Life in the Mountains
I have to admit this past week has been crazy, awesome, incredible, and amazingness all packed into one week. As I mentioned in last week's blog we had volunteer orientation at our house all last week. Therefore Floyd House had the opportunity to eat many meals with the new volunteers, most of whom we knew already but quite a few that we didn't. It was great to get to know one another and we had some great conversations throughout the week as well. Having the orientation at our house also helped when we had two snow days because it just meant we had more people to hang out with while we were all stuck at home. So since we got more snow a few people did go out and build a snowman and made snow angels. It was also only the second time one of my housemates (Hannah) had seen snow, so she was very excited to participate in all these activities. So on Thursday we were finally ungrounded and were able to go into the shop and do some work. Right now our crew is working on building bird houses and feeders for WorkFest. We are going to give them to our participants at the end of WorkFest. So we've almost completed all of them and they look great.
To conclude orientation this week there was a commissioning ceremony on Thursday night at Mountain Community Fellowship. It was great to officially welcome all the new volunteers into CAP.
On Friday night myself and some of the other volunteers got to experience some Kentucky culture. We went to the Hometown Jamboree, which happens every Friday night in Paintsville, KY. They have a bluegrass band that plays for about 2 and a half hours and there is lots of dancing. It was a great time and the people that were there were thrilled to have us there and they welcomed us with open arms. It was really great to experience some of the culture. On Saturday I went with Rachel (my housemate) and her family to visit a participant's house that we worked on in the fall. It was really great to see them again and to be able to catch up with them because we haven't seen them since Christmas. And to finish up this great week a bunch of volunteers went to see Father Beiting say Mass in Paintsville. It was really great to meet him and listen to his experiences and what he is doing now that he has started his own mission in Lousia. But he is a very busy man and has lots of plans for his mission that he has started and it was also great to hear him talk about the early days of CAP and how he started the organization.
"Let's get excited about our faith!"- Father Beiting
Kate Stefanowicz is a long-term volunteer in CAP's Housing Program. She lives in Floyd Volunteer House.
