Tonight Jan has three reflections which highlight Sheil's commitment to this community. Tonight we had our annual potluck at the community center. Every year towards the end of our stay the community has a potluck supper for us. It is a chance for us to connect with past Habitat families and hopefully the ones whose houses we've been working on. It also gives the Tutwiler community a chance to thank us for the work we've done. Sarah was there, she greeted me with a big hug. We've asked her if when we come down next year she would give us a tour of her home. She gave us a resounding yes. After the dinner I was walking back to the dorm as she drove by. "I will show you my house next year! Ya'll have a safe trip home!"
May 22, 2014
Marie made her delivery of books to the Tutwiler Library today as she does every year. The practice started a number of years ago when she worked for the Evanston Public Library. She and Linda Balla, another booklover, EPL employee, and HFH veteran made the acquaintance of Roshella, the Tutwiler Librarian. The Tutwiler Library is, remarkably enough a relatively new building just over the tracks from the decrepit downtown. It is a very pleasant, modern library that attracts an enthusiastic clientele with its holdings, PCs, and internet access, and Roshella is a dedicated librarian, but perennial budget cuts threaten libraries here as much as they do in Evanston. Marie and Linda discussed with Roshcella what kinds of titles she might like to add to their collection and arranged to cull theregular EPL discards for suitable books for Tutwiler. One shipment usually accompanies our HFH crew. Another happens sometime in the fall. Two librarians from Evanston connecting with a librarian in Tutwiler.
John also has a delivery of books to make to the library and community center. He managed to have a huge donation made by some discount booksellers and is working on securing a way to ship the books to Tutwiler.
What is remarkable about all this is that the people who make the trip to work for HFH every year do not stop thinking about the Tutwiler community when they return home, and even those like Linda, who no longer can make the trip, continue their work in their own way. (Linda and husband Randy also funded the purchase of several pies for dessert for our 2014 crew.) We are invested in this community. Our minds are here even as we go about our work in Evanston.
Thoughts for today
In leading our devotional this morning, Charlotte quoted St Francis: “Preach the gospel at all times. When necessary, use words.” This suits me just fine. I’m not much of talker, and I admit I’m lousy party material, but I’m quite happy to let my actions speak for me. That’s not to say I don’t appreciate effective communication. The noted semanticist and former US Senator S.I Hayakawa once said “Say what you mean and mean what you say”. I’ve taken that to heart. I may not say much, but when I do, I mean what I say. The same goes for what I do. I take my actions quite seriously, as seriously as anything I say.
Marie, Harriet, Bernadette and I finished trimming out the closets in house 39 today, in record time I might add. Trim and finish work here in Tutwiler is a particular challenge. We’re presented with four closet “spaces”- rooms finished with 2x4’s and finished drywall. There are no door jambs, no shelves, no clothes poles, no base boards, no closet pole supports. We are given access to pile of 1X lumber and left to our imaginations to build a closet. So we get to design a closet from scratch that we hope will please the future homeowner, based mostly on what we would like to see in our own closets, had anyone asked us. So with a flurry of staining, applying polyurethane ( 3 coats please), measuring, re-measuring, cutting, trimming, locating studs, drilling, nailing and coping we produce a closet that I cannot imagine being hidden behind closed doors. That’s how good we are at this. That we pretty much completed all this by Thursday is a credit to the skills of our “fit and finish” team.
That we do a good job at this is important to me. That HFH houses are built with a limited budget with only the most basic materials, typically not top of the line stuff, makes it particularly important that the work we do for the prospective homeowner be of the highest quality, certainly no less than the quality we expect in our own homes. That’s what I’m thinking of as I do this work – what will the homeowner think of this? I’m hopingwe delivered this year.
JN
On distance and time
We’re 640 miles from Evanston. It is not uncommon for someone to question why we need to travel so far to work for Habitat for Humanity. There are plenty of HFH opportunities in the Chicago area, are there not? Would not our time and money be more efficiently used locally?
There is a change in your mind and spirit, however, when you travel, especially when you’re moving away from home and work and all that is familiar to you. Eleven hours of riding in car is not particularly arduous, but it does give you plenty of opportunity to think – about the place you are leaving, about the place you are going to, and why you’re going there. Watching the changing scenery gradually brings you into a different world.The contrast between Evanston and Tutwiler could not be greater, but a sore butt and a few stiff joints really brings the point home. You wouldn’t get this experience if you could fly to Tutwiler, or somehow be instantly transported here like Captain Kirk. How you get here is part of the experience of being here.
The trip home is just as important. We’re typically a little more anxious to get home, and thoughts start to move toward the tasks at home and work that has gone undone, but, again, there is plenty of time to think about where we’ve been, what we’ve done, the people we met, and what it all means.
JN
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