Week 47: Tales from Tucson - The Epilogue

Here we are. 47 weeks later and like all good things, my year of MVS has reached its end.

After returning from Kansas City on a bus full of Shalomites, Andrea and I were welcomed by a hot and humid house. Swamp coolers are a little less effective when the high is 107, the low is 90, and humidity is at 35%. But we had a good last week. We played pickleball and had some good meals with the Schlabach's in the evenings and I had two celebrations at work: one in the Florence office on Wednesday with the wider adult team and one on Friday in the Tucson office with my every-day colleagues on the administration team. Both we great times with work friends and I felt very appreciated. Friday I also helped with the annual Thank-a-thon, calling donors and thanking them for their previous financial support. I got quite a few voicemails (who answers phone calls from unknown numbers?) but the few conversations I did have were warm and grateful.

During my last hotline shift on Thursday, I had an exciting moment of unexpected connection. The front desk transferred me a hotline call and I began speaking with a person in Spanish. As we switched to their preferred language of English they told me their partner recommended they speak with someone named "Fisher." That was me! This person's partner had left us a voicemail about a month ago, I responded and left them a voicemail, he left me three voicemails will I was in Kansas City, and then we were finally able to connect early least week. I suggested that they tell their partner in detention to call our hotline on Thursday but couldn't promise that I'd be the person they spoke with. As luck would have it, I ended up taking that call! It was really exciting to be able to speak with both people and provided that communication into detention centers is possible. Unfortunately, we were unable to provide any services at that time but they were still grateful for my time speaking with both parties.

Now I'm back in Goshen, reunited with Gretta and my family. Gretta and I plan to travel back and forth between our two families for the next couple of weeks before moving to Ann Arbor mid-August where I'll start a new job as a legal assistant with the Michigan Immigrant Rights Center and she'll start her graduate program in public health at the University of Michigan. We're very excited to start this new chapter of our lives together!

For those of you who weren't at convention and would like to watch our seminar, you can find it here on YouTube: https://youtu.be/1tEeAXt5IFs. Thanks to Travis Duerksen from Mennonite Mission Network for recording and posting this seminar! This seminar simultaneously synthesizes some of our greatest reflections on the year and offers a unique look into our house dynamic.

I almost forgot! I did finish one more puzzle and of course it was missing 6 pieces but had 8 extras from other puzzles. Of course it did. It was also a picture of the Balloon Festival in Albuquerque, NM so maybe that's why it was missing pictures.

I wish I had some quipy tag that I'd been using all year, like "Stay sweaty, Tucson," or "Always expect the unexpected lizard." On second thought, maybe it's okay that I didn't use one of those. So I'll end with this:

Thank you Shalom, support committee, and Lisa for helping me and everyone else feel so welcome this year. Thanks family and friends for your support from near and far. And thank you, readers for joining me in the recounting of my Tales from Tucson!