Day 1 of the Animal Service trip and we have found the Jacksonville community to be more than inviting. Arriving late Saturday night, our group was invited into the youth center by one of the St. Mark's Episcopal Church members. Our facility proved to be more than expected, couches, large bathrooms, TV and all. After sleeping peacefully through the night and being woken to the site of Dunkin' Donuts from our hosts around 7 A.M. we were invited to go to the 8:45 mass with the St. Mark's Church members. Although all the members of our group do not follow the Episcopalian faith (actually none of us do) we decided that this would be an amazing learning experience for all of us, and a great way to respect our amazing hosts. The service was beautiful and only took an hour.
Afterwards, we were greeted by a pastor who knew the Mizzou "Fight Song", a woman who was an Alpha Chi Omega graduate from 1975 and another woman who's son also attends Mizzou. This experience was enlightening because we saw that the people of this community related to us more then we ever thought they would.
Humbled, we continued to our first scheduled service event; volunteering at the Jacksonville Humane Society. Not far from out location, the whole team showed up ecstatic to see the puppies we were sure the humane society held. We entered the front office to find that the humane society had a miscommunication and was not expecting us this morning. Being Gumby as MAB has always instructed us to do, we told them we would do anything they needed, after further discussion, they decided it would be most helpful for them if we picked up sticks in their animal cemetery. The cemetery was, as most cemeteries are, very sad. We walked around picking up sticks for about 15 minutes, then we all unintentionally got distracted by the names of the animals and the messages on the headstones. Being the passion-stricken animal lovers that we are, we got inspiration strike. We walked back to the storage shed and asked if we could use wheelbarrows and rakes to further clean up the cemetery. For the next 5 hours we raked the years build up of leaves, swept the headstones, and overall tried to beautify the animals' resting places.
Although the work was everything but what we thought it was going to be, one thing we learned, as a group, is that, this is why we're here. We are not here to do the things we all want to do, which in our group's case is play with puppies. We remembered that these organizations can get a lot of local help that is willing to play with puppies, but almost none that is willing to rake leaves for 5 hours. However, these tasks are the ones that these volunteer-based organizations need out-of-town volunteers like us to do, the ones that they cannot spend their days doing. During the day, regular volunteers that were walking the dogs stopped by to tell us how much better we were making the cemetery look and how much they appreciated what we were doing. This made all the hard work worth it to us. We knew that we were making a difference to the people that are there all the time, the dogs that call that space home, and the pets that were being remembered in that space.
We did, during a break, get to go see the puppy room, where we proceeded to all "AWH" for 20 minutes as we were able to take them out of their cages and play with them. As much as we wanted to, we didn't get to adopt any… L However, this break was a nice dessert for our hard (and hot) labor. We left hot and dirty, but most importantly, we knew we impacted the volunteers, so we were satisfied and happy.
Later in the day, we also got a chance to talk with the St. Mark's youth group that meets in the place where we are sleeping for the week. We told them a little bit about what we are doing here, and they told us a little bit about their church and we found out that they are too going on mission trips over the summer. It was nice for the group to know that youth in the community appreciates our presence and our service and that they were looking to do the same in their futures.
We took a walk as a group to let the youth group finish, and on the way, we were again reminded of how amazing the community in Jacksonville is. Down the street, a friendly married couple with their delightful dog, Bo, greeted us. We stood in a circle and entertained Bo for a half an hour and told the family about what we were doing here in Jacksonville. Their neighbors walked down the street a few minutes later with their Westies, which we also bombarded and we told them about our service as well. All the people here are so excited we are here in Jacksonville to serve and they all offered us so many things (food, movies, entertainment) letting us know that we really are welcomed. We continued on our walk by looking at the many parks in this neighborhood, watching the sunset, and taking endless numbers of group selfies (proving our group dynamic is stronger than we anticipated).
(This is Bo.)
(Maria with a neighborhood cat.)
Needless to say, we are having an amazing time. We cannot wait to continue our adventure and as always, We're In It For The ZOU. We'll keep you updated, but for now, we have to play more Heads Up! Bye.
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