Nightmare at Hillcrest Baptist Church

2: The number of days I've missed work this week.

This is on account of I am ill with some mysterious new sickness that turns all my bones into rubber, my muscles into Jell-O, and places what feels like double-edged sandpaper down my throat, therefore making it incredibly painful to swallow. I've been exhausted all week, and spent most of the last two days buried under my comforter while entire seasons of "Friends" played on my computer.

But we're going to put all of that aside, because I did promise everyone an explanation of that little side note on my last blog post about my rage subsiding over an incident I had at the beginning of this month. I know it has been intriguing all ye invisible readers since I mentioned it, so here it goes. Nightmare at Hillcrest Baptist Church (In Carlisle, Ohio).

Kaitlyn and I have been doing site recruitment; that is, we've been going out to our seven counties and knocking on doors to places we feel might make good Benefit Bank sites. This includes foodbanks, churches, whathaveyou, any place that reaches out to promote available resources for struggling families.

Which brought us to Hillcrest Baptist Church. We went in and asked for the name on our contact sheet, who was the person who mostly worked with food distribution and whatnot. She wasn't in, but the man there (we assumed he was the pastor) and his secretary or assistant or whoever, offered to sit down and talk with us anyway.

So at first Kaitlyn and I thought that this was a nice guy, because we don't come across a lot of people who are willing to take time from their schedules to sit down with strangers (even though we send out letters ahead of time). The first thing he asked us was "Is this a government program, or is this faith-based?"

"Well, actually it's a little of both. See, the Ohio Benefit Bank was implemented through a public-private partnership of--"

"I don't want to be involved in any governmental program."

"...Okay, well with the Ohio Be--"

"Let me repeat myself, are you hearing what I'm saying? I don't want to be involved in any governmental program."

It turns out that Hillcrest used to be a partner of Shared Harvest. Used to be, because once they realized they couldn't distribute God-fearing pamphlets in addition to the bags of food, they cut all ties (it's USDA government food). Hm...Who Would Jesus Feed? Well, no one apparently, because they shut down the whole thing.

We tried to convince this guy that we were there that day to represent the Ohio Benefit Bank, which does not deal at all with food distribution, but it was hard to get two words in. It turned into this whiney little wannabe pity-party, in which he and the woman with him complained about a couple of people who had come in to ask for help and either hadn't said "Thank you" or had continued to come in for years. Okay, sir, well a bag of food isn't gonna get a family through a few years, it's going to get them through a few days. These government programs help with actual sustainability.

But again, he just would not hear us out. They had too many judgments about people living in poverty, which is just incredibly disappointing. Because he's probably feeding that stigma to everyone who comes through those doors. After about a half hour of this, Kaitlyn said something along the lines of, "This is what we do, we find new sites to use the Benefit Bank so people are aware of what help is available wherever they go to eat, work or pray--" and Mr. High and Mighty said, "Oh, your job today, that's pretty easy."

This guy has no clue. We were so incredibly offended. We finally grabbed our stuff, told them we could tell they weren't interested and not to expect a follow-up call, and left.

So that's the story about the Hillcrest Baptist Church that still has me fuming. I did realize that if this had happened to me several years ago, I don't think I'd be as fired up as I am now. I mean, I would still be incredibly annoyed and offended, but I don't know if I'd feel as passionate about it as I do now. That's what a year in Americorps will do to you. And I'm glad it did.

Americorps Appreciation

11: About the number of hours of sleep I got Friday and Saturday nights.

Being an Americorps VISTA can sometimes be a thankless job. Not a lot of people understand what it is we do, and some don't even know we exist. We put in a lot of hours without a lot of pay. We come in at night and on the weekends and are still considered to have an "easy job." (This is actually a long story that I have been avoiding while my rage subsides. I'll try to write about it in the next couple of days).

I try not to let it bother me, and honestly, it usually doesn't. I feel like the point in being a VISTA isn't to get recognition or applause. The point is to help as many people as I can.

Still, appreciation is much appreciated. Last week was National Americorps Appreciation week, and Friday morning the VISTAs from all around the state of Ohio met up in Columbus to work together on a different kind of service project. Some people sorted clothes at homeless shelters, some promoted the VISTA program to local high schools, some planted gardens. Kaitlyn and I were each assigned to pick up trash in the town of Linden, which is one of the lowest-income neighborhoods in Ohio. We split up into groups of four or five and were given a supply of work gloves, trash bags, and those handy litter-picker-uppers (I'm pretty sure that's the technical name).

The day went by pretty fast. My group had a lot of fun getting to know one another and trying to find the most interesting piece of litter (I won't get into some of the things we found. Let's just say I'm glad we had gloves). And once we finished our block in the neighborhood, it really did look much nicer.

After about two and a half hours of cleaning up the neighborhood, all the VISTAs met at a movie theater called Studio 35 and were given free pizza and popsicles while we watched "The Princess Bride" (INCONCEIVABLE!) All in all, it was a really fun day. I love meeting up with the other VISTAs to see what everyone else has been up to.

Unfortunately, I did not take a single photo while I was in Columbus. It's not easy to carry a heavy bag of trash and trash-picker-upper anyway. I didn't want to have to carry my camera around, too. But I did want to include a photo in this blog post, so at the risk of getting off topic and delving slightly deeper into my personal life, here's a picture of my cat, Albert. Work-related note: This photo is now my desktop picture for my work laptop.

The Results are In!

11,125: The pounds of food we collected in Fairfield Saturday for the Stamp Out Hunger Food Drive!

Yes, I would say the food drive this weekend was an enormous success. We had several enthusiastic volunteers helping out, and the time went by pretty fast because we were unloading trucks so often.

Today's blog post will be told through the use of pictures.

We got to the post office a little before 2:00, so not a lot of mail trucks had come back yet. We used that time to lay out about a dozen enormous boxes provided by Shared Harvest. We still had some down time when we finished that, so we went for a group shot inside the box. On the left you'll see my sister Jen, my mom Debbie, Kaitlyn's husband Taylor, Kaitlyn, and Adam, a volunteer from Lakota East High School. And that's me in the middle.

We actually had a lot more volunteers than this. For some reason, my brother-in-law Dan isn't in this picture. My dad took the picture. The five volunteers from Fairfield High School showed up at 3:00, and my boyfriend Kyle came over at 4:00.

Whenever a mail truck would come back from it's delivery, a few of us would meet it outside with one of those carts and plastic storage bins to unload the food. Sometimes a truck came in with two bags of food, but most of the time the back was completely filled with non-perishables.

Meet my dad, Chris! He's preparing a dolly to go out and load some more food!

Check out all of those volunteers stamping out hunger!

Once a box was completely full, we would use the dolly to wheel the skid into the enormous truck to go back to Shared Harvest.

Meet my boyfriend, Kyle!

Meet my brother-in-law, Dan! These guys were really helpful in getting all that food into the truck.

At the end of the day, Fairfield had collected a total of 11,125 pounds of food!
And the grand total of Butler County came out to be (drum roll, please)....

77,182 pounds of food!

That's 2,730 more pounds of food than last year! Hooray! Thanks again to everyone who helped out on Saturday by unloading and reloading boxes, donating food, or getting the word out! We made a huge difference this weekend!

Welcome to Indiana!

2: The number of states Kaitlyn and I were in on Monday.

Kaitlyn and I spent Monday out in Preble county visiting seven potential Ohio Benefit Bank sites. And oh, what adventures we had.

The first place we went, the Higher Heights Church of God, was a huge success. We were able to meet with a few people who seemed extremely interested in incorporating the Benefit Bank in their church. It was actually quite refreshing. They didn't hit us with illogical concerns and excuses--they saw that it was a good program with huge potential for their services. We'll probably get back with them in the next day or so to get them started on becoming a site.

After that, though, things kind of went downhill.

Two of the places we visited were residential homes. I don't know if we had the wrong address or we had somehow gotten the supervisor's home address or what, but we didn't bother going in. We left information at three other agencies. The GPS and Google Maps couldn't locate the address of another. And for the last one, we ended up in Indiana.

That wasn't our fault, though. The agency used an Ohio address for all of their mail, so that's where we sent our notice letter and where the GPS took us. We pulled into the driveway of a quaint little ranch, which was located on acres upon acres of gorgeous scenery--horses, a lake, even a barn. There was a man working on a tractor in the front yard, so we asked him if we were at the right place.

He explained that the agency was actually like a day camp for kids, and that the actually office buildings were located a mile or so up the road. We tried to leave after that, but he was kind of a chatterbox. He asked us if we had a minute to talk and, thinking he wanted to discuss the letter about the OBB we had sent, we said of course.

"We've got about seven horses, see, you can see them up there."

"Oh yeah, that's great."

"The lake is right over there, it takes up about 70 acres."

"Wow. It really is beautiful up here."

"Now you see this statue over here?" *Gestures to statue of a horse*

"Yes."

"He's painted to look exactly like that horse over there, that brown and white one. He was born about 11 months ago."

"Mm." *Back away to the car*

"Now the colors are a little different, see it's a little darker now."

It went on like that for a pretty long time. Eventually, we thanked him, got in the car, and drove about a mile up a steep, dirt drive. When we finally found the building though, we decided not to even stop in. We can't recruit sites that are in Indiana.

But at least we proved that Kaitlyn and I are dedicated VISTAs -- we're willing to go out-of-state to locate new OBB sites!

Home sweet home

Recruitment

74,452: The pounds of food collected for Shared Harvest from Stamp Out Hunger in 2009

Now that tax season is over, VISTA community trainers like Kaitlyn and I are going through what feels like an extended lack of activity. It's odd not having to pick up the phone every ten minutes to schedule tax clients, and quite nice to have most of our weekends free again. And now that we have so much extra time on our hands, we're focusing our energy on recruiting more Benefit Bank sites.

Today we'll be going to Preble County with a list of several potential sites we've been compiling since the start of our service. We sent out a letter to all of these sites a little over a week ago, letting them know what the Benefit Bank is and that we are going to be in their area today. Hopefully we'll be able to sit down with a few people and convince them to get started on becoming a site.

In other news, this Saturday is Stamp Out Hunger! I've got the post office in Fairfield covered when it comes to volunteers, and I have seven people willing to help out in Middletown (though that has been a little iffy) but we're having some trouble finding enough people in West Chester. So if you're willing to donate your time to a good cause, PLEASE let me know and I'll be happy to sign you up to go to your local post office this Saturday to help us unload, organize, and reload boxes of food to go to the Shared Harvest Foodbank. It's for a terrific cause, and we can use all the help we can get! Go here for more information!