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 :)