Making a House into a Home

Hello from Cleveland! For anyone keeping an eye on our blogging schedule, I switched with Adam so he could better prepare for his upcoming LSAT. He’ll take my post on Monday, hopefully with good news about the test. Best of luck Adam!

Although we only started blogging recently, the other Cleveland volunteers and I began our placements in mid to late August, so tomorrow is actually the end of my seventh week as an HM Volunteer with Catholic Charities Migration and Refugee Services. WOW, what a whirlwind it has been!

This picture is from our first week, when Sam, myself, and a few others had to lower a donated couch off of a second-floor balcony in order to take it to a new refugee’s house. This picture pretty much sums up my first couple of weeks. We were slowly getting to know our way around the area, learning how things worked at our placements, and physically making the house more live-able. We made sure everyone had the necessary keys, paperwork, and community bank account access, and we tackled all of the other logistical issues that arose. In short, we spent the first couple weeks “moving furniture” or “making a house.”

This next picture exemplifies the past few weeks. In the picture, Tina and Sam are enjoying the amazing chicken and pesto pizza we made using arugula from the refugee’s community garden. In recent weeks, we have gotten to know each other more, and have grown closer as a community. It is in these weeks that our “volunteer house” has slowly been turning into a “volunteer home.”

Although I am enjoying my work overall, I’m not sure I could handle the craziness and stress without the support of my community. We pick each other up at the end of a rough day and celebrate each other’s somewhat random accomplishments. We talk, laugh, joke, and have even burst out singing a random song or two. As we make plans to go back to Villa Maria this Saturday for Harvest Day 2011, I can’t help but think about how much we’ve grown over the past seven weeks. We know a lot more about each other, our respective placements, our community in Lakewood, and even ourselves. So, as we prepare to celebrate the coming fall season, I look forward to the bountiful harvest of gifts that await our community. Our new home.

I want to add that the inspiration for the title of this post came from Sam's awesome volunteer fair display above. In case you can't see them, the first picture says: "this is how you make a house..." and the second says: "...this is how you make a home."

~J.P.