Clarissa's Deep Dish Adventures: Jumping in

Hello!

My apologies for taking a while to make another post. I feel like recently, I’ve just been trying to get in the groove of work and thus haven’t felt like I’ve had much to report.

Up until just a couple of days ago, I wasn’t sure where I would be placed within Build. They initially talked about putting me at Douglas High School, which was pretty intimidating to me. I’m not super great or experienced with adolescents in the first place, let alone inner city teens. I was just putting my faith in the Lord, knowing that he would carry me through and strengthen me. However, I just found out that I’ll be at Spencer Elementary School! Yippee! In case you didn’t pick this up in a former post, I really enjoy younger kids and have much more experience working with upper elementary-age kids.

Anyway, so this week felt like my first “real” week working since before I had been working from home and going to training. I worked with Linda from Grace Seeds on Monday and Wednesday. Monday, she drove up here and picked me up and then we drove around all morning picking up vegetables at community gardens (at churches) and delivering them to a food pantry. We also had breakfast at this really awesome café that I can’t remember the name of. Wednesday, we pretty much did the same thing just at different gardens, and took them to a food pantry out of a church in Oak Lawn. She also treated me to lunch at Potbelly, an awesome Chicago sandwich chain, with one of the most amazing Oreo milkshakes I think I’ve ever had (and I’ve had a lot of Oreo shakes in my day!).

I’m really looking forward to working with Linda/Grace Seeds. I’ve recently become really passionate about the idea of food justice/hunger in America and am excited to work with that in an urban area. Grace Seeds is an organization with lots of big picture ideals like sowing God’s seeds (grace seeds, if you will) and cultivating peace and justice. One way they do this is through Share the Harvest, a little sub-organization under Grace Seeds. Share the Harvest collects produce from community gardens and shares it with hungry neighbors (the work I described in the last paragraph). I think this is really awesome that it empowers people like us in churches to actually do something to help. We have the skills, knowledge, and access to do things like garden to feed others rather than simply giving money (which don’t get me wrong, that’s VERY important work also!). I just think that sometimes givers enjoy giving so much more when they can see tangible results of their labors. Sidenote- hopefully this blog gives you all some of that satisfaction! Anyway, I’m just really excited to be part of this organization and see how I can help make it grow and flourish (pardon the pun) in the next year.

Back to Build! Last week was all very fun training. I was only there for 3 days of it, but we learned about the basic organizational structure and stuff, so that was good. This week, I helped Dot a little bit with getting the ball rolling at Douglas High School. (I was going to go over on Monday but it turns out they didn’t need me so I got to hang out with plants in the Conservatory again! :) ) Tuesday, I went over and called 43 homes to invite kids to the in-school/after school programs starting at Douglas. That was pretty exciting since at least 2/3 of the numbers were disconnected. I guess that’s just the reality of this neighborhood. Then I met with Samantha and we nailed down my schedule, hooray!

Yesterday I went over and helped at Ericson, the elementary school right by our house. I first helped supervise the indoor recess for the younger kids (like Kindergarten and first grade-ish) which was super fun. Right away when I came in, some of the kids remembered me from a couple weeks ago, ran up to me, and gave me great big hugs! Who doesn’t love that?! Then I jumped rope with some kids (slash swung the rope for them since I’m SO TALL! that they can’t get it over my head :) ) Then a kid nailed his face on the gym floor so I sat with him in the office for a bit.

Today was community day! We met with JD from the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless and did outreach like we’ve done for the last couple of weeks. Basically we go to Melody School in the morning and pass out fliers to parents with info about benefits that homeless families are entitled. The federal government set aside lots of money to help homeless families with kids in school so that they could have a chance of succeeding. Then that money was given to the various schools based on how many homeless children went there. Many schools have record of receiving the money, but no record of spending it; thus not using it to help families in need. We’re trying to bridge the gap by informing people of these benefits (bus cards, uniforms, school supplies, etc) and encouraging them to take the initiative to go into the office and get them.

So we did that this morning and then came back and played Settlers of Catan (best game ever, except for the fact that Megan keeps winning!). Then Krista brought lunch over and we revisited our covenant and wrote it out. Then we played Ticket to Ride! Now we’re all relaxing and thinking of something fun to cross off of our bucket list tonight!

Last weekend I was blessed with the opportunity to go back to KC for my wonderful friend Michelle’s wedding. Michelle and I lived together for three years at KSU and she is such a blessing to me. I’ll post more pictures when the photographer puts them on Facebook, but here are a couple that my friend Hayley took.