These last few weeks have been especially busy at The Michael House as we prepared to receive new moms, welcomed two women interviewing to become MissionCorps members, and trained many new volunteers and student interns from ASU and GCC. All of this on top of practicing Simple September and juggling babysitting for one of our moms while she goes to school 5-6 days a week. So what does all of this mean for a Corps member? I just have to take it one blessed day at a time.
Let me give you an idea of the things that make me excited lately:
• Getting calls from interested volunteers and watching the babysitting sign-up sheet fill up slowly but surely
• Sorting through donations of baby girl clothes and knowing that soon a toddler in need will have a new ladybug outfit
• Fruit snacks, construction paper, and brightly-colored pens
• Praying three times a day with my fellow Corps members
• Opening stuck drawers in the kitchen
• Having all of the carpets in the entire house steam-cleaned because one volunteer was willing to take on the project
• Getting an email from a priest interested in saying Mass at the house, just when I wanted to give up on it
• Burping a baby, getting him to smile, and being able to feed a week-old little girl
Listening to teething babies cry in the middle of the night isn’t exactly the most joyful thing in the world. But then I remember that it really is such a blessing to be able to serve these moms and babies, that listening to a baby cry for milk every morning at 6:50 means that that little family has a safe place to sleep at night, and that all of these things are possible because of the kindness and generosity of complete strangers.
If you’d asked me a year ago what I’d be doing right now, I would have never thought I’d be living in a home with six mothers, their brand-new babies, and three other young women with the same crazy passion to serve those in need. I definitely wouldn’t have thought that toting a 2-month-old to Mass would be my idea of fun. But now that I’m here, and I’ve gotten a chance to see the great and little things happening every day, I couldn’t imagine a better way to spend my time.
-Lucy, The Micheal House
