The purpose of life is not to be happy. It is to be useful, to be honorable, to be compassionate, to have it make some difference that you have lived and lived well.  Ralph Waldo Emerson

Yesterday evening, volunteers arrived ready to get to work! After a communal dinner, we gathered together to get to know each other a little better and finished the night with the traditional PV Commissioning Service. If you have ever volunteered with the PVs at any of our locations you are probably familiar with the Commissioning Service. It is a way to prepare and focus ourselves on the week ahead and bring into focus into the service we are beginning. It is a tie that binds all PVs wherever they serve.

Today being the first day of the program, the volunteers helped us to move tools and housewares up from our storage in Pineville to The Way and then helped to organize all these items. Because of all their hard work today, the rest of the summer program will run a little smoother. Their work will affect each volunteer that comes later, connecting us all together as a community. Everyone helped with the move, but then those that weren’t organizing went to the Itmann Food Bank to help paint their floors. The Food Bank sees a lot of traffic each month during distribution day and the floors take a bit of a beating. Periodically they need to be resurfaced with heavy duty anti-slip paint. This past spring the NIU students did half of the food bank and then today the summer volunteers worked to complete it. Another wonderful example of the connectedness of all PVs.

After a hard day’s work, we were all looking forward to our dinner which tonight was tuna noodle casserole, salad and homemade apple cake. It was a wonderful and comforting meal.

For reflection tonight we took time to think about how we are each coming down with our own gifts and talents to share and while we are all different, we come together as one to serve together. We went around the circle and share our “new and good” from the day, a good ol’PV tradition  : )