June 18th

By Jody

This morning most of my kids said, “today we get to do what we came here for.” Personally, I think I had already gotten well under way on my reason for coming, well before this morning. I came to Montana to meet new people, to put myself out of my comfort zone by going to a culturally different part of the US, and to serve others by doing whatever is asked of me. One of my other goals was to expose my children to a community very different from their own and to ask them to “give” rather than always receiving.  I had already met new people prior to our work assignments: Carita from Minneapolis, Linda from New York City, Kelsey from Bellingham/Missoula, Matt from Los Angeles, and Garry and Pat from Colorado and Virginia respectively. In our volunteer family I was trying to do whatever is asked of me, it is nice to not always be leading! J

 But we arrived at the Blackfeet Community College for our community meeting. In adding to our team some of the attendees were Dee from the college, Tony & Laura from the Boys and Girls Club, Kelly from the CDC, Betty from Social/Family Services, and Rachel from Blackfeet Manpower.

We spent an hour trying to work through the open projects and how many were needed. The logistic dilemma was that most projects only needed one volunteer and yet we had to ensure that our family volunteers always had one parent with the minors. Carita was the only free agent- so her time was quickly booked for the week.

The final plan for the day was for Jody, Nate and Ross to spend an hour at the library designing a flyer and agenda for holding a computer video game learning session for local kids. Carita would spend the afternoon at the library performing various tasks. Pat, Garry, and Matt headed to the Care Center. Mark, Alec, Tai and Ava were to work on the garden at the Community Development Center.

Nate, Ross and I finished planning the video game sessions with Ginny, we designed the flyers with a local resident, Cooper, and then walked to the IGA, Glacier Family Market, Exxon Station, and the Post Office to hand the flyers. They then returned to the library to create a resource sheet for the librarians to use in the future for assisting patrons on computer online age-appropriate games.

Garry, Pat and Matt plated exercise games with the residents at the Care Center and helped with crafts.

Ava, Tai, Alec and Mark spent their afternoon weeding and prepping the garden at the CDC. They came back extra dusty and dirty and claimed that there was a lot of rocks to deal with.

We all met briefly to go over our fire evacuation plan, utilizing the great map Tai has put together for Global Volunteers.

Mark, Pat, Gary and Kelsey headed out to the sweat lodge for the evening ceremony. Linda, Carita, Jody and all the kids went to Eagle Shield for dinner. Maria prepared us a great meal of beef stew, rolls, cottage cheese/strawberry salad, and carrot cake. Everyone raved about the delicious dinner and ate multiple servings. We then returned to the Head Start building for a quick swim, showers, and then back to the kitchen for card play.

I think some people felt they weren’t making a big enough difference helping in the community. Some were disappointed in the “missing” or “vanishing” work projects. Others wish they had more interaction with the local community.

Overall, we all learned on day one that being flexible is critical. I tried to slow down and just relax into the environment. I spoke to local kids at the library, had a great discussion with Ginny from the library about a Montana tutoring program, met the managers at the local grocery stores, spoke with the Postmaster, and spoke with several employees at the community center. Although I may not have served side by side with these community members yet, I have enjoyed meeting and conversing with everyone I have encountered here on the Reservation. Now if I can just find time to read the Blackfeet History book I purchased per Joe’s recommendation, then I believe my perspective will become even clearer.