Dates for Spring PV Seattle Week Set

Planning has officially begun for another service week in Seattle!

Our Lady of Guadalupe is eagerly awaiting the return of the PVs, as are the many agencies we worked with last year. It is proving to be another exciting and diverse week. Volunteers will spend their week working in a soup kitchen, assisting with a agency serving babies and small children, help to plant a community garden, just to name a few.  If you want to get more of a flavor for what this week will be like, please go to the archives for April/May of 2013 to read about last years trip.

The dates for this year will be Sunday, April 27th through Saturday, May 3rd. Due to space constraints, we do once again have to limit this opportunity to 10 volunteers, so it will be on a first come first serve basis.

Please let us know if you are interested and/or if you have any questions.

Happy New Year!

We wanted to take the time and wish you all a very wonderful 2014! We are excited for the year that lies ahead and all of its opportunities, challenges and blessings.

We also wanted to take the opportunity to thank all of you who have supported the PVs this past year whether by your presence, your prayers or your purse. We would not be here without each and everyone of you!

Many blessing to you and your families for the year ahead.

More pictures from Aurora

Here are some more pictures from the week long PV service trip to Aurora, IL. It was a great week! You can read more about the trip by going through some of the earlier posts.

Enjoy!

Thank You

We wanted to send a big THANK YOU to all the organizations that we worked with during our week in Aurora. The collaboration between all of these agencies is quite impressive. Please take the time and read about these amazing organizations by following the links to their webpages:


Hesed House - Hesed House's mission is to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, shelter the homeless and give people the chance to hope again. Hesed House is a national model for ending homelessness – one person, one family at a time. It is the culmination of nearly three decades of strategic evolution from a formerly acceptable model of "eats and sheets" to a Comprehensive Homeless Resource Center – a campus of centralized highly skilled professionals collaborating to provide the tools necessary to help individuals and families break free of the shackles binding them to homelessness.

Emmanuel House - Emmanuel House CDC is a non-profit, 501(c)(3) organization dedicated to helping working-class families save and work their way out of poverty in a responsible & dignified manner. In close collaboration with our partner organizations, qualified families are selected and subsequently given the opportunity to live in one of our apartments – usually for about 18 months. Families pay market rate rent just as they would anywhere else, but by leveraging a variety of created and existing resources, an entire year's rent (usually about $10,000) is channeled into each family’s savings to provide a down-payment on their first home thereby eliminating the primary and often sole barrier—the ability to save a down-payment—to home ownership.

My Father's Hands - My Fathers Hands is a non-profit organization working within the Fox Valley area.  My Father's Hands mentor at-risk workers by teaching them general construction skills using a hands on approach.  The projects we work on include safety repairs on the homes of local senior and disabled community members, as well as, collaborating with other non-profit organizations on larger construction projects.

Our Lady of Good Counsel Catholic Church - Our Lady of Good Counsel Church in Aurora, Illinois, is a diverse and unified community of Christ's disciples living our Catholic-Christian faith through worship, fellowship and service bringing God's transforming love to our parish and our world.

World Relief - World Relief began offering services in DuPage County in 1979 and then opened an additional office in Aurora in 1999. We are a Christ-centered organization that partners with local churches and works with hundreds of individuals and community groups to offer a comprehensive range of services to refugees and immigrants living in DuPage and Kane Counties.

Mutual Grounds - Mutual Ground, located in Aurora Illinois, provides a safety net of services for victims of domestic violence and sexual assault that include emergency shelter, domestic violence victim advocacy and sexual assault counseling. Additional services include education programs for professionals, students and the community-at-large.

Day 7 Aurora Service Trip

On our final day in Aurora, we spent the morning helping out with a fundraising hike for Hesed House, one of the organizations we worked with during the week. The Hike for Hesed is an annual fundraiser for the organization that starts at Hesed House and runs along the Fox River. The PVs did a variety of jobs to help the hike run smoothly. There was a great turnout for the event (lots of people and lots of dogs, including a couple of PV dogs) and it raised $30,000 for Hesed House.

After the hike the PV trip was officially over. It was a great week! In the coming week we will be posting additional pictures as well as links to the organizations we worked with. A big thank you to Bruce and Susan for housing the PVs and setting up all the activities for the week. You guys made this week special!

Day 6 Aurora Service Trip

Friday, the group spent the day working at the offices of World Relief, helping with a citizenship workshop. The volunteers sat with people who were in the final stages of becoming a US Citizen and helped them complete the 10 page application, as it can get rather confusing. The PVs had a special training on completely the applications a few nights before, so we would be ready to assist. The day was a very different and wonderful experience for the volunteers, that touched them and they will carry with them for years to come.

We also said goodbye to several volunteers during the day. We decided to go out for dinner in downtown Aurora with those remaining, for a celebration of the week. We ate at an Irish pub on the river, so afterward we strolled along the river and enjoyed a beautiful fall evening.

Day 5 Aurora Service Trip

Today we worked at Mutual Grounds, an organization that works with women who have suffered domestic violence or sexual assault. They run their organization out of a old mansion, that used to house the mayor of Aurora. They don't spend any money on maintenance and rely upon volunteers to help maintain the property. Today we pitched in and helped to week throughout the grounds. It was a gorgeous day to be outside.

For dinner tonight we were treated to roasted chicken,  potatoes and lots of other goodies. Between dinner and reflection we has a bit of down time, so banana grams and hearts games were played.

This evening we had our closing prayer service since we will be losing a couple volunteers tomorrow. We shared about the work we did with our hands this week. Even though we are winding down, we are excited for the remaining two service opportunities.