at seventy-seven

Today was my grandma's 77th birthday.  I spent the morning at the MRC making relief kits.  Once again, I had the pleasure of working around and with a group of 70+, maybe even all 75+ lovely people bantering and joking and working efficiently.  Sometimes there's a break to joke with managers about when their pay is coming, sometimes there's a break to find a chair, sometimes to shoot rubber bands at each other, but mostly the breaks come when we run out of a supply and we're already 3/4 a skid done.

I went to lunch with four of the ladies, two sets of sisters.  And so, I happily sat listening to their lives of who's doing what, who's grandkids are doing what, who's still alive, what wonderful food they had here last week.  But the beautiful thing to me, is that even though they chatter on about their lives in this small pocket of the county when their feet rarely venture out of it anymore...  these women are just as involved and moved in their hearts for those with basic material needs in the far reaches of Africa, the Middle East, and central Asia.  And here, year after year, week after week, they sort clothes, cut jeans and fabric for quilts, make relief kits, school kits, newborn kits, package soap, and send out letters.  Aware and conscience in their hearts and heads of the acute needs of people far away, people they will rarely ever see photos of, let alone meet.  And yet willing to do and partake in ways of providing, of extending the hands of the body of Christ.  They made it a norm, a practice that gave way to routine, distancing them from any logical reason to not serve in this way.

And here I'm sitting, loving that the fact that these women have no clue how uncommon they are.

(MRC is a Material Resource Center, a warehouse-y building of the relief organization MCC, Mennonite Central Committee.  At the MRC, all sorts of kits and requests are sorted and prepared for shipment to the far reaches of the world.  The regular laborers at this MRC are largely retired folk who volunteer their time.  http://www.mcc.org/kits/)