IHN Sunday 9/19/2010

Today's IHN work was light, compared to a normal end-of-IHN-week day.  Since the IHN setup was remaining in place, all we had to do was drive our guests over to the IHN Day Center in the van, and we did that about an hour later than we usually do, at 8 am.  IHN staff covered the morning, and our volunteers covered from 1 to 5 pm.  At 5, we drove them back in the van to First Presbyterian, where they were greeted by the IHN hosting volunteers from Holy Cross Lutheran Church.  Our work here is done.

Many thanks to the dozens of First Presbyterian volunteers who made this IHN host week a success.  There are more than 60 individual jobs in a host week.  We don't have quite that many volunteers during the week because some people sign up for several jobs, such as driving on multiple days.  The IHN office requested a list of our IHN volunteers -- all of them, not just the ones who worked this time.  Counting all the people who have worked during 2009 and 2010, there are just under 100.  That's roughly 10% of our congregation.  IHN is by far our largest outreach project in terms of the number of church members directly involved.  Even so, about 90% of our congregation doesn't participate.  I would very much like to increase the participation percentage, both because it's good for people to get involved, and because we should not have to depend on the same dedicated cadre ("the usual suspects") to do each and every IHN host week.

I stayed long enough this evening to see that Holy Cross Lutheran got started without problems, and then departed.  We're done for another three months or so.  Our next IHN host week is November 28 through December 5.  I hope to see you then!

Rick Simpson