Hit the Ground Running

Michael asked me in 2017, “Would you consider us applying to be volunteers together at Ecce Homo?” I admit that my motives for saying yes weren’t entirely noble.
True, I wanted to make Mike happy, it would be an adventure to serve as “ambassadors for Christ” together, and we’d be able to partner with our friends at Christmas Lutheran Church in Bethlehem some Sundays. But it also seemed like something of a lark, in a world-renowned city. The guest house would give us room and board for working 30 hours a week – the rest of our time, we could be tourists. I told friends, “We’ll be doing things like serving meals, staffing the front desk, watering plants, and sweeping terraces – it’s not brain surgery.” How hard could it be?
Pretty darn hard! At least in the beginning.
Ecce Homo is excellently run like, to use the cliché, a well-oiled machine. Although it’s neither a hotel nor restaurant, the work is similar. Each week, Sister Rita (our director, from Canada) hands us assignment sheets with our names and jobs highlighted. (Mike & I are generally assigned as individuals, not as a couple.) Our first morning here (Wednesday January 2), the pink highlighter showed I was to do breakfast “wash up” at 7:30, followed by training in “reception” from 10:30 to 12:30. After breakfast, I headed to the wash up room, next to the three dining rooms.
There’s a commercial washer for dishes and utensils, which I was slightly familiar with from helping at our kids’ elementary school cafeteria years ago. Fortunately, a young local man named Jonathan operated that, while a young French volunteer, Clarisse, and I dried. We all wore dark aprons. I needed to learn where to put the big and small plates, big and small forks, cereal spoons, soup spoons, small spoons, breakfast knives, dinner knives, glasses, serving spoons, water pitchers, milk pitchers, where to hang wet dishtowels, etc.
Clean trays of steaming bowls and cutlery from the washer came thick and fast. I struggled to keep up, feeling like I was in the “I Love Lucy” candy factory episode, where Lucy and Ethel, at a conveyor belt, struggled to keep up with wrapping chocolates.
The director of the adjoining breakfast prep room, Maha, came over and introduced herself in a gentle voice, saying, “We are a team. We are a family.” Jonathan, Clarisse, Maha, and her coworker, Nazira, were patient with rookie me. As we handed each other a tray or serving dish, we could say “Thank you” in English, Arabic (“Shukran”), or French (“Merci”).
Jonathan made the mistake of telling me it was his birthday. I announced to everyone who walked into the wash up room, “Today is Jonathan’s 16th birthday!” I led two groups in singing “Happy Birthday” to him. Like any teenager with a doting but somewhat annoying grandmother, Jonathan seemed embarrassed but also smiled at the attention.
After I mopped the floor, I was off to two hours of training at the front desk. So much to remember – too much for this blog post.
Ah, but the payoffs! One was after training, as Michael and I walked upstairs for lunch. We climbed up to the third floor terrace for a view of Old City Jerusalem. Almost everywhere you look is like a post card.