I have a crazy job. Thank God for Saturdays and Sundays.

Greetings, dear ones.

After a brief heat wave, temperatures have returned to moderate/perfect here in Gresham. What’s strange about our weather, at least in this part of the state, is that it is quite cool when I wake up and walk to work, but when I walk home from work at 5pm, I often have to peel off a few layers. It seems that the hottest time of day is at 5—very interesting. Still, it’s usually not nearly as hot as back home because we don’t have the humidity here. I went for a lovely run the other day at about 5:30 and it was about 70 degrees and sunny. I’d call that close to perfect.

Mt. Hood, taken from my roof (I climb out my window).

The first three hours of the day are often quite gray, and I’m always pleased when I leave the office and see that the sun has come out and Mt. Hood is perfectly clear in the distance. For those of you who think I could have taken a more quality picture of the mountain, perhaps you’ll like the new shot, which I took from the roof outside my bedroom window, where I often read and journal and stare at the mountain. One of my favorite walk-run-hikes here (a true “adventure run,” Molls!) is up Gresham Butte, and the view it provides is amazing. Mt. Hood is an active volcano that could blow any day (I can often see Mt. St. Helens in the distance as well, which blew its top in 1980 as some of you may know)… nothing like living on the edge!

The work week was pretty good, though we’re all still getting used to our lives being occupied from 9-5 (some people with long commutes are booked from 7:30-7:30; I realize I’m lucky to live only seven minutes—on foot!—away from El Programa). We’re pretty lame most nights. We come home, work out or nap or read in the living room or on the roof, have dinner together, chat a bit or have a Community or Spirituality Night, and get to bed by 11 or so. We have a lovely system for our dinners; every night, Monday-Thursday, two people cook dinner for everyone. We often cook for sixteen people so that we can all eat leftovers for lunch the next day, so those on dinner duty have their work cut out for them. The cooks decide what time dinner will be served (often pretty late) and then, if you’re home, you join everyone at the table. If you’re not, you know that there will be a portion of delicious home-cookin’ set aside for you when you make it back.

A shot of part of my room. Decor is sparce but meaningful. :)

The other half of my room. I love that green chair, of course.

My cooking night for right now is on Thursday, and Linds is my partner. In our house of eight, we’re probably the two people with the least culinary experience/talent, but we’ll learn! We’re using our wonderful moms as resources; last week, we made a recipe from Mama Wolff (Southwest Breakfast Casserole—I can post it if you’re interested because it was yummy!). Next week, Linds will secure a cheap and easy recipe from her mom and we’ll cook for our army. I enjoy our quiet week nights and try to make sure that I’m doing things in the morning and after work that make my life feel fuller. I often run before I go to the office (if not, I’ll work out after work sometimes). I always leave work for the lunch hour and will sometimes call people and reconnect, which always brightens my day. After work, I enjoy reading, reading, reading. I should create another blog for the books I’ll devour this year! Anyway, as with anything, it’s all about finding a rhythm, and we’re still establishing that, but we’ll get there. 

A few notes from the work week: I basically decided, after a slow Monday and a discouraging Tuesday, that this job, like much in life, will give me what I put into it. I had been too nervous about not understanding people—or speaking incomprehensible Spanish—so I wasn’t answering the phones. On Tuesday, Monica, one of the other girls in our lobby area, told me that I’d have to start learning to answer the phones. Well, I didn’t think I needed a tutorial so much as I needed some guts. So, I just started answering calls, and I often didn’t know what to say to people who called with broad and diverse concerns, but I asked Carmen and Monica lots of questions and slowly started to learn what to tell people calling for legal counsel, what to tell people wanting food vouchers, what to tell people needed appointments for resumes, and so on. 

I decided to take the same approach with the people coming into our office. Carmen and Monica helped with that because they sort of just told me, “A client is coming in and needs help making a phone call/finding a record of a marriage certificate/creating a resume. You can do that, right?” Inside, I thought, “Um. No,” but what were my options? So, this week, I was able to observe Karen (a volunteer who does some energy assistance and some notarizing, two things I’ll be doing; she’s in the office once or twice a week) do some notary things, and I helped Carmen to an energy intake. It was amazing to look at this beautiful lady, JoAnn, and tell her, “We’re able to give you $400 to help you catch up on your energy bills.” She told me she’d been “blest by the best” that day. Her situation was heart-wrenching and an all-too-often-heard story. She lost her job of fourteen years not long ago and hasn’t found other employment. Her rent costs $850/month and she receives unemployment for $856. She gets food stamps worth about $104 and makes that work for her, but she’s o ften left unable to pay her utility bills. She pays only what’s necessary to not get shut off, but after awhile she’s bound to get behind, at which point she gets help from her family members or needs to come to an agency like ours. 

Sadly, we only have funding right now to help people with a certain energy company, so many of the disheartening moments of my day come from having to tell the people calling us (who have the OTHER energy company) that we can’t help them at this time. That’s why it felt so good to actually be able to provide assistance to JoAnn, who does have the provider for which we currently have some funding. I’m excited to receive more funding this winter so that we can help more people because it breaks my heart to have to say “No,” “Sorry,” and “I know no one else in the area has any funding either… No, I’m not really sure what you can do…” again and again and again.  

I also helped a woman named Maria this week, who was trying to track down the record of her original marriage certificate from North Carolina from 2005. She needed it for some other official task she was doing but realized she had never received it. So, she’d had someone help her write a letter to NC Vital Records to track it down. She sent in the $24 search fee and, after a few weeks, received a letter in response saying that they were keeping the money for their efforts but that their search hadn’t found any such record. Discouraged and confused, she came into our office and asked if I could call and find out what was going on. She gave me two documents—something that looked like a copy of her marriage license application and also a pseudo-marriage-certificate document that looked official except that it was lacking a signature. I figured there must have been a communication problem because these documents seemed to confirm that she had indeed married her husband in 2005 in that state.  

So, I called the state and they found nothing again, something I thought was preposterous. I called the county in which she’d been married and their search also produced nothing; she simply wasn’t in their database, which wouldn’t have been the case had she actually gotten married there in that year. I was confused and getting frustrated on the phone with the woman at the records office when she finally asked me, “Wait a second. Are those documents in front of you white? The application papers?” When I said yes, she told me that Maria and her husband were supposed to have returned those copies to the Vital Records office, at which point they could also submit $10 and receive an official certificate. The process had never been completed, and I don’t even know if they were “officially” married all this time, something I had to explain to Maria. We both laughed, but I was also upset because this was another clear case of someone being lost in the system because she can’t speak English and because no one bothered to make sure that she understood these things at the time. In addition, all of the names on her marriage license were spelled wrong and mixed up (many Latinos have two last names, which some people can’t seem to keep straight if they don’t understand that cultural phenomenon). We drafted a letter that should hopefully help her get everything organized. She was extremely grateful. 

Something else I’ve had to do a few times at work is make calls to the jail and courthouse to find out the status of individuals recently taken into custody. I had three different women come in looking for their brother/husband/cousin this week. These men had each been arrested for charges not totally known to the woman in question, and the women didn’t know how to find out where the guys were being kept, for how long, and whether or not there was any hearing coming up or any chance to visit them. I learned to navigate this particular maze fairly quickly with a few calls to the right places.

It was pretty crazy to find out that one of these guys was in for SIX charges—rape, robbery, kidnap, sexual abuse, unlawful sexual penetration (first and second degree)—and was also going to be in trouble with immigration when all of that got sorted out. I had to tell his sister that these were the charges he was being accused of, that his hearing was coming up in a few days and she could call back (or come back to the office and have me call) to find out how it went if she wasn’t able to attend, and that he might also be deported…which means that she probably had to embark on an entirely separate and confusing maze to find an attorney that doesn’t charge a ton of money and would possibly represent him. Sometimes the things I have to translate for people are easy—documents and letters and passport applications—and sometimes I have to tell them hard things.

After tearing up one goat house and replacing it with this one.

Needless to say, I appreciate the rest that weekends offer. Last night, we went out in Portland briefly (we found that we were actually all quite sleepy by midnight or so and that we can’t afford to buy anything very good to drink anyway!), and today I had a BEAUTIFUL morning because Jim and Mary Ann, two other support people we have, invited us on a fun and gorgeous adventure. The Columbia River Gorge is perhaps one of the most breathtaking sights in this country, as I discovered this morning on our way to a 1916 mansion-turned-residence of Franciscan nuns. Their villa is in the Gorge and their grounds include gardens and patios and fountains, waterfalls, twisty trees, goats, chickens, and the mansion itself, which is pretty amazing.

A waterfall on the nuns' property. Amazing!

The nine nuns who live there are spunky and energetic. We worked on cleaning the goats’ barn and then demolishing a little house that they play in out in the field. Erin, Jillian and I were the only three able to go this morning, and I was so happy I got up and went because the ride was absolutely beautiful, the nuns were awesome, and it felt so good to do some manual labor. I tore apart the boards and ripped out rusty nails and scraped goat poo off the floor of the barn, and I loved it all! The Midwestern Hulk in me definitely came out as I tore the decrepit structure from limb to limb, ripping out rusty nails and snapping rotting 2-by-4's. It was exhilarating, actually, breathing the fresh Northwestern air and just using some muscles! We got lunch there, too—not a bad deal!—and stopped at two beautiful look-out points on the way home because Mary Ann is the best tour guide ever and knows everything about hiking and exploring the gorge. Tomorrow, we’re going on a 13-mile hike with some people from the other area JV houses (Hillsboro, Portland Mac, and Portland Morris), and although I’m a little nervous about pounding out thirteen miles, I am so excited for more scenery.

A panoramic of the Gorge area from Crown Point lookout.

Alright, unfortunately I have to stop here because it’s time for Mass. This week, we put a  “Get to know us” insert in the St. Henry’s bulletin, so all of the nuns recognized our faces and we met more people from the parish, who all asked us, “Do you need anything? A table? A waffle maker? A twin bed?” (we always say yes!). I like getting to know the people in this community, and I am gradually falling in love with this state. I know that all of you would love it, so please come visit!!

Time for Mass.

Love,

Amanda