What does Odie's time with traveling with the crusade afford him in the novel, This Tender Land?

Sister Eve's traveling crusade symbolizes the semblance of freedom and family. While Odie and his friends are working for Sister Eve's crusade, they feel their first sense of family stability, as well as the possibility for safety throughout their continued journeys. Later, when Odie reencounters Sister Eve in Saint Louis, he considers rejoining the revival, believing Sister Eve's troop will free him from his continued longings for home, his frustrated rootlessness.