Volunteer Blog

Every month for an hour prospective volunteers sit in on an orientation session, learning about UMC's history, its mission and more about homelessness than they could learn in a graduate course.  Then they get a tour of the property -- soup kitchen, showers counseling rooms, front desks, phone and mail service areas -- all the basic weekday goings-on.  Then it's off to the Depot where art, soccer, gardening and other change-making programs are showcased.  This is where the October group -- larger than most, more than 20 this month -- got an unexpected lesson. 

Volunteer Coordinators Jo and Barbara try to present a realistic picture of homelessness -- the challenges our neighbors face, the tendency for them to process life from a place of "survival", the hard, long road out of poverty.   The participants had just been told that to work here, they must adjust their expectations for "success", accept that they can't "fix" everybody and know that overnight miracles would be ...a miracle!

And there he was, standing in the Art Gallery talking to Ray Isaacs, seeing the old soup kitchen through new eyes.  Miracle Man.  Man in a coat and tie, standing next to his proud wife.  Man who used to sleep in the woods where our new building now stands.   His testimony to the group was the perfect surprise!   And the lesson that we hope our new volunteers took home with them -- don't expect huge miracles, but sometimes they happen anyway -- and that will make the surprise all the more worthwhile!