One-on-one with God

Name: Gwendolyn Hansen

My friends and family are the most important things to me. And the companionship and love you get from other people.

I think that spirituality goes on and off, but I try to make it something very important in my life. To me, it means a closeness to God, mostly. Having a belief in a higher power, having some kind of control. I don't know what I would do if I didn't believe that there was a God who could help me out, who just knows what is going on and has a plan. Even when I think something is really messed up, it helps a lot to know that God is there, and that He is not going to let anything get out of hand.

I try to work things out through prayer. I don't do it as often as I would like to. I enjoy prayer, though. Prayer is important. I pretty much see it as just a private, intimate moment with God. I usually pray alone. I'm not very comfortable praying with other people – there are very few people with whom I am willing to share something so intimate and so private. To me, prayer is just me one-on-one with God, just opening my soul and seeing where the conversation goes. I try to reflect the love that God has for all of His children, including me, and to take the love and the compassion that He has given me and show them to other people around me. I try to just be what God would want me to be. But it's hard sometimes.

I've been involved in some volunteer projects. The main one is the Appalachia Service Project (ASP). It's a home repair ministry in the Appalachian Mountains, where West Virginia, Virginia, Kentucky, and Tennessee come together. Significant numbers of people there are below the poverty level. ASP comes in and brings volunteers from all over the country to help repair their homes, and to minister to and build relationships with the people.

I've been praying a lot lately to see where God wants me to go, because I would really like to work for ASP. Even more important than the home repair is just the relationship that you build with the people. You feel so much love. Because they are at a lower economic level, I guess, material possessions are not central to their lives. They're proud of what they do have, but they're not out to get more things. God and love and their families are a lot more important to them. It feels like they have a much richer life than you or I could ever have. Your faith grows through the contacts with these families.

I remember I used to be very afraid of heights. But by the end of one week, I was helping out on top of the roof. There's a phrase that we use a lot: “stretching your comfort zones.” You're never the same after you do something like ASP. It's incredible that in such a short time God can do so much inside of you.

In my third year with ASP we were in Letcher County, Kentucky. There was so much to be done on one house, but due to finances this was the last week that ASP would have any volunteers there. The floors were all falling through, the roof and toilet were leaking, and we were surprised that the bathtub was still in the house and not under it. There were holes in the walls from hornets.

Two little girls were living there. On our lunch break, they would come up and sit and have lunch with us, and we would talk. I think they were about six and eight. I remember looking around, wondering what they did, because when I was their age I was always running around, playing with friends, playing with Barbies, or something. The only toys we saw were one hoola-hoop that had obviously been around for many years and a bike that was too big for either of them. And they played with them constantly. We found out later that they really didn't have any other toys.

At lunch they would come up and ask us to have a hoola-hoop contest with them, and of course they would always win because they played with the hoola-hoop all the time. They never asked for something else to do, didn't complain.

We ended up growing very close, and it was an incredible experience.

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