hole in the floor, power washing and painting the outside of the trailer, and straightening the underpinning where the earth had pushed it aside. Both sites will be continuing into tomorrow.

We also had a new site helping with an arts and crafts program at Council on Aging, which happens to be next door to The Way. While the commute is very short, the work was very worthwhile and rewarding. Not only did the volunteers help out with the crafts, they also took the time to sit and talk with the residents. We will continue to help at Council on Aging every Tuesday and Thursday.

As the rains came down, we enjoyed a taco dinner and homemade soup, cookies and cake. It was quite a feast! No one can ever say we don't eat well here. Even though we have simple lunches of peanut butter and jelly, the dinners certainly make up for that!

We closed the evening with reflection. Gathered as a community, we asked to reflect on scripture about blindness and in turn how we can be blind in our lives. We went around and shared something new and something good that we saw.