Last week, I wrote about a few of my experiences befriending Knox County residents. This week, I’m going to talk about how to meet people yourself! Let’s get started!
Volunteering
Perhaps one of the most readily available and rewarding ways to meet Knox County residents is through volunteering. There are countless service opportunities, and they are so diverse, that you should be able to find somewhere to serve no matter your skills and interests.
If you’re interested in education and children, volunteer with the Partnership of East Knox and Kenyon. If you’re interested in medicine, volunteer at the Knox County Hospital. The winter shelter, a seasonal homeless shelter, is always looking for new volunteers, and BE (the Christian club) is looking for help from students (regardless of religious affiliation) with their monthly commitment to serve with Mount Vernon’s Hot Meals program. And if none of these seem like a good fit, the Office for Community Partnerships can help you find other opportunities.
Faith Communities
While this may not be a good option for everyone, attending religious services can be an incredible way to form connections with people from the Knox County community. I’ve met many of my best friends through church services in Knox County. Unlike serving in the community, there is not something for everyone here; Knox County is not religiously diverse, so you won’t likely find any explicitly non-Christian religious services. However, if you are a Christian, have a Christian background, or are open to attending Christian services, there are a lot of denominations, including some very outsider-friendly ones.
I go to Journey Church in Howard (pictured above). It has a very casual vibe, with loud, guitar-heavy music and a lot of families with kids. But Knox County is home to a truly stunning number of churches, so you can find everything from a few Seventh Day Adventist churches to old fashioned Pentecostal churches, a Catholic church, several conservative Baptist churches and more. Journey is amazing, but there are also other great churches in the area. Episcopal and Congregationalist churches are probably most open to people of other faiths, and LifePoint Mount Vernon is very tailored towards college students.
You can often also volunteer through churches. If you’re ever around in the Summer, the Mount Vernon United Congregationalist Church looks for speakers every year to talk about their religious beliefs at their weeklong Peace Village children’s camp. Some churches even hire college students (of various faith backgrounds) to play music or watch the children during service. While faith may not be a helpful link to the community for everyone, if you are a person of faith, connecting to a Knox County faith community can be a very rewarding experience.
Just Talk to People
As long as you’re approaching interaction with our neighbors outside of Gambier with openness and respect, you can’t really go wrong unless you try to do it at 3 am at Walmart (trust me, never EVER go to Walmart at 3 am). I’ve met incredibly cool people all over the place in Knox County. The owner of Paragraphs bookstore downtown seems super cool, Happy Bean’s baristas are awesome, and the people working at Danville Family Dentistry are amazing. My point in this isn’t that these are the places where you’ll meet your amazing local friends, it’s that there are amazing people everywhere. Everyone has cool stories to tell, and you can learn so much from people with drastically different life experiences than yours, so just try talking to people. Talk to the Amish people who sell jams along Middle Path every Saturday, or your cashier at Troyer’s. Strike up a conversation with your barista at Happy Bean, and just enjoy the experience.
There are many ways to meet Knox County residents, so just go for it! Ask questions about their lives, listen, share some of your stories with them, and let yourself enjoy the people you meet. You certainly won’t agree with them on everything, and you may be surprised by some of their stories, but I know that you’ll learn something worthwhile.
Image Credit: Hosanna Swartz, Apple Valley Ohio, Go to Journey