Garden Build Day 2

I wasn’t sure I would be able to get out of bed today.  After day one of shoveling, hauling and leveling stone dust, I hurt.    I hurt sitting down and I hurt standing up.    

I was surprised this morning after an okay night of sleep I was able to wake up and get up with little discomfort.  As I drive to church “aka our worksite” I missed the conversation, the laughter, even just the giving of directions with a van load of teens as we would drive to the worksite.   But after missing that part, I fell totally into YNIA

As one of the first to the site, I took a few pictures to remind us of where Day one left off and Day two started.  At times we wonder how to keep everyone busy during a pandemic and close quarters.  The answer, leave it to our teens.   We were asked what needed to be done and somehow teens arrived in various locations and worked.   Then old compost pile was taken down and moved, the vegetable garden was weeded and plants staked, all while a small group started the very center of the circle of pavers.  

As we moved out from the center more teens moved in.   We got our groove on with an awesome place list and carrying various pavers for the circle.   Then the idea of an assembly line was floated.   This was amazing.    It spread two and a half pallets of pavers through the four parts of the cross.   At the conclusion of the day the top and bottom of the Cross have been laid though they need some tweaking and the pavers for the arms of the Cross are all in place to be laid tomorrow.  

Now you may say that is a great day, a successful day.   But in YNIA, we don’t end at the end of the work day.  We shared an early dinner before Mass.   Our teens were the lector’s, singers and Altar Servers.   Sunday “Sundaes” were a hit but not as much as the life size Monopoly game.  

We scheduled these days to be 12 1/2 hours long.   Two days in and we could easily have spent another hour each day with our teens.  
Yes, I miss getting up early and watch them all stumble out in the morning.   I miss our van conversation.  I miss traveling to another state together.   But this pandemic has also brought us so much.   We can still gather as YNIA.   We can still grow as a team.   We can watch the teens grow and bond before our eyes.   We can gather for a project but this time we are leaving something for our community.   We celebrate as people we know and love pass by and honk their horns or stop by to see what we are up to.  

This pandemic has taken a lot from us, but it also gave us the opportunity to as we learned on our last service trip “to come to love the detours”.