My Place At Grace

I definitely comfortable and at peace here. I think about it more though, who I am, with so many situations where you have to decide who you are and what you want to do. Working at Living Grace was like that too. Todd was quite the star there. He really was at home very quickly, taking an active leadership role and discipling the men, and really making a huge impact. So, that’s not normally me, so I found my own niche. I found over the weeks we were there that I was the one that made sure things were running smoothly in the day to day operation side of the place. It was comfortable and peaceful there and I really enjoyed it and was good at it. One day I cooked for 80 people! Through that too, God brought me different people- people I wouldn’t have been able to talk to if my personality had been different. I did also challenge myself in areas that I wouldn’t normally do, such as giving devotions. I wasn’t too keen about being asked to do it, and felt it was an experience I could to without. In the end, I did it three times, and I actually really looked forward to doing it. Here are a few lines I wrote after a few of these experiences......

Week of June 30-July 4
This week was by far the best yet. John and Joan, the couple who runs Living Grace, were off this week, so Todd and I were left in charge. First thing Monday morning, one of the women, Selena, came in early. Selena is a woman that helps out regularly at LG, washing dishes and cleaning in exchange for a food packet at the end of the day. She is a lovely woman that has developed a trusting relationship with John and Joan. Selena came in drunk at 8:30am, with a black eye. She was with her partner, who she lives with on the street, and she was crying. Joan asked me to come with her as she talked to her in the office alone. Although Selena is able to function fairly well during the week when she is working, she faces a long weekend on Friday, when she will be on the streets until Sunday when LG serves lunch again. To cope, she usually gets drunk on the weekend, which seems to result in her partner abusing her. Selena also shared that she lost her 3 month old baby four years ago to an illness. She has never received any counselling for this. While Joan got Selena coffee and a roll, I talked and prayed with her. In the end, Selena had to leave the centre and come back when she was sober. Unfortunately, that was the last day this week that I have seen her.

Today was my day to cook! It was my first time flying solo in the kitchen. I had to make three huge pots of soup. The difficulty is that you have to work with the ingredients that have been donated, which makes following any recipe difficult. There is also a very limited selection of spices- just salt and some herbs, when they come in from the stores. Today I made a tomato based soup with ground beef, vegetables, and tortellini. I also made a type of chowder with corn and potatoes. Unfortunately, there was no milk to make it creamy. It was a lot of fun to do this today, and made the morning fly by. It was a busy day as a local newspaper was visiting today, which will hopefully be good publicity and maybe bring in more support. We also had a tour from a new church group that just arrived. Abigail, Amelia’s 7 year old daughter, came in with her, so we danced together during the lunchtime singing, me in an opera voice to make her laugh. I was teasing her about loving the cockroaches at LG and starting her own farm.