Photo: The 2016 Johnstown, Pennsylvania, Service Adventure unit. From left to right: Shannon Young, Leah Rittenhouse, Dorothee Haase, Jordon Hodges, Krista Rittenhouse, Aaron Zimmerman, and Austen Saffell. 

Names: Krista and Leah Rittenhouse
Occupation: Service Adventure co-leaders, Johnstown, Pennsylvania, unit. Service Adventure is a Mennonite Mission Network service program for young adults ages 17-20. Young adults live and serve in community, with leaders, for 10 months.
Congregations: Crossroads Community Church in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, is our host congregation, but there are eight congregations that support our Service Adventure unit. Every other week we go to Crossroads and every other week we visit another supporting congregation. We grew up at Scottdale (Pennsylvania) Mennonite Church.

1. What are your earliest memories of church?

Leah: My earliest memories of church are being in Sunday school and there were these little wooden block story figures used to tell Bible stories. Those stand out in my memory, the stories with those little blocks.

Krista: My earliest clear memories would be of Bible school and going to camp, which are not specifically memories in our church building, but we went to a Christian camp starting at age 6 for a long weekend overnight. And Bible school was a day thing. I remember the dramas and the craft activities. One time we got to make bricks out of mud and straw. It was lots of fun to get muddy!

2. You both took a gap year in between high school and college. What made you consider and choose this option?

Krista: I took a year and went to Ecuador as an exchange student my senior year of high school. It felt a lot like a gap year. My family had hosted four different exchange students: two from Europe and two from South America, so that was really impactful and led to me wanting to spend a year in another country. I also wanted to learn Spanish. I just enjoyed the interaction with the exchange students in our space and it ignited that interest in me to explore other cultures.

Leah: By the end of high school I knew I wanted to do a year of service at some point between the end of high school and during my college years. It was mostly because of growing up in church and hearing stories of people who had come back from experiences in other cultures or doing service. It sounded exciting to me and like something I wanted to do myself. So I did Service Adventure in Anchorage from 2008-2009.

3. Do you have a favorite story from your gap year that you tell over and over?

Leah: I don’t know if I have a favorite story, but I do often like to tell people about all the Alaska-specific things that I experienced that were awesome highlights. Things like going glissading, where you would hike to a top of a mountain in winter. There’s snow on the mountain and you just slide down. Or one time we went sledding on the side of a mountain on a trail through the woods that was a quarter mile long. If you got off the trail, you got stuck waist deep in snow. So fun!

Krista: One of the things I had to learn in Ecuador was how to take myself less seriously. A lot of this learning was forced on me because I made a lot of mistakes language-wise. I went in with very minimal Spanish. I could express myself a bit, but didn’t understand anything.

I remember a moment with one of my classmates when we had some free time outside. I couldn’t understand group conversations, so I decided to approach one of my friends who was off working by himself. I prepared three questions ahead of time that I knew I could ask understandably. So I went over and pitched the first conversation starter. He told me his answer and I would have no idea what he said in response, so rather than responding, I would just pitch my next conversation starter. And I still didn’t understand the response, so I decided to pitch the third starter. I had no idea how to understand anything he said and I had no way to close the conversation, so eventually I just had to walk away and I remember thinking, “That guy thinks I am totally stupid right now.”

So I made lots of blunders, language-wise and sometimes cultural ones, too. But the guy from that story became one of my best friends and we could laugh about that conversation.

4. How did you all make the decision to serve as co-leaders for a Service Adventure unit?

Leah: I had done Service Adventure, and our parents were Service Adventure leaders when we were really young, so we heard stories and had connections with this program for a long time. This was one of those things that we had kind of just dreamed about. We’d say to each other, “Wouldn’t it be fun to be Service Adventure leaders together someday?”, but then you move on and don’t really think about it.

It had been something we both knew we would probably enjoy doing, but this past summer we were really trying to consider an option that we could do together. We had done a bike trip together in the fall and we just really enjoyed being together the two of us and felt like we worked really well together. In the midst of that, we got an e-mail from Susan [Nisly, Service Adventure program director] And we thought, Hey, let’s find out if it’s even a possibility to have a sister pair do this.

Krista: Neither of us were interested in leading on our own, but we were interested in doing it together. Susan responded and told us, “I think this works, but we need to take it back to our committee because we’ve never had anyone request to do it together.” So we’re the first sister pair. We knew we wouldn’t want to do this by ourselves, and throughout this year we’ve affirmed that. It’s a really good thing we’re doing this together.

5. Tell me about the city of Johnstown. What has been one interesting or fun thing about learning to know this city?

Krista: I think one of the interesting things to learn about was that there was a flood that happened here in 1977. It was a major flood, and people oftentimes know Johnstown for the flood and that piece of history.
That event has affected the demographics of the area. There was so much loss at that point that anyone who had resources moved out of the city and relocated. In general, it’s not a highly educated place and there’s not a lot of job opportunities. Oftentimes people with resources and education continue to move out of the area for other opportunities, which keeps this depression cycle happening. And a lot of the older generation in Johnstown still remembers that time. It’s neat to be able to talk to people and ask them what they remember of that day. Lots of people still know where they were and how that affected their family.

Leah: For me one of the interesting things about Johnstown is that even though it is not a huge city, it has all of these small neighborhoods and these neighborhoods are referred to by their name. So people will say, I live in Kernville or Hornerstown or whatever your area of the city is. People are loyal first to their neighborhoods. Sometimes you’ll say, Are you from around here? And people will respond, “Oh no, I live over in Hornerstown,” but the place they mean is also another neighborhood in the city of Johnstown and it may only be like five miles away. The first couple times I heard that I would just try to keep my jaw from dropping open, but each neighborhood does have its own personality.

6. What has been one thing you’ve learned from your participants during this year?

Krista: We have five participants. Three guys and two girls. I say this in a kind of joking way, but I am serious. I have learned that yelling is not always a bad form of communication. Growing up, I would have felt very uncomfortable with that and I would feel tension when speaking in a raised voice.

We do a lot of yelling in this house together. Some of that is joking and being loud together and having fun, but there’s also some really good communication that happens with yelling. It can be effective and not always negative.

Leah: I guess this is more than just one thing, but part of our program is doing learning components that we take turns leading once per week. I’ve learned lots of things from different people’s experiences. I learned some sign language form Shannon, and from Aaron I learned more about the engine of a car and how it runs. I learned basketball drills form Jordan, a little about German culture from Dorothee and about different forms of poetry from Austen.

We also have a worship component every week that we have taken turns leading. I would say we don’t necessarily have practices that we do super regularly all together, other than praying at meals and going to church together, but there’s been some awesome times together as a household practicing different forms of prayer or study together.

Krista: We’ve watched a couple video sermons. We’ve gone to church Bible studies together. We’ve done some music and some journaling things together. We’ve also done just group sharing time, where we have more intentional talks about our highs and lows and prayer requests. These are just ways of checking in and acknowledging where we’ve seen God.

7. What’s your household’s go-to meal to cook together?

Leah: We don’t do a lot of cooking together. We take turns cooking for everyone each week. Overall there’s been a lot of Tex Mex meals. Also each person has their go to’s. Austen likes to make pizza and soups. Some of the girls really like to make curry dishes. You can kind of guess what’s going to be coming when it’s their week to cook.

Krista: The only meal that was a flop was a chicken dish that the salt came out too fast from the shaker and it was really, really salty.

Leah: It’s a pretty good group of cooks. We really have great meals.

Krista: Although, we were not here this weekend and they did make supper for a family from our church that invited them to go a hockey game. Leah and I had our weekend off and we suggested that it might be nice to provide supper, since the family has two boys. For them they made Ramen with bacon and eggs and pancakes. There were three ingredients which were common in the house and don’t go together, but they just threw them all in .

Read past seven question interviews.