Orientation (part 1)

Orientation has begun and to sum it up: I am super pumped about this year of MVS in Rochester! 

I’ve been in Rochester, NY since Friday night.  My roommate Keturah Miller is awesome and we are getting along splendidly. You can check out her blog too if your are interested in hearing more from the Rochester Unit. Together we live in a spacious two bed room apartment above a family home in the 19th Ward. This is a new place for the MVS unit, so in between the craziness of orientation we've been organizing our living space and hanging up wall decorations (we're slightly intimidated by the curtain rods - so we're gonna wait for some help from the church before we tackle those :) ). 

Orientation has been led mostly by our support team (Jubilee /J-Team for short) made up of two young couples from our church, Rochester Area Mennonite Fellowship. Austin and Megan Pettigrew and Bryan and Kristin Babcock live only a few blocks down from us and have been a great support over the past few days. I'm looking forward to getting to know them more as the year continues. They seem ubber excited about this city and about working for change and social justice here and their excitement is contagious. Among the other things they are in to, they have recently started a nonprofit beekeeping operation to educate inner city kids about bees and plant reproduction (check out Sweet Beez online)  Conversations with our J-Team have filled me with energy as we discuss social issues, hope, justice, and intentional community at every opportunity.

Along with our epic conversations, orientation has been filled with details, plans, and exploration. Life this year will be busy, as on top of work Ket and I will participate in a book study with our J-team, a prayer and potluck night, and an evening workshop with clients from my work every week. There's also Friday night frisbee, a vibrant church life, and hopefully more community events to plan and be apart of. One of the goals of the Rochester unit is to be a presence of hope in the local community and I'm excited to see how we make this a reality. We're also excited about spiritual development and vocational skill building. 

Exploring Rochester has meant a few different things: we visited the People's Festival at the Ghandi Institute, looked down on the city from the Sweet Beez hives on the roof of an old warehouse, watched the labor day parade, climbed through the abandoned subway tunnels, been the only white people on the city bus, watched a documentary about the 1964 race uprisings in Rochester, had authentic Rochester Dinosaur BBQ (Nick Tahou Hots, the place to get a famous "Garbage Plate," was closed due to the holiday), explored downtown parks, etc. 

On Sunday we attended Rochester Mennonite Area Fellowship, the church that's supporting us during our year of service. The congregation was so extremely welcoming and warm - I instantly felt right at home. Singing from the blue Hymnal and supplements again almost made me tear up. The children’s story was acted out with the wooden figurines my mom used to use for children's church and was full of “wonder” language. We had potluck after the service and everyone was so excited and engaging. Plus the food was delicious. 

I have yet to start my placement (that will happen on Wednesday) and there are a few more orientation things to do yet, but so far I am filled with excitement and hope for this year in Rochester. There are so many things to look forward to!