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Chaplain Finds It Natural To Volunteer

wendysketchValencia resident Wendy Langhans likes to share.

She has written the “Outdoor Report” and shared her tidbits about nature with KHTS listeners every Friday morning, something that grew out of her love of wildlife and natural areas as well as her former job as an interpretive naturalist with the Mountains Conservancy in Towsley Canyon.

She serves on an advisory panel on Open Space for the City of Santa Clarita, helping planners evaluate acquisitions of open space around the city limits. And she is known to lend a hand with various odd volunteer jobs at church or the SCV Food Pantry.


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But it was her selfless dedication to youth in county probation camps that got the attention of Supervisor Michael Antonovich and recognition as one of the 2011 Volunteers of the Year, an honor that both excited and humbled her.

Nearly 200 people attended the luncheon held April 9 at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion to receive their thanks from a grateful County.

“The County of Los Angeles Board of Supervisors honors the outstanding volunteers who have played a key role in enriching the lives of Los Angeles County residents. This year’s theme, “Volunteer: America’s Heroes” underscores the County’s diverse volunteers who range in age from 14 to 94,” wrote Antonovich on his website. “Many are volunteering for the first time and others are fulfilling their wish to ‘give back’ to their communities. In 2011, 49,663 volunteers donated 2.2 million hours, saving $47 million to taxpayers.”

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“I had an inquiry in late February and gave them some details about my job and found out in March that I was part of the vast horde of volunteers being recognized,” Langhans said. “Don’t get me wrong, on one hand I’m very honored, but on the other hand, it’s a little bit embarrassing too, because most of the time the work I do is really hidden.”

“People give according to the gifts that have been given to them. So it was just good to see what folks were doing,” she said.

“I enjoyed listening as the young people came up and told their stories,” she said, noting that there were several teen-age and college-age people coming up for awards. It was done in a way that was very affirming, it wasn’t coming up by rote kind of thing, I felt good about this.”

“What was also very meaningful to me was George Hill was with us – he is the husband of Diana Hill, who got me involved in this. She was a wonderful woman, full of grace, full of love who passed away a few years ago. To me, if she had lived, she would be the one who was being honored,” Langhans said. “I really felt – I may be the one standing up here alright, but I wouldn’t be here without her or the hundred or so volunteers who are part of this – that’s really what’s being honored. You have to have one person standing up here, but I’m not the one that should have the attention, they should. It gives them a sense of affirmation from the community about the work they are doing.”

A graduate of Fuller Theological Seminary, Langhans serves as a volunteer chaplain at a probation camp near Castaic, a job she’s cherished for the last 10 years.

“I have two roles, maybe three,” she explained. “The first role is working with the youth to offer them a glimmer of hope that life doesn’t have to be the way it is. That’s probably the most important, but the second job I would do is facilitator, helping to organize other people to get things done in the probation camps. The third job is creating a connection between the volunteers and the youth in the camp, so that the youth begin to see that their lives have value and to show the volunteers that they have as much to learn from the youth and the work that they’re doing – they get more out of it then they give. There’s growth in the youth and growth in the volunteers.”

It’s a volunteer position that she may not see direct results from, but she knows her work pays off in the long run.

“My friend who got me into this, said ‘we plant seeds, some of them sprout, some of them don’t. We don’t provide the growth, we just plant the seeds,’” she said. “But in a workshop, one of the things they (the young men in the camps) commented on was that “it was the Christians” who came to see them in the prison. Those were the visitors they had. It was spoken as “we were not forgotten,” especially since they know we didn’t have to be there.”

Langhans said her drive up the hill to the camp puts her back in nature’s wonderland every now and then, spotting mountain lions, deer and other wild animals. She even recalls finding a large amount of black bear ‘scat’ near the camp entrance. The time spent traveling and walking along the camp roads gives her time to ponder her responsibility and how she fits in with both the young men she counsels and her fellow volunteers.

“Now things have changed LA County Probation is beginning to recognize that it’s important to mentor the youth on the outside, if you want to reduce the rate of recidivism, you have to focus on the some of the culture, climate and circumstances of these youth,” she said. “If many of your friends are involved in illegal activities and these are your friends, you are more like to participate in those activities yourself.”

One of her favorite parts of being a chaplain at the camps are “family nights.”

“We’re sitting around a table having fun, we’re not preaching at them, but we’re basically living out our faith. We start with a prayer, just like you would before a family dinner and at the end we ask if there is anyone they want us to pray for and we’ll do that so that we can kind of involve their families and the people that they care about it,” she explained. “It becomes ‘for this hour, we’re family’ and you can bring in your own family into it at the end to pray for them. That’s a very positive thing. I’ve seen it work in a number of ways – the youth find out that that they can have a good time without getting into trouble; you don’t have to drink, you don’t have to smoke weed. They realize that these people coming up aren’t getting paid, they’re doing it out of love and that means that they’re worth something,

“You can talk all you want, but if you don’t do it…actions in this case, speak louder than words. Talking with the youth about rehabilitation, about going back into the community, we talk about the importance of community in their lives, giving and receiving. They understand the people coming up for game night and they realize that this is the community reaching out to them and they’re called to reach out to the community, so there’s that sense of reciprocal compassion and love, which is a useful thing for them to recognize, that there is something that they can give.

“Many people think about these kids and it brings fear into their hearts. Once you’ve gone up, once you’ve been with them, so many people say “they’re just boys” – you still have to be careful – but nonetheless, you begin to see them as human beings.”

Chaplain Finds It Natural To Volunteer

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