At orientation, the BVS staff talked about how we would receive far more from this year than we could ever give. I imagine that like other first time BVSers, I agreed, but actually had no concept of what they meant. I had volunteered before through projects with school, church, and other programs and I thought I knew what the staff referred to when they spoke of some of the personal gains of service. I had no idea. This year, I came to see how much my cup was overflowing with grace, mercy, and love from God. He emptied my life of many things, including some pride, and refilled it with a sense of community and connection to people.

The Lord used the people of Harrisonburg, VA, where I spent this past year working at the Community Mediation Center, to show me this grace, mercy, and love. Notice that others extend these to me, far more than I could extend to each of them. It amazes me the variety of settings and circumstances under which this occurred: from my coworkers to my neighbors, in church, on the bus, at the Rockingham Fair, and everywhere.

First, I became needy. In almost every circumstance, far too numerous to recount, I had a need that others could fill, which forced me to reach out in ways I had never done previously. One example I'd like to share is the "outfitting" of our kitchen, though the same could be said of our whole living situation. I say "our" because I lived in a townhouse with two other BVSers, Karin and Rudolf Klein, from the same orientation unit as myself. They worked at Camp Brethren Woods, which is in the same vicinity. Earlier, I had moved into that same townhouse with Laura, a graduate student, who within two months of my arrival needed to go and take additional course work in Indiana. She kindly left behind the majority of her belongings for us to use and was able to find a furnished apartment near the seminary she would be attending. Laura did need, however, many of her kitchen items for the new place.

A hodge-podge of kitchen items resulted. It may sound odd, but I loved it. At first, we were rather nonplused about putting out the word of what we needed and seeking to obtain it all. Once our needs were met, though, I realized how amazing it was, and how many people's kitchen wares we had collected all to give us our daily bread. Our knife-set came from Laura (as many items), our large pot and silverware from Kathy, my boss, our baking pans and some dishcloths from the camp where the Klein's worked, our mugs, glasses, and other pots from a man we had never met, but he knew one of my co-workers, dishtowels from a woman who saw a bulletin in church, the list goes on and on.

While these are all tangible items, they represent far more to me. They represent the people who gave them. It started because we could not meet our own needs. Many people in the community supplied our need, and freely gave or loaned things to us without questions, without judgment, without insinuating we should be able to supply these on our own. Not all of them understood or had heard of BVS. They simply gave in response to the need or from having connections to one of us, or from having connections with someone we knew. Our kitchen and our townhouse represented a community to me.

The responses of people in the community to our needs was affirming. I know that not everyone who is needy experiences this. Many receive rejection and judgment. I wonder about what happened to simpler living when not everyone on the block was expected to possess his/her own hedge clippers and lawnmowers and tillers, etc. You give what you have, and your neighbor gives what s/he has. It took me 10 months in BVS to begin to understand that concept I had read about as a child of "being neighborly." It is offering grace, mercy, and love to those around us. It is not expecting all us to be an island of self-sufficiency, but valuing what each of us can bring to the community and supplying for each other what we cannot supply alone. It is filling each other's cups to overflowing.