What do you get when you throw one person from Oregon, two from Iowa, one from Minnesota, one from Michigan, and one from North Carolina together in a house in Delaware? So far it’s been teasing each other’s accents, discussing the difference between “scotcharoos” and “special K bars,” and wondering when we’re going to run into Joe Biden. Exploring the east coast this first month has been an adventure. One of our first goals in Wilmington was to get to know our neighborhood.

We ate our first dinner as a house outside on our front porch. We made an effort to say hello to everyone who walked by our house, which happened quite frequently given the fact that downtown Wilmington is a ten minute walk. We have introduced ourselves to a few of our neighbors on afternoon walks. A few young boys living in the house just a few up from ours asked us to call a race for them while we ate a gourmet dinner of “we-don’t-have-anything-but-pasta.” We wish we had the energy to sprint up a hill as much as they did!

One woman who walked by as we said hello to her said to a friend walking beside her “I call this the house of smiles.” We all laughed about the reputation that Lutheran Volunteer Corps must have in all the placement cities. What must they all think of these twenty-somethings that move in and out of the house every late summer?

It was a light-hearted moment, but also one to take seriously. We do indeed have a reputation to uphold. The Koinonia house has been active in Wilmington for a couple decades. Though the house may have gained a reputation, every year is different. Every Koinonia group is different. During this first month, we’ve pondered over who Koinonia 2018-19 will be.

It’s now time to take our neighborhood one step further. We’ve learned that our house has a major sweet tooth. One idea was to offer fresh baked chocolate chip cookies around our neighborhood. Though the idea is incredibly cliché, we know that anyone who offers us free dessert is a friend of ours. We hope that will be a gateway into inviting neighbors over for dinner and learning their story. There’s a wall behind the “hello” that we haven’t climbed over yet.

Read more about the Wilmington LVCers here.