Bound for BVS

As many of you know, I am currently serving through Brethren Volunteer Service in the Church of the Brethren FaithX office. I have been serving for about 5 months already (wayyy behind on these posts!), but before I moved to Elgin, IL for my service year, I had a week long orientation.

The Summer Unit 335 had their orientation in Colorado at Camp Colorado.

The week of orientation was filled with getting to know those in our unit so we can lean on and support each other throughout the year, learning how to live on a budget and cook for yourself, learning about our working styles, how to work through difficult times at our placements, thinking about our faith journey and how and why we decided to do a BVS year, and a lot of time spent in community.

One of my favorite things about orientation was meal times and when my group was in charge of cooking the meals. We got $1 per person, per meal to buy the food we needed to cook with. That seemed super challenging at first (and I do acknowledge that for people who are food insecure, doing this every day is more of a challenge), but once you start thinking about ingredients that will make a lot but are cheap, and start looking for the vegetables that will add flavor and color, but don't weigh a lot so tend to be cheaper, it is less daunting. The time we spent cooking then in our small groups was also fun. While things were cooking or we were standing chopping veggies, it was nice to chat with my group and share some of our stories.

Another one of my favorite parts of orientation was our service project. We helped camp out by painting some of their outdoor furniture, which also provided some nice time to chat with others in the orientation group. (In case you haven't realized, I really enjoy chill time to chat with people haha.) This was also quite the bonding experience because we were taking off the chipping paint so we could repaint. If you have ever worked at taking chipped paint off wooden furniture, you probably know that it is quite an experience and can take some time. But it was great to see all the fresh paint on the benches and chairs, and now all the benches are signed with our names and BVS unit...until they need repainted again!

As I think back to the sessions we did to prepare us for our placements, the two that were my favorite were the working styles session and the resiliency session. And maybe 5 months out, those stick as my favorite because they are the two that I think about most often at my placement.

The working styles sessions got us thinking about how we best work; is it with people or alone, are we fast paced or slow paced, do we like to plan everything out or just dive right in. Personally it took me a while to finally figure out what working style I am because I wanted all the details and information before making a decision, which is why if you know the working styles you won't be surprised that I am a blue working style. This has helped me with my work as a team because I can better see where my thought process is coming from and where the other team members are coming from.

The resiliency session talked a lot about how we come back from challenging situations. What we can do to help ourself prepare for what could be challenging and then also what we can do to help ourselves after. A lot of this has to do with taking a moment to see what we are feeling internally and what our body is telling us. This has been particularly beneficial for me because the transition to living a new place, experiencing new things, and having other minor things to deal with from time to time, adds up in transitional times and it is important to be able to work though it, be resilient, and not let it keep getting you down.

Orientation taught me so much, gave me the opportunity to meet new people, and to prepare for what this BVS year might bring. Some days I wish I could go back to those calming days at camp anticipating what was to come, but I also have loved this adventure so far and never quite could have anticipated all that has happened. Plus I have mid year retreat to look forward to in a few months!