Opening Ceremony Day

Instead of snow, it was rain that greeted me on Friday as I walked to catch the bus into the Village for another early shift. Despite the weather, there did seem to be more people around in the Village, though, perhaps because Opening Ceremony Day has finally arrived, and so the Tenth Paralympic Winter Games are about to begin.
The shift started as usual with some admin and preparation, followed by an expectant wait to see if anyone would come for the 9am Bible Study, but they didn't. A visit to the Polyclinic followed. However, before that visit there was a telephone called which drastically changed the shape of the day.
Earlier on in the week, one of the other chaplains has heard that there was a shortage of volunteers for the Opening Ceremony, so he, myself and a third chaplain said we'd be willing to help. But we heard nothing. Not long after the beginning of my shift a few phone calls were made and received, ending with a request that the 3 volunteer chaplains be at the stadium for a briefing by 1130am. Apparently, we were to be 'people managers' as "presumably that's what chaplains do a lot of the time".
The short notice was fine for me as it's only a 20minute walk from the Village to the Stadium, and one of the other chaplains wasn't too far away; but the third chaplain was still at home on the edge of Vancouver, so she had quite a dash. Our administrator ably held the fort in the Multi-Faith Centre to ensure cover there. At the briefing, we learned that we would each lead a team of at least 10 other volunteers undertaking various roles in connection with getting spectators into and out of the stadium. However, that plan was shelved when it was realised that we don't wear volunteer uniforms [See: 8th March - Accreditation and all that]; and instead we were assigned to the 'Fast Response Team'. After a familiarisation tour of the stadium, we were given a radio and stationed at the Information Booth to help them with whatever they needed whilst listening out for calls for help and action that might be needed elsewhere. Then the challenges followed......
I got our first call which was "We need you and your team to block off a gents washroom so that the public can't use it. It needs doing but we don't have the resources to do it, make it happen"!! Apart from the incongruity of asking a woman to work in/around a gents' toilet, this was an interesting task, to say the least. It felt a bit like one of those TV programmes where contestants are given apparently impossible tasks. But within 15 minutes myself and one of the other chaplains had sourced barrier posts, tape with 'Danger' written on it, sticky tape, marker pens, paper, and enough French vocabulary to be able to write a sign in both English and French, and the gents toilets were effectively sealed off!! Don't ask exactly how we acquired everything, but it was pleasing to see that our self-made barricade was still in place when we walked past at the end of the evening some 6 hours later.
After this, our tasks were mainly answering people's questions, directing them to places, and taking wheelchairs to collect members of the public from their arrival point and take them to their seats, and vice verse after the ceremony. We were also privileged to be told to take time off and watch the Opening Ceremony. Our duties meant that we missed the first and last 15 minutes, and we watched from some of the few vacant seats very high up in the stadium, but it was a fantastic experience.
Our role in the stadium made for a long day (I'd left my hosts at 7am and didn't get back until 11:45pm) but it was a good one. As well as the privilege of being present at the Opening Ceremony, I felt humbled by some of those I pushed in wheelchairs, was irritated by some of the public who made unjust demands on volunteers, and had a whole lot of new experiences doing something so different from my usual role. Some may question what this had to do with sports chaplaincy, but it was very practical Christian service, not just to the general public, but also to those volunteers we worked alongside. Our hope is that this spoke as much of God as what we normally try and do.