When applying to serve with CAP, you not only agree to serve as a volunteer but as a community member in the house in which you are placed. I have lived at the Johnson Volunteer House for a little over a year now and plan to stay until June. Needless to say, not everyone stays for a second year with CAP, so naturally the Johnson House has changed over time. The last few months have been filled with volunteers leaving to enter the next chapter of their lives, whether it be school, a job or heading home for awhile.This has left room for new volunteers to come into the house, which adds to a different atmosphere to the house. New people, new personalities.

Sometimes community isn’t always easy. You go to bed at 10:00, your neighbor goes to bed at midnight. There are lots of compromises one has to make while living in community, but that is what it’s all about. You learn about how other people are used to living and how to make it work in community. For example, everyone loads a dishwasher differently. It doesn’t sound like that would be a big deal, but when there are fifteen people in the house putting dirty dishes in the dishwasher, it doesn’t really get done if everyone is loading it differently. Last year we had to have a couple “tutorials” on how to load the dishwasher, just so we were all on the same page.

Needless to say, when you live in community, bonding happens. Sometimes group activities are planned, such as camping, a bonfire, etc. to promote bonding. However, most bonding times occur when you least expect it; with a visit to a fellow housemate’s room for a quick chat, a dinner conversation at the table, a game played after dinner. Or sometimes it is through a painting of a unicorn… At the Johnson House, we have a unicorn painting and it is not certain where it came from. However, this unicorn painting has helped to bring the Johnson House closer together. It started as a joke, telling incoming volunteers that one of the older members had painted it, and now we have a small corner of the house dedicated to unicorns- a towel, a stuffed animal, a comic strip, and a book... And there’s been talk of temporary unicorn tattoos… a little much? Maybe. But it is something that has brought the house closer together. It is in such ways that bonding can happen even the most seemingly random and unexpected ways.

A Very Johnson House Christmas

Last night I was looking at some pictures from last year and talking with a fellow housemate who is also staying a second year. There are so many stories, memories and traditions that take place within a house. Cutting down a Christmas tree, random dance parties, costume parties, Halloween and Christmas parties, camping, hiking, swimming, eating out…the list goes on and on.

In community, we eat, serve, play and pray together. The bonds that strengthen in a house allow its members to grow both socially and spiritually. Without community, you could still volunteer and do service, but the amount of growth that could happen in your life would be greatly diminished. In community, you learn new things and grow while serving, and may sometimes change the way you serve, or how you serve. Maybe you will be inspired by the faith of another housemate, or moved by the passion of another housemate and work to do more in the program in which you were placed. There is a reason why community is one of the three pillars of CAP, with the other two being service and spirituality. The three pillars together allow for a volunteer to fully grow and be successful in their volunteer life.

Jennifer Zupicich is a long-term volunteer in CAP's Child and Family Development program. She lives with 12 people and a unicorn in Johnson Volunteer House.