Weeks 5 onward: Work, travel, and many adventures

Man, the summer is really running away with me! Apologies to anybody who's still reading (Mom Mom and Dee Dee, looking at you) for the lateness and the skipping of several weeks! Things have been crazy busy, which is equally exhausting and wonderful at the same time.

Since I last posted, we had our event at Oral Roberts University in Tulsa, drove from Tulsa to St. Louis, from St. Louis to Johnson City, Tennessee, and then from there to Cincinnati, where we're looking at our second event at Xavier University this coming week and where I'm writing this from right now. [Correction: Didn't end up posting last weekend. We're in St. Louis now, looking at our second week here at Harris Stowe University!] It's been nonstop, so it was great to have a day to rest today and be rejuvenated for the next couple weeks.

Each event is pretty similar in a lot of the jobs we do, the set up, our individual jobs during the week, tear down, and so on, but each week also has a very different character depending on the group of students who come and the locations we're serving at. Tulsa, for instance, was a smaller group of students, and a lot of them were serving at local schools doing work like painting and improving the outside of buildings, playgrounds, landscaping, etc. One of my favorite moments from that week was the very last night at the end of the very last session - the band finished playing their last song and turned to leave the stage, and the students started chanting "Encore! Encore!" and with the go ahead from our production manager, Austin, they went and played another song. Despite it being a fairly small event, the energy in the room was incredible, and it was just amazing having a night of such excitement filled worship. The band was also great, and played a Hillsong song that I hadn't heard before somehow called Sinking Deep, which is now one of my new favorites. I definitely recommend checking it out, which you can do here. One thing that really stuck with me from that week was the devo that Caleb did for us. He talked about when Jesus healed the ten lepers - nine walked away healed in body. But the one who returned to Jesus and thanked him and worshipped him, was also healed in spirit. What he ended with, was this statement: sometimes we don't need only to be obedient to God. We also need to stop, come to him and praise him for who he is and what he's doing.

The Gateway to the West

The next location we were at was St. Louis, MO. I enjoyed seeing the arch, even if it was from a distance and we didn't get a chance to go up into it. We're going back though, so maybe next time! CIY partners with an organization in St. Louis called Mission St. Louis, which is a little bit different than most of our other events where we don't have one main partner in the city. Mission St. Louis is a cool organization, because their focus is on empowering people to improve their own neighborhoods. We're fortunate to be able to partner with them, so that while our students are volunteers from the outside, they're able to see this community and relationship centered approach to alleviating poverty firsthand this week and learn from this experience, all while serving people mainly by doing work to improve their homes. (If this sounds interesting, check them out here!)

We climbed a waterfall!!!

After St. Louis, we drove to Johnson City, TN, to Milligan College. That weekend, I got to see my family when they drove down for the Fourth of July. We went to a fair of sorts and watched the fireworks together, and I got to see them the next day as well. The team also went on a hike Sunday morning - wilderness church! - along a trail to a waterfall, where we got to swim and climb, which was a fantastic adventure and one of my favorite parts of the summer so far. Our event in TN was one of our largest, and probably also one of my favorites. It was just a great week - the groups were great, Milligan was great, the weather was great - just the overall atmosphere was fantastic. We had our sessions in the chapel, which was beautiful and a great venue for worshipping together and gaining truth each evening. One of the things I liked about this week, also, was all the chances I had to have good conversations with our emcee that week, Caleb (not my fellow intern... a different Caleb). One of my favorite things is always getting to learn about God from the many wonderful people I've met this summer, and this week was full of that, which was awesome. One thing that kind of blew my mind, was something along the lines of: people are sometimes confused, because Christianity is full of paradoxes, like finding strength in weakness or finding life by dying to ourselves. But we only think of these things as paradoxes because we live in an imperfect world, where things are backwards from what God created them to be. So these things actually make sense - just not to us based on the expectations of our society. That's crazy to me to think about, and so cool. There were a lot of other things like that, but I'll have to come back to them in a future post, if I remember what they are. I also developed a slight obsession with the song Touch the Sky - highly recommend. Go listen to it. Here you go.



Snapshot of one project, before...



Am I ready for Pinterest yet?

and after!

Eating Austin's birthday cake... life as a community at its finest

The next week was Cincinnati, which was last week. This was our second week in Cincinnati, and it was similar to the first week - if anything, it just went a lot more smoothly, since we actually knew what we were doing a little bit more. I really do enjoy Cincinnati as a city, and it was great being back somewhere I was already familiar with. Having some level of familiarity with where we were living, where we went to eat (more icecream! more donuts!), and with driving around the city was definitely something I enjoyed about last week. Not to mention that the food at Xavier University is by far the most excellent of any campus we've been on. I also enjoyed getting to spend some time talking with our emcee, Mark Worley, who knew some Spanish - my first Spanish this summer! and told me about some of his trips to Guatemala, which was fascinating for me since that's the sort of work I'd like to eventually do (missions work in Latin America). We also had a lady as our speaker this week, which was awesome, and I enjoyed getting to hear from her at the evening sessions.

And now, we're looking at our second week in St. Louis. It's been a pretty good weekend of prep work and relaxing - we went and saw Ant Man, and had some misadventures trying to go to an outlet mall. Truth be told, I'm still loving the work I'm doing, but I'm also starting to be really tired, and it'll definitely be nice to have a few days off next week in Joplin. It's hard to believe the summer is already almost over - just three more weeks left, then I head home. Pretty crazy.

Anyways though, it's late, so this is all for now. I'll leave you with a short story... This lovely addition is courtesy of Sully, who probably didn't think I'd leave this in here. But here it is!

I just have one dog named Copper. His best friend Todd wasn't allowed to talk to him anymore cause Copper is a hunting dog, and Todd is a fox.  They were destined to be enemies, but they could have been such good friends.  Why did their friendship have to be so impossible?  Why couldn't they be left alone to hangout with one another, being the best of buds for all times?  Todd pondered this from the window, looking outside towards Copper's house.  Sadness welled up inside of him, for he knew that he would never be able to have the friendship with Copper that he had always wanted, and knew was possible.  Poor Todd, he has no friends but the old nameless lady with a garden.  His only acquaintance was a kooky old owl, and two other birds that were total tool bags.  Todd was alone, alone and friendless...

Weeks 3 & 4: Final preparations and Event No. 1 - Cincinnati!

First view of Cincinnati! (And another one of our trucks ahead of us)

As you can probably tell by the fact that I haven't posted in almost three weeks, it's been kind of a whirlwind. Our last week in Joplin was spent preparing to leave for our first event in Cincinnati, Ohio - we drove there on Thursday a week and a half ago, and spent that weekend setting up the venue and getting ready for students to arrive. 

Second view of Cincy

We also had the opportunity that weekend to see a little bit of Cincinnati and experience, especially, some of the food. We didn't make it to Skyline chili (sorry Scott), but we did go to Camp Washington. It was my first meat chili experience in a long, long time, so it was pretty interesting. We also went to Busken's (for donuts) and Graeter's (for icecream) quite a few times throughout the week, which considering the fact that I have a huge sweet tooth, I highly recommend. Food aside, I really enjoyed my short stay in Cincinnati - it's a city with a lot of character, a lot of great buildings, and a lot of large, beautiful trees. We even got to hammock in some of them!

Hammocking at Xavier U

We began the week bright and early Monday morning setting up for registration, and around 2 pm youth groups began arriving. We had about 430 students and youth leaders on campus at Xavier University, where we were staying, by the time everyone arrived, and soon everyone was checked in and ready for the week! On Tuesday through Thursday, groups would go out to work sites around the community - whether that was a school, someone's house, a park, or someplace else - and do different projects like painting, building, yard work, or sorting school supplies. The students have sessions in the morning and evening to give some context and understanding behind the service work they did during the day, where there's a speaker and, in the evening sessions, a worship band. This is pretty much what a typical week is going to look like for us, with some slight variation. We pack all the production and work site equipment up onto a semi truck on Thursday night after the last session, and we head out to our next location early Friday morning - last Friday, we drove from Cincinnati to Tulsa, OK, where we are now!

Even late night work isn't too bad with some friends

First registration day! Check out my snazzy nametag

Found these in the trash // love the goofiness on this team

Going back a little bit - our role during the week is getting our own personal jobs done, so for me, taking care of a lot of logistical things like seating and housing plans, printing and making sure we have all the papers and supplies we need, taking care of financial paperwork, and other office things. What we also get to do, which is awesome, is divide up into three trucks and ride around during the morning and early afternoon, checking in on groups at work sites and making sure they know what they're doing and have everything they need. We would bring them supplies, the site managers would offer direction, we'd talk to and encourage the students, and we would pick up trash and supplies the groups didn't need anymore. An awesome thing about this part of the job is the opportunity to hang out with the speakers for the week - in Cincinnati, I got to be in a truck with Sully and Caleb, and the first day we were joined by one of the speakers, Aaron. It's a huge blessing getting to hang out with a whole bunch of men and women who are great spiritual leaders - they've all been super fun and also so full of wisdom, and it's amazing being able to get to know them a little bit and learn about their journey and glean maybe just a little bit of that wisdom from them on how to love people and live a Godly life. We weren't joined by any adults the last two days, which was sort of a shame, but also lent itself to a little bit more silliness and a chance to bond more with each other, which was fun too.

Even driving the twelve or so hours from Cincinnati to Tulsa wasn't bad. We jammed to Disney, TSwift, some worship songs, and a whole variety of other music, we had a girls truck and some much needed girl talk time, and we had a sweet nap station in the backseat. Driving through the tropical storm that passed the route was pretty intense, but we made it through unscathed (maybe in spite of the fact that I was driving) and continued on our way without incident. We arrived in Tulsa at Oral Roberts University, which is a really interesting campus and really beautiful. We got everything set up over the weekend, and now here we are! This week is a much smaller week, with almost a quarter of the students we had last week, which is a much different experience and really nice in a lot of ways to get to experience both.

Prayer tower at ORU

With all the business and all the time we spent together as a group this past week and weekend, I started having some introvert problems. Thankfully, I was able this weekend to get in some really quality Jesus time and some alone time (and even some piano time!), and things have been much better. I've really been loving what the Lord has been laying on my heart lately - something I've been thinking on a lot is understanding my identity as a woman in Christ. There's a book called Captivating written by Staci and John Eldredge that Codey brought up a couple weeks ago, and Becca has been reading. A passage from this book came up by coincidence in my email (I love how things always come up together like this) and I just really loved it, so I'm going to share it with you guys here:

"Eowyn removes her helmet and lets her hair fall free. She declares herself "no man" and fighting as a woman, slays her enemy. Something critically important is revealed in this story. Women are called to join the Greatest Battle of all time - the battle being waged for the hearts of those around us. The human heart is the battlefield. The war is a deadly one; the results devastating or glorious, but always eternal. We are needed. There is much to be done. The hour is late. But we will only be victorious when we enter in with our feminine hearts - when we battle as women. 

Redeemed women of God have tender, merciful hearts, backbones of steel, and hands that have been trained for battle.

There is something incredibly fierce in the heart of a woman that is to be contended with - not dismissed, not disdained but recognized, honored, welcomed, and trained."

First of all, two thumbs up to the Lord of the Rings reference. Secondly, I really like the idea here of femininity being a strength - these aren't things which are usually connected. But a lot of the virtues that the Bible lists out are often ones which are (for better or for worse) associated with a more "feminine" way of being - love, patience, humility, kindness, etc. I may have mentioned before that the passage that Engage Service is focusing on this summer for students is in Colossians, so I've been reading through this book a lot on my own as well. I want to give you two of the passages which either stood out to me or other people have brought up - the first is less related to the topic of feminine strength, but I'll circle back there with the second. 

I want to pair the first passage, Colossians 3:1-4, with what I've been reading in Jeremiah 11:20. (And yes, by the way, that is crayon - highlighter bleeds through the pages of my Bible, this is an alternative I highly recommend :) ).

Colossians 3:1-4

Jeremiah 11:20

I like these two together, because both talk about setting your mind and heart on the Lord, and how my "cause" and my real life is really in the hands of God and in Christ. This is really reassuring to me, and a good reminder to keep my thoughts fixed on Jesus and on things that are good and beautiful, instead of being distracted by or worried about other things.

Evening session w/ our theme of Good News

The second passage in Colossians is what I want to leave you with. This passage came up several different times in the last few days, and just really struck me because I think it's beautiful and because of the idea of quiet strength. Quiet strength seems to me like a much more feminine characteristic, and I love that that's something I know I can find when I focus my mind, thoughts and actions on loving Jesus and other people. 

This is The Message version of Colossians 3:11-14 

"So, chosen by God for this new life of love, dress in the wardrobe God  picked out for you: compassion, kindness, humility, quiet strength, discipline. Be even-tempered, content with second place, quick to forgive an offense. Forgive as quickly and completely as the Master forgave you. And regardless of what else you put on, wear love. It's your basic, all-purpose garment. Never be without it."

Week 2: Laughter around the campfire

I’ve now spent two weeks of my life in Joplin, Missouri, and I have to say the place has really grown on me. I’m accustomed to a much more urban feel, and the smaller town atmosphere actually makes me really happy.

Bags of t-shirts we rolled this week

This week has been a ton of fun. We’ve been working harder – not as many meetings, lots of getting ready for our first sessions! We’ve rolled about 1,500 t-shirts, so we’re pretty much pros at that now. I’ve also gotten to work on schedules, housing, had some money matters entrusted to me (eep), and on Friday we loaded up a truck for our practice session yesterday! We’ll be rolling out next Thursday and heading to our first event in Ohio. 

Some of the highlights of this week in terms of non-work related things were both Monday and Tuesday. On Monday, we went to the CIY office in the evening to make Oreo balls for a cookout at our boss’s house the next day. They were delicious, by way, and super easy to make – you can find the recipe here. 

Just singin' along to some Lion King

Pretty great guys we get to work with

At the office, there’s a small kitchen, and next to that is a conference room with a huge TV. We all helped with the Oreo balls for a while, and as there got to be less to do, Caleb went into the other room and pulled up YouTube on the TV and began playing Disney songs. As we cooked, cleaned the kitchen (S/O to Sully for being awesome and not only willing but eager to clean), and sang and danced along to classic Disney music (S/O to Caleb for knowing all the words to every song), it occurred to me (and Becca, as we discussed later in the week) that this was really what Christian fellowship and community is all about. It was a fun, carefree evening, and made my heart so happy.

The next day, we went to a staff member (Rachel)’s house for a cookout with the whole Engage team. The entire evening was fun, but the best moment by far happened when we were all sitting around the campfire towards the end of the night. We were all talking, and the boys were, as usual, being pretty silly, and all of a sudden Codey started laughing his belly laugh. The thing is, when Codey laughs deeply, he sounds like Mickey Mouse. The laugh itself, combined with the fact that this sound is coming out of a pretty big guy, is absolutely hilarious, so once he started laughing, so did everyone else in the circle. Then Rachel laughed – her laugh also sounds super funny, so it set off a chain of laughter where Codey and Rachel would laugh at each other’s laughs and everyone else would join in. We laughed for a good seven or eight minutes, until it was sort of painful, but it was amazing and wonderful.

"This actually happened" face

Something else that happened this week: I ate meat for the first time in seven years. I’ve been thinking about it for a while, knowing that being vegetarian and doing missions work probably wouldn’t be possible, and just decided the other day that I’d do it then. My first meat was a corn dog from Sonic – this choice might not make sense, but hot dogs are actually one of the things I’ve craved the most out of all the meats. Surprisingly, it didn’t taste all that different from veggie dogs I’ve had recently, so it actually was pretty good. I haven’t had meat since, but it’ll be interesting slowly making the switch. I don’t have much interest in eating meat, but it’ll definitely be handy for those times when there are limited choices.

Sunny!

Other adventures: we went to a train bridge one night, which was pretty cool, and we had family dinner last night at a non-fast food restaurant, which was nice. We also went to some of the sessions for CIY Move which took place at Ozark last week. The worship music and the speakers were great, and there were lots of talented high schoolers who performed in the talent show. We also got to hang out at our boss Sarah’s house yesterday, where we met her pup, Baxter, her mom’s sweet new puppy Sunny and her turtle (!) Squirtle. So so many animal pals, and I love it. Last but not least, we went and swam in a creek and (attempted to) hammock, which was super fun.

Train bridge

So what has God been teaching me this past week? Doing devos and spending time in reflection, I’ve been coming to a lot of understandings about myself and the way I want to be and live, which is kind of crazy as it’s happening all at once. It’s all things I’ve thought and read about before, but God is really laying them down on my heart and reinforcing a lot of things for me. I’ve also been really blessed to get to spend time in conversation with the men and women around me on staff and on my team, gaining insights and encouragement from one another. I don't have a lot of very specific things to talk about that he's been teaching me - it's been a sort of sleepy week, and so I've been focusing much more on prayer and reflection than on learning a lot of new things. One of the speakers talked about how important it is to fear God, the same way you might fear your earthly father. This kind of speaks to what I've been thinking about a lot lately - just rediscovering an awe for how powerful God is, and grasping even a little bit of what it means to love the way he does.

I'm getting excited about leaving this Thursday - prayers for smooth travels and good cohesion for our team would be wonderful. Hope you're all having a happy summer so far!

Engage event staff family :)

Week 1: Cats, New friends, and Fast Food

I've officially been in Missouri for almost a week, and despite the many setbacks to me actually arriving here, everything since that arrival has been wonderful. I met my team - three guys (Codey, Caleb, and Sully) and two other girls (Annaliese and Becca), as well as our fearless leaders (the CIY Engage staff) - the night I arrived and the next day, and almost right away I was super hopeful for the rest of the summer. The people were one of the biggest things I was looking forward to this summer, and I wasn't disappointed, because everyone so far is really great.

The past week was mainly spent in meetings and learning about our role as a group as well as our individual jobs. Our day begins at 8 am in the CIY offices, where we have morning devotions with the rest of the interns from CIY Move and Mix and also professional development training. One staff member talked about what it means to have a servant's heart, a term that's fairly common in Christianese. What stuck with me was the assertion that everybody wants to be thought of as a servant, but nobody wants to be treated like one. Obviously, right? But this is something I often fall into, and serving and loving others without expecting anything from them is a mindset I hope to get into as we move into working this summer. The staff here has a lot of wisdom to share, and there have been similar tidbits that I've gotten from every morning session we've been a part of.

Our team is super serious, if you couldn't tell

The Falls

After that, we've had meetings and training, lunch in the middle of the day, and then we end our working day by 5 pm. After that, us interns will take the van and hang out at the dorms for awhile (we're staying in dorms at Ozark Christian College) then meet up for dinner. We've had some adventures, and we've also experienced most if not all of the fast food restaurants in Joplin, so, good stuff. One afternoon, we decided to try to have a picnic, and went to a place nearby where there's a waterfall and a cliff overlooking a river. Unfortunately, I didn't realize there was going to be hiking along a rocky trail to get to the cliff, and I wore flip flops, which resulted in a stubbed toe and a whole bunch of blood. I promise I'm not as accident prone as this blog so far makes it seem! That aside, it was a beautiful day, and it was nice to get out and experience nature together.

We also went to pick up my suitcase from the Joplin airport together (sweatshirts don't make great pillows, clean clothes and toothbrushes are good things to have in your carry-on - some of the lessons I learned that day) and on the way, saw a magnificent double rainbow that stretched all the way across the sky in a perfect arc, which was pretty awesome.

More/bigger Falls

Something I came across this week throughout devotions and my own thinking through things was my sort of 'theme' for this summer and year. Last summer was characterized for me by "Be Still." God taught me a lot about listening to him and being patient and attentive to understanding more of his character and just how great he is. This summer, I think, is going to be about Passion. In one devotion, the speaker talked about the cravings that God gives us (for success, acceptance, etc.) and how we have those so that we can look to him to be satisfied. Unfortunately, it's really easy to try to satisfy those with other things - for me, (being a little bit vulnerable in a public space, yikes!), that thing is love. I have a tendency to place a lot of value on relationships with other people and to work hard and search for and find a lot of value in gaining the trust and love of these people. That in itself isn't something negative, but I also have had this hurt me deeply as well - and the reason is that I'm putting more value into these relationships than into my relationship with God.

Creek with three crosses overlooking it on Ozark's campus

Looking back, looking at my heart now, and looking into the future, what I really hope to gain from this summer is a whole new realization of how big God's love for me is and how all encompassing it is, and a rediscovery and reinvention of my passion for the Lord and for working towards his plans for me. A passage I've kept coming back to the past few months is Jeremiah 2:2, where the Lord speaks and says, "I remember how faithful you were when you were young, how you loved me when we were first married; you followed me through the desert, through a land that had not been planted." The idea of marriage is really appealing to me in general, and this idea of the church as the bride of Christ really drives the passion that I've been finding. While in Jeremiah, this is said as a rebuke to Israel for straying away from the Lord and a reminder of what they once had - it is my hope that this sort of love and devotion is something that I'll be able to really rediscover, deepen and live out now and in the future.

Honorary team cat, Bridget

All in all, I'm loving it here so far. Almost everything that I love is here! There are great people. There's nature that I've gotten to explore. I'm getting so much Jesus time. There's tons of worship music all over the place. I've even gotten the opportunity to play with not only some pretty great kids (hanging out at our boss's house), but also a whole variety of small fluffy animals. This weekend, I even went running with Annaliese and Codey - and by running, I mean we jogged a mile to a playground, played, and then walked back. Because we are adults. So even my favorite kind of running! So basically, everything is awesome.

I would be remiss if I didn't say that I do also miss my family and friends, and I very much hope that you're all doing well! Love you all lots, and I'll see you and talk to you very soon.

            

Travel Mishaps and Musings

I was up before the sun today - 4:30 a.m., bright and early. I woke up so early because today was the day I began my summer travels, interning with CIY (Christ in Youth) Engage running youth conferences all around the Midwest. The first part of the day was relatively uneventful - my parents drove me to the airport, I checked in, and before long I was in my seat on the plane without incident.

Within a few minutes, however, was my first mishap of the day. A passenger behind me lost control of her bag as she tried to lift it into the overhead compartment, and subsequently dropped it on my head. I wasn't paying attention, still being half asleep, and so it came out of nowhere - it honestly was almost sort of funny, except for the fact that it was actually pretty painful. The flight attendent was very kind and brought me ice, checking to make sure I was okay, and life went on as before (though some of the skin on my head didn't).

Because it was actually sort of hilarious in a sad kind of way

Soon, we touched down in Dallas. The layover time flew by, and soon I was boarding the plane that would take me to my final destination: Joplin, Missouri. However, the second travel mishap then took place - because of a problem with the pilot's chair, we weren't able to take off right away, and soon thereafter a storm rolled in. We ended up sitting on the plane for two hours before being deboarded and told that our flight was cancelled. 

I was able to find another flight to a different airport, and I'll make it to Joplin eventually. What I've kept coming back to this entire day, however, was a section of Eugene Cho's book, Overrated, where he talks about waiting - something I've been doing a lot of today - and getting time alone with God. As Cho discusses Chapter 4, we in America often get so caught up in our devices (guilty. super guilty.) and the idea that it is important to always be busy doing something, that we neglect to just spend time with God and listen to what he's saying to us. 

The past semester was extremely discouraging and difficult for me, for a variety of reasons. I initially drifted away from God, mainly because I was exhausted, stressed, and "too busy." However, I was broken down more and more until I realized that the only thing left for me to do to pull myself up was to turn to and lean on Him. So while I was tempted to be irritated and discouraged by the delays and mishaps I encountered today, I realized that really it's been a huge blessing - it's only the first day, and already God has created a space for me to spend extra time alone with Him. And while this does make things more inconvenient for those involved in fetching me from the airport, I can't help but feel that this is a good sign for the weeks to come. I'm very hopeful and excited to see how God is going to heal me and grow me this summer.

Because sometimes I'm pretty obstinate

Most people who know me will tell you that loving people and doing good are huge parts of who I am and what I plan to do with my life. And I just wanted to share something that Cho says that really speaks to me in this moment of my life: 

"We need to pursue justice not just because the world is broken, but because we're broken too. Pursuing justice helps us put our own lives in order. Perhaps this is what God intended - that in doing His work serving others, we discover more of His character and are changed ourselves." 

I'm looking forward to not only being able to serve those around me and the youth attending Engage, but also being able to learn and grow in the Lord through that service.