I Don't Volunteer. I Become the Director.
I complain about church ladies a lot.
The truth is... I am one. Just with Wi-Fi and artificial intelligence.
Church ladies have a very specific superpower. They cannot walk past a problem without trying to solve it. Someone casually mentions the vacant lot on Main Street is looking a little glum, and three weeks later there are fifteen raised garden beds, a compost station, and a SignUpGenius assigning who's watering tomatoes every Thursday.
Nobody asked. Nobody voted.
The church ladies simply saw a need and filled it. (Honestly, if left unsupervised, they'll have a farmer's market up and running by Labor Day.)
That’s exactly how I ended up directing an adoption camp.
A few years ago, a relative stranger sent me a Facebook message asking if I could help with a weekend camp for adoptive families. It was one weekend a year, an hour from my house, and I have adopted kids, so I said yes.
That's all they asked.
But church ladies don't hear the question you ask. We hear all the questions you forgot to ask:
Maybe I could help with the marketing?
The website could be easier to navigate...
I know someone who would be a great presenter.
Have you thought about changing the schedule?
Somewhere in there, I “accidentally” became the camp director.
Whenever camp season rolls around, sixty-five adoptive families arrive from all over the country. In the lead-up, I find myself waking up around midnight thinking about name tags, breakout sessions, family packets, presenter schedules, and repeatedly asking AI to make one tiny change:
“No... not like that.”
“Worse.”
“For the love of all things holy, Gemini/ChatGPT/Claude/Copilot...” (Yes, I use them all and pair them against each other like the internet dictator I am.)
My husband got recruited too. His mistake was pointing out that the sound system could be better.
So he fixed it. Congratulations, honey—you’re now Head of A/V.
That's how both of us ended up here. We saw a need and filled it. We don't dabble. We drown.
Throw us in the deep end, hand us a waterproof clipboard, and stand back… cause we about to get our knickers wet.
— Sheila
