Hope Center

I personally had a lot of fun this past week for my internship. Wednesday night, instead of having a talk and breaking into small groups, we had the high schoolers move our 'Hope Center.' The Hope Center is our church's program to provide families in need with food, hygiene items, and other household goods that are necessary for living. We spend about an hour and a half moving boxes and diapers, toothpaste and hair products from truck to shelves. Most of the workers of our Hope Center are rather older in age, and lifting heavy boxes, not to mention hundreds of them, can be very difficult, so the fact that it took us such a short amount of time, and the pride that went into the work made the faculty very happy! I also enjoyed seeing some of the kids step out of their comfort zones to help out, which in itself is enough to call the night a success.

Not only was high school going strong this week, but the adults as well. I had the opportunity to play djembe for a mini retreat, what we called Holy Spirit day, out in Lake of the Woods, Mahomet. There were tons of amazing people with really interesting stories that I got to listen to. The day was gorgeous as well, especially with all the leaves changing color.

Dios te bendiga!

School ≠ Sleep

If there were ever two more contradictory entities in life for me these past two weeks, they were midterms and sleep. I don't think I have ever stayed up as late as I have consecutively these weeks than ever before; working on everything from English papers to Sociology tests. Please don't get me wrong, I'm more of a night owl myself, but studying and writing papers in the early hours of the morning isn't my idea of a great time...unless of course you add some friends and extensive amounts of coffee, then it can become hilarious. The point however, I have been exhausted these past few weeks.

 Consequently, this has affected my internship at church. The phrase "running around like a chicken with its head cut off" has such a new meaning to me now, because my time spent at church was me scrambling to get things done. Every Wednesday night we have the high school get together for youth group: we have some games, have a talk, and divide them into groups to discuss it. My job is to prepare the church before they get there, create the games, provide a talk if necessary, and kick them all out when we are done. (There is more detail that goes into each activity, I'm just not avid about writing right now, go figure.)

The problems started with our Sam's card not working, preventing me from buying candy and soda for that night. Not a big deal, these kids really don't need MORE sugar. It just so happened, though, that this past Wednesday was my night to give a talk... and I hadn't prepared yet. So from 3 til 6:30, right before youth group starts, I wrote out my talk. But I forgot about the game! Thankfully there are some awesome friends of mine who love games enough to start them in times of crisis, so they saved me and kept the kids engaged until I had to give my talk. Surprisingly it went great! Although, I probably shouldn't be surprised it went well if I believe in a God who can overcome anything, even something as minute as a talk to high school kids. I received some nice compliments on keeping them engaged and presenting a lot of good issues, so I was excited, and relieved!

The rest of the week I found myself dozing off in classes, both in school and at one of my internship classes at church, so it wasn't only Wednesday night that I felt repercussions of all of my lack of sleep and piles of work. Thankfully I completed all of my assignments, and I have to say, I don't think I did too bad on them either. My cart may be way in front of my horse in saying that, because we haven't got our grade on our English papers yet, so if you are reading this Professor Williams, have some grace... (Insert smiley face here.)

Now I imagine some of you out there are probably saying, "That's what you get for allowing work to pile up on you." I have to agree, life gives plenty of chances for letting work slide, and offers great, feeble shelving units to pile more and more hefty activities onto. These past few weeks have just been one of those life moments where work outweighed the amount of time I had. In hindsight, I need to prepare in advance if I know there are going to be conflicting projects. I must say, though, I was quite productive; procrastination was not even in existence!

That's been my past few weeks; it's been hectic for sure, but despite the work load it has productive. I'll leave you with a quote from an inspirational figure, Mr. Berra: "You've got to be very careful if you don't know where you're going, because you might not get there."

God bless!

Mexican Coke!....and Jesus!

Hello everyone!

This is my first post that contains real content, so I hope you are as excited as I am...or, maybe not. Nevertheless, this post is a little past due, so I shall dive right in.

Like I said I am using my internship as a volunteer opportunity, more so because I am not being paid for my labor... so feel that using the internship for class is good compensation! The internship started September 1st for me, and since then I have been to a church planting convention in Columbus, OH; preached/taught for one of our Wednesday night high school groups (I have done this before, but this one and a few others will be classified under the internship); and I have helped coordinate a 'retreat' for the students, where I taught another mini class.

Although these are a few large scale events, most of what I have done so far is administrative work: a lot of entering student's info into our system, contacting them to let them know of our upcoming events, managing our website and Facebook, stocking our student cafe (which has really improved my business skills; who knew Mexican Coke had such a high demand among sugar craving high schoolers!), and other odds and ends dealing with paperwork and other slave labor activities...

I'm also getting some great opportunities to travel: I am hopefully going to go on another mission trip to Mazatlan, Mexico this December/January, so I am very excited for that! I haven't been there since the summer of 2009, when I was an intern there from the beginning of June to the 3rd of July. As I said I went to Columbus, OH, earlier last month, and am also getting the chance to go to conferences in Greenlake, WI and Iowa. I'll let you all know how those go, not too sure what to expect yet.

But that's a basic overview of what my internship/volunteer work looks like, and I will be breaking it down into more detail as the semester goes on. I also plan to keep this blog past the ending of class, which is why I titled it more personally. If I'm putting time into it now I may as well stick to it.

So to end this day's post, I will add a quote:

"Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle." - Rev. John Watson (Ian Maclaren)


P.S. - The sermon I gave for the Wednesday night was on identity as a community, and the retreat class was on the identity of man, and how it isn't our actions or works but our heart that make us men. Just FYI in case you were interested.

Have a good one guys!