Indeed we do! If you ever have questions just ask me via IRC or email.
I'd be very happy to help.
First of all thank you for the help you've given me so far.
My extremely unsophisticated idea is to just update this wiki page so that it's obvious there are people who are willing to mentor newcomers. It seems as though we already have mentors or people willing to be mentors, but we also have people who did not know this was available.
More specifically, I think it would be useful if under the "Finding a Ticket" section, as an alternative to just picking a ticket, we suggest people to ask either through email or on IRC for a starter ticket. Then, hopefully the people who would be willing to mentor this person can suggest tickets they are equipped to deal with themselves.
By having newcomers ask for a ticket, we can guarantee that if this person gets a response there would be a mentor available. Also, if someone is too busy to be a mentor, then that person could just choose not to volunteer so that nobody should get overburdened, or at least any more overburdened than they already are.
It might seem silly and I am probably just too shy, but as someone new I am always very hesitant to email the entire mailing list for help. On the other hand, I also feel bad for emailing a specific person because I figure they are likely very busy. If I were assigned someone to ask for help, especially someone who volunteered himself or herself, I suspect I would not feel so embarrassed to ask for help. I probably should have asked for help more on IRC but to be honest I have only used IRC once or twice in my life, incidentally also for help on Haskell, so it's not something I really remember.