I once heard someone state “God comes out of the darkness to call us into communion. The story is us responding or not responding.” They are words I have pondered upon a great deal. It seems that for every person such a call to communion is different. What are the feelings in our hearts and minds which lead to doing the unexpected? For me, the unexpected was coming to Christian Appalachian Project. Going to eastern Kentucky for almost a year, helping repair homes for low-income families – work I was unaccustomed to doing – and living in a house with fourteen other people I had never met before. When trying to tell people about the experience it is extremely difficult for me. There are so many emotions, experiences, and other elements to attempt to convey. When the inevitable questions of “What was it like this past year? What did you do? Why?” are posed they are very hard to answer.
I didn't think I would ever come back here after taking my last Alternative Spring Break trip to the region in March 2011. I had job applications which I strongly felt would accept me. Yet by the end of that trip something had changed within me. What began as speculation – the possibility of coming to CAP for a year – had transformed into the firmest resolve to apply. As I began the long journey back to New Jersey with my college I found myself searching for a way to communicate to others what I felt was a call to at least investigate whether there was a place in CAP for me.
How peculiar it was to tell people what I intended to do after graduating. Yet for me there was the incredibly strong feel that this is where I belonged and needed to be. Within a week after getting back from the alternative spring break trip, I had made my decision.
I was told that this experience would not only change me but ruin me! The word 'ruin' in this context, however, does not mean harm or destroy, but change perceptions beyond what they were. I was told that the way I viewed the world would be irrevocably altered. I was told that I would learn and see much. Looking back I am rather amazed at the accuracy of those words. For learn much I did.
I learned a great deal about carpentry. I learned how to use saws, hammers, and other tools. I learned how to plan a ramp, build floors, construct tin roofs and install windows and doors. I learned how to make a campfire, how to cut down one's own Christmas tree, and how to dance to bluegrass music – something I am still particularly awful at.
Yet such things are comparatively minor when I reflect on what else I have learned. This is because God taught me a great deal more beyond carpentry skills, outdoor activities, and how to, or rather not to, dance.
I learned that sometimes people who have little to offer materially may have great things to offer culturally and spiritually. It is incredible to meet someone who makes a mere four hundred dollars a month and yet has such a love of life, God, and all those around them. It is amazing when one encounters a great many people who were hard-workers throughout their entire lives – coal miners, farmers, tractor salesmen – and have now been reduced to poverty. Yet, in spite of all hardships they are filled with love and peace to all around them.
I learned that material possessions, although important, must not come to dominate our lives. Any number of factors, including tornados, can take away our material posssessions in an instant. In early March, the region – much of it never having even seen or heard of a tornado touching down in the mountains - was hit by well over a dozen tornados. Towns such as West Liberty and Salyersville – where I had lived for two months – were largely destroyed with great numbers of people losing their homes and possessions. To be a part of the disaster relief efforts was both very humbling and shocking.
I learned that living in a community of fourteen people I have never met before is not an easy thing. We do not all have the same perspective. It is sometimes tempting to want to treat community life as an inconvenience or something that has to be dealt with. However, I saw that if people were willing to work together and treat their community as more than a place to rest their heads at the end of the day, it could be a second home and family. Meeting people from a great deal of perspectives and backgrounds truly is fascinating and I feel I am a much deeper person for it. My own community, the Johnson House, has become a second home to me. It is a place I will deeply miss for its family atmosphere and the love for one another that I have encountered here.
I learned that trusting in God, one of the hardest things I have ever done in my life, is so important. That old quip, which I usually dislike, of “God works in mysterious ways” is sometimes very accurate. None of my plans involved me coming to eastern Kentucky to be a carpenter for a non-profit. Nor did they include any of the other things I have seen or done while I have been down here. Yet I could not imagine my life without having this experience and feel tremendously blessed for it.
When it comes to life, there are various questions we must ask. Take, for example, the identity question: “Who am I?” Or, perhaps, the intimacy question: “Who will I be with?” Yet, the final question we must ask is what all of this – our lives – means. What is the meaning of everything? I am not quite sure how to answer such a question for myself at present. However, when looking at the CAP experience as a microcosm of that final question I can provide an answer of sorts. I am frequently asked “why?” in regards to my CAP experience. Why have a job that pays $150 dollars a month, forces you to live with strangers, and involves working forty to fifty-five hours a week?
I will admit that it is not something I ever intended to do for the rest of my life. In a nutshell, I felt an indescribable calling in my soul that said that is where I belonged. I came to serve God and the wonderful people of this region as well as to learn from their great wisdom and love. Service to others is never a one-way street; we ourselves are changed in the process. No, it was not always easy and sometimes I found a great many doubts and trials. I come away from this experience a greatly different man than when I left. Some of these trials were at times even a bit amusing. For example, I remember thinking – as I reflected upon what the upcoming year in Kentucky would be like – upon my dislike of spiders, heat, and getting dirty. How peculiar it was that I found my first day of work sitting in between the rafters of a bathroom which had no floor, cutting sewage pipes, covered in mud, with a with a wolf spider infestation around me! I suppose God does have a sense of humor after all.
Other trials I had were not so amusing. I remember spending two days in late December going to deliver Christmas presents to various people whom CAP served. Yet it seemed that every single person on the list I had was undergoing a crisis at the time and needed someone to speak to. What do you say to a lonely man whose sister, the human being he has been the closest to his entire life, died a month prior? What to tell an elderly woman, hard of hearing but filled with compassion who actually made me lunch, wondering when CAP will be able to send another elderly caseworker to help her? Or rather, how to react to a woman whose best friend next door has just died five minutes before my arrival and desperately, amid her tears and the sounds of ambulances, needs someone, anyone, to comfort her and wants me to pray with her?
Most importantly, perhaps, I have learned the importance of humility. It is humbling to engage in work in which I most certainly do not have a natural aptitude for. That is not to say that my work was poor or that I disliked carpentry. I greatly enjoyed all that I was a part of, but found myself learning at a slower pace than a great many others who were here. It is humbling to meet so many wonderful people who live and work with you: a former missionary to China, a recovering addict who turned his entire life around to become a servant of God and the poor, a seventy year-old woman who has traveled the world and tells me that she is “not ready for the rocking chair yet!” These are just a few of the amazing people I have had the opportunity to work and live with at CAP. More to the point, however, it is humbling to meet people who have so little yet have such hearts of love. I have worked on the homes of people which were falling apart. Yet so many of them had such love and peace in their hearts.
When I first arrived, a wise man, whom I will simply refer to as Winston, informed me that once you work on someone's home they will treat you like family. That is one of the most amazing things of the people here: their hospitality. Several of us have gone back to some of the participants we have assisted and have been welcomed into their homes with open arms. When I am asked where I saw God in this past year the first thing I say is through the people whose homes I had the privilege to work upon. I can remember helping rebuild much of Tim and Patty's trailer, insulating the home of Gene and Roger, installing a new tin roof for Carla and Hansel, building a new kitchen floor for Miron and Janet, and a great many others. All of these people are wonderful and I have been blessed to meet them. As I prepared to leave, a co-worker mentioned to me that “you will not forget those whom you served and they will not forget you.” How true those words are.
Chris Giorlando served as a long-term volunteer in Elderly Housing and was a member of the Johnson Volunteer Community. He finished his volunteer term in May, and is now preparing to serve as a teacher with the Pacific Alliance for Catholic Education.
