As a 16 year old, my first experience with Sierra Service Project convinced me that faith was not just a pleasant Sunday morning activity. It awakened a desire to make a difference in the world, and let me see that I could be a part of something bigger, deeper, and more important than I had suspected.
When I became a member of the staff, I learned how to adapt to almost anything. These were the early days (1979-84), and every year was its own new adventure. My first summer was in Orleans, California, on a staff of three – Janet Gollery (now McKeithen) was our site director, and her brother, Marty and I shared supply and construction. We also had a teacher from Fresno, George Reid, with us for the first two weeks. A cook hired from the community never showed up, and we made do somehow. I won’t get into the details. We encountered hostility from local youth at the beginning of the summer, ultimately leading to community-wide Thursday afternoon softball games before we were done. An adult counselor from southern California pulled out a rifle to defend us (he thought) one night, and the youth minister from San Dieguito (“Big John” McFarland) helped defuse the situation. We met Grace Davis, who ate cereal from bowls she had woven years before, but whose childhood home was falling down.
Every week, it seemed, we faced some new and unexpected challenges. We learned to trust in people we had never known, and in resources beyond what we could see. In different ways that was true every year. The names and the faces of the youth and families varied from one summer to the next, along with the conditions at the sites, and the makeup of the staff. But there was always a thread of grace that held us together and kept us going. In the work of SSP, it is visible still.
