Day One

The beauty of the moon over Bayou Teche was amazingly matched by the glorious sunset over the Gulf of Mexico. Satisfactorily settled into a cute, little apartment on the UMCOR Sager Brown Campus in the tiny town of Baldwin, LA, I set about learning the lay of the place today and how I might most effectively justify my space in it. Sager Brown serves as the location of support services for a Depot which sends relief supplies all over the world. Short term volunteers, primarily from United Methodist Churches in the Midwestern and Southern sections of the Country, contract to serve a Sunday-Friday term each week. Mostly they work in the Depot assembling relief kits (health, school, layette, birthing), but some choose to do outreach in the community as well. I am a long term volunteer (two months, in my case), working in Outreach. I help liaison between the short term volunteers and the community, which includes working at a local Head Start program, elementary school and a domestic violence shelter for women and children. I also coordinate a weekly Vespers Service and assist in the Outreach Office signing folks up for food aid and home repair. It's good stuff and I'm surrounded by a wonderful, nurturing, professional staff and several other long term volunteers.

Joys of the day include: The efficiency of mass, rapid transit; Squirrels on the grounds; Trains speeding by on local tracks with all their satisfactory sounds; My first food aid sign-up; Southern accents and being called Miss Karen. It is an exciting new challenge to be busy in Baldwin.