For one week I was a West Virginian. I don’t know about you but it’s always right at the end of the trip where I get the hang of everything. The roads and the landmarks start to click. I understand the way to talk and dress, etc. For a week, I wore boots and jeans, I got called buddy, sweetie, honey and even a, hey you look like me. I started up a conversation everywhere I went and worked with my hands all week. I was a full blown, West Virginian. But it was more than that, this week I learned what it actually means to be a West Virginia, to be in almost heaven. It meant loving your neighbor, this was taught to me by Angela Lester. Angela started her own food pantry and has been running it for almost a decade. Angela spends all day everyday serving her community and she does so with a glad heart. She has 4 children all in the area, involved in local business and church groups. She showed me what it means to be a neighbor. She welcomed me in for a week and treated me like family. She introduced me to everyone we saw. Invited me to church and a men's church group. Bought me lunch every day without question and sat down to eat with me. She spoke honestly and openly about her faith, her story, her goals and her obstacles. Her area is rough, there is a lot of drug abuse, homelessness and food insecurity. She serves nurses, elderly and families, all without question and above and beyond their needs. She goes out of her way to make sure the people she serves have food they like and enjoy, that they can choose the clothes and food they eat like they’re shopping at a store. I came to help her this week hoping to make an impact in this community. To be honest I didn’t. I emptied out a storage room, lifted some awkward and heavy shelves, scraped paint off a wall (The worst task known to mankind), and primer on the wall. The project I came to do didn’t even get finished. But that’s not how Mrs. Angela sees it. She called me a gift from God. Her husband and her couldn’t stop smiling and commenting about how great everything looked and how amazing it was having me. To me it looked like a project not finished. To them it was a new beginning. They spent all week thanking me for coming, going out of their way to offer me breaks and food. They made doing hard work easy and long days fly by. Their family made me believe in the area. As I left on my last day, I sat in my car torn between being excited to go home and being sad to leave. It was crazy to me, less than a week ago these people were strangers. I was in a place I’d never been with people I didn’t know. Now I was leaving a different place. One where I had friends, where I knew the streets and the best food. How was it that this place felt so quickly like home? From my long hours in the basement to my time staring out over that vast beauty of New River Gorge National Park, this had felt like it was almost heaven. For a week I was a West Virginian, and from now on I will have a home away from home here. As I look back, I am so grateful for the opportunity to be welcomed in as family and I look forward to being a Virginia, New Yorker, Californian, Texian and many many more.
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