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A SERVAS Journey in Southern California by Whitney Walsh
When my husband and I joined SERVAS in 2023, we were excited to connect with new people. To ease into the experience, I decided to reach out to local SERVAS members in Southern California for coffee meetups. One of the wonderful individuals I had the pleasure of meeting was Barb Maxfield from Palm Desert.
Our coffee chat led to an unexpected and delightful invitation: a House Concert hosted by Barb and her wife. I'd never even heard of such a thing, but my husband and I were certainly intrigued! As it turns out, that concertsinyourhome.com is an organization that connects musicians with hosts willing to open their homes for intimate performances.
This introduction to house concerts was a revelation, and we've since become enthusiastic hosts ourselves! For our most recent concert, we saw a perfect opportunity to combine our love for music with our desire to foster the SERVAS community. We decided to invite local Southern California SERVAS members, hoping to meet new faces and strengthen our regional connections.
I posted the event details on USSERVAS.ORG, and received invaluable assistance from Joanne Ferguson Cavenaugh and David Schwartz, who helped refine our announcement. To my surprise, I discovered there were many more SERVAS members in my area than I had initially realized! While several members contacted me but couldn't attend, we were thrilled to welcome Jane Delaurier and Marcie Prohifsky to the concert. It was truly a pleasure to meet them both and share an evening of fantastic music. This experience truly highlighted the power of SERVAS to bring people together, one shared experience at a time.
