While being a student at Wildwood, you are asked to volunteer on Wildwood’s campus half a day. You take your classes the other half. I came here as a Mission Volunteer and became a student the second semester. My voluntary work goes towards helping the Campus Maintenance department.
Back in France I remember helping my mother cut down a tree together with my cousin. My cousin was annoyed that my mother didn’t have a chainsaw that we could use, but only a manual handsaw. I tried to teach him a lesson that it’s important not to get stressed out so easily, and to know that there are plenty of manual tools that often work better and get the job done quicker than power tools. I also showed him how to use a saw.
My first day of voluntary work at the Campus Maintenance department I had to cut down a bunch of trees with a chainsaw. I could do nothing but wonder: Is God trying to teach me a lesson about what I said to my cousin?
My parents are separated, so I grew up living with my mother. This meant that I wasn’t taught how to repair things and I wasn’t good at it. I wasn’t a fast learner either. While volunteering in Campus Maintenance I kept thinking of people I have met before who have had lots of training and were lightyears ahead of me. They managed to work fast but were still thorough and diligent. In today’s day and age that’s very different. Nowadays people work fast but lack achieving quality. That’s only if there’s enough time for that.
Charles Hightower, who is my supervisor, has taught me a lot. I learned how to paint a house professionally, for example. I have fixed a broken pipe on a steep slope in a forest, painted the former house of Wildwood’s founder W.D. Frazee, and have painted the children’s Sabbath school room at the church.
Sometimes helping Campus Maintenance can be challenging, but the Lord uses my time here and takes every opportunity to make me more adaptable when challenges arise.