Orientation observations

This past Friday we had a visitor come through the BVS office - Genelle! She was one of the Orientation Coordinators for my unit (along with Callie) and was in town visiting her sister, LeAnn. We reminisced a bit about my unit, talking about where everyone was and what they were up to. It got me to thinking about the differences of our BVS orientation experiences here within the house.

There were 31 volunteers in Unit 277. We split our orientation time between two Missouri towns: Peace Valley (pop: 455) and Kansas City (pop: 464,310). The only time we slept in real beds was at the Missouri-Arkansas District Conference and Internet availability was largely non-existent for us. I headed off to Colorado at the end of orientation where I wouldn't know anyone for a few hundred miles in any direction. This would be my first of three projects plus a stint in Portland, Ore.

Here's Theresa's unit, #303, which began a year and a half ago. She had a full unit of 24 (apparently 31 was a bit much) and roughly three quarters of her unit has already finished their time in BVS. She went to Texas for her project, where I think the only person she knew upon her arrival was her housemate whom she had met three weeks earlier at the beginning of her orientation in New Windsor, Md. Theresa is now in her second year of BVS in a much different setting and workplace than last year.

Jessie was in a winter unit, 304, which meant they met in Gotha, Fla. for their three weeks together. At 13 members, her unit was larger than many winter orientations, but still the smallest unit among those in the Elgin house here. Jessie was the first BVSer at her project in New York and only had five other volunteers with her for her mid-year retreat last summer. Jessie's unit is also unique in that possibly only one volunteer from the entire unit will be done with their term of service exactly one year after beginning due to some not making it a year, taking two-year international placements, or serving at an interim project while they waited for their first choice to open up.

Unit 307 went through orientation this past fall and included Hannah, Kristen, and Laura. At 17 members, it's a somewhat small unit for the fall. Like Theresa, they met in New Windsor, Md. for their orientation. They were a younger unit than many, too - eight of the volunteers from this group are still teens. Unlike Jessie, Theresa, and me, it was already known where Hannah, Kristen, and Laura would be going after orientation because it had been decided months before.

It's interesting to think about how our orientation experiences shape our time in BVS. I never occurred to me that not every unit gelled like mine until I got to my first mid-year retreat and met the summer unit. Surely technology plays a role as well with access to things such as Facebook, cell phones, and texting. SnapChat is pretty popular with some of the housemates here for keeping up with what's going on with other volunteers at their projects. To imagine what it would've been like to enter into a program like this twenty or thirty years ago is pretty wild. Brief phone calls and snail mail letters must have been a remarkably sustaining energy source.

And then there's the current unit, 308, that is down in Gotha, Fla. with Jessie and Jocelyn. This isn't a picture of a food group, but the entire unit - all six of them. There are some similarities that surely we all would recognize - food runs on small budgets, trying to stay awake during sessions, curiosity and awe for the new place they are staying, etc. They're even roughly half from Brethren backgrounds like all of our units were (which is not always true - only one out of 12 from the summer unit, for example). What awaits them when they reach whatever comes after orientation is still anyone's guess. Maybe one of them will even end up here in the Elgin BVS house someday and they'll get a chance to tell their story on here, too.