Benches

This last week was kinda wild. I guess it started last Friday night at work. I was hanging out with Lauren after putting all of the girls to bed and Lauren kept telling me I should really try and get a hold of one of our co-workers from Summer camp. I told her I had tried with no response and I was just tired of pursuing it. She eventually let me know that this person had a secret wedding the previous weekend and was 4 months pregnant and that I REALLY should try and get a hold of her. Now, my first instinct was shock, followed quickly with anger. Not anger that she got married and was pregnant, but anger and sadness that this co-worker that I considered a pretty good friend didn't feel it necessary to tell me herself what was going on with her life. The next morning I got up at 4am to drive Holly to the airport so when I got to work, I was pretty tired and still really bummed out about the news from the night before. Then, I saw that this person was calling my cell phone. Because I was kinda pissed, tired, and working, I pushed ignore because I didn't feel like having that conversation right then and there. A couple minutes later, this person came to hunt me down in the Girl's dorm (and I hid in the hallway to avoid her for almost a half an hour). She later cornered me in the Health Center and said stuff like "Sorry I haven't returned any of your phone calls... A lot has been going on... A lot of things are changing... And I wanted to tell you this before you found out through the grape-vine..." I told her she was too late and I already knew... the conversation was awkward from then on. I told her congratulations (even though I don't think it was very sincere). I really am happy for her because this is what she has wanted for a long time. I am more just bummed that she didn't feel it necessary to let me know what was going on...

So the rest of the weekend was pretty mellow. We went to State Street on Sunday were I took a ton of photos for my Photography class (Assignment 3... look at them and please tell me what you think... Not just "I like it or I don't like it" but what works and what doesn't). We also took the elementary kids to the SB museum of Art. It's free on Sundays and there was a great exhibit of Picasso Drawings. Later I got a wonderful visit from my friend Elissa at Borders which made the weekend extra special!

The rest of the week was pretty mellow. My mommy was gone camping so it was just me and Nae at home all week. My Dad was coaching so I really didn't get to see him that much. But the house was quite and I was fighting off allergies that later turned into a little head cold around Wednesday. Now I am work again trying to enjoy the rain!

The Jerk

I love the movie The Jerk ("The new phone book is here! The new phone book is here!" So funny!), but this time I was the Jerk and it wasn't really funny. It was sort of busy weekend I suppose. I went to work Friday night and we had a social. It wasn't too bad this time around even though a ton of the kids were super moody this weekend. Sunday we went to the Mall (WooHoo! The mall). It's actually one of my least favorite trips that we do, but Nae came with me and we had fun playing and taking pictures in the toy store. After work my mom made dinner for my b-day.

Yes Monday was my birthday and I have to admit I was kinda a jerk (ok, maybe a lot a Jerk). Amber had planned out a wonderful day of hanging out with friends and I wasn't super happy. I guess I have never really liked my own birthdays because I really don't like having the attention on me and usually that's how birthday's work. So the first half of the day was kinda painful for the people around me (I am sorry for being a lame face) even though we enjoyed Coffee, Pedicures, and Lunch. After a hour of resting and thinking, I realized how much of a jerk I was being and realized I just needed to get over my insecurities and enjoy the love and company of my friends. So later in the early afternoon my wonderful friends picked me up in the "Party Bus" (Martha's Astro Van) and we enjoyed a wonderful night hanging out with each other.

In addition to being my birthday Monday, It was also my mom's best Friend, Shelly's first day of Chemo. She was recently diagnosed with Breast Cancer and is starting her fight. She lives in Elk Grove (a town south of Sacramento) so it makes it a little difficult to support her being so far away. In order to help her feel supported through this, we are all wearing our Stand Up 2 Cancer Shirts on days she has her Chemo treatments.

In other news, I finished my Second Assignment for my Digital Photography class. The first half of the assignment was to take compositional photographs (Rule of 3rds, C curve, S curve...). The second half was to take the top 6 photos and make them absrtact. Check them out!

You Suck!

Ok, so the title is a little rough, but I honestly have been sucking at blogging lately. Not too much has been going on so I haven't really had anything to blog about. School is... going. I love my digital photography class! I will probably be posting some of my photos tomorrow... I have to touch them up a little and then save them as JPEG's before I can upload them. Spanish is... really easy. I am taking Spanish 2 (which I have taken maybe 5 years of Spanish in my lifetime, plus I grew up being babysat by my abuela who only speaks Spanish) so to say the least I am kinda bored, but it's nice to kinda start to brush up on my unused Spanish skills (that's right... I just called them Spanish Skills). My two other classes are online and start in October so I will let you know how those are going once they start.

For now I am just hanging out at the coffee shop with Holly, Tim, and Nicki. The Big 21 is on Monday and everyone is freakin me out, but we'll see what happens... Haircut Sunday and i am hoping to get a new look (everyone has the graduated bob now... it's time for a change...)

Hi-Ho! Hi-Ho!

It's off to work I go this weekend. Last night was the start of weekends at school. I was so excited to meet all of my new kids (which there are several of them by the way) and super excited to see some of my old kids. We have a ton of girls this year (well, it's the same number as last year... it just seems like there are a lot of girls this year) and about half of the boys we had last year. About half of our girls are new to OVS which is super neat but also sort of difficult as far as transitioning. We have a very lively bunch of girls who feel the need to yell a lot (sometimes too much, but it's their first weekend so they are excited). But for the most part they all seem like nice girls so we will see how this year goes. Last night we started off the weekend with a pool party, today we go to town (Big Town... yeah, that's just downtown Ojai... not big at all), and tomorrow we will go to Skating Plus (I will probably opt out of skating since I broke my arm there years ago). But, so far (knock on wood), so good.

Excited?

Staff meetings are this week for work and the kids are supposed to arrive on Monday. I haven't really had a whole lot of feelings about work starting up again. Well, maybe I have kinda been dreading it and wondering why I signed my contract to give up my weekends (or worse, my Sundays) for another year. But today I got to go to my first staff meeting and, upon seeing the resident student list, I kinda got... Excited? Really? Yeah, I am kinda excited about work. Funny how just seeing the names of the kids I am going to be spending my weekends with got me excited about my job. I thought it was funny... The meetings sucked and I have to go to more on Friday (I am supposed to go tomorrow but I have class... never thought I would prefer to go to class than a meeting). Friday's meeting should be short and then I have to do my CPR certification that afternoon, but it hopefully won't be too bad. But yeah... I'm kinda excited... Go figure...

The Root of All Evil

Today was our first Community back after a summer break. It was so nice to not have to walk into big church and feel awkward and uncomfortable in those pews, but to actually walk into a room full of people I love and who love me (not that people in big church don't love me... many of them do, it's just... so dull) and feel comfortable.

The popular phrase is "The love of Money is the Root of all Evil." Is that really true. True, money causes many of the problems in our world today, but really... ALL problems... it's a little extreme. Actually, money makes a lot of good things possible in our world today. We looked at one of John Wesley's sermons where he talks about the use of money amongst Christ Followers. Mike Kingsley mentioned it in his last blog, but it basically can be summed up in three short sentences: "Gain all you can. Save all you can. and Give all you can." Now, without going into great depth on this topic, it pretty much means that we should be hard workers. As Christ followers we should be hard working because we serve a higher master. We should use every minute of our day to work hard and earn as much as we can. Following that is "Save all you Can." This doesn't really mean to stockpile all of your money just because you can. It's more it's better to save our money than to continue spending it and pouring into this giant consumer economy that we find ourselves in. And the third of course is "Give all you can." It's pretty simple right. So why can't we do it? Why can't I do it?

John Wesley died with only a saddle. The reality of our finances is that 100% of what we have is God's. Not the 10th that we give to the church (even though that is important), but every penny we have is God's. That means that anything we purchase with our money is (or should be) an offering to Him (pleasing in His eyes). John Wesley wraps up his sermon with this:
"Brethren, can we be either wise or faithful stewards unless we thus manage our Lord's goods? ... Then why should we delay? ... At this hour, and from this hour, do His will: Fulfill His word, in this and in all things! I entreat you, in the name of the Lord Jesus, act up to the dignity of your calling!"

It might not all make sense because it doesn't really make sense to me right now either. Here I sit typing on my poop HP computer dreaming of owning a new Macbook Pro and a new SLR camera for my digital photography class. So what do I do with that?

Thin Moments

It's been so nice to be able to go to church this summer. I've been almost dreading going back to work in a couple of weeks because I know it means no more church. I've been kinda bummed that Community took a break for the summer (I'm glad I get to go to two before work starts) because I really have a hard time in "Big church" (I call it big church... I don't know why...). I don't know if it is the Honky Tonk/Patriotic Worship music or the sermons that seem to go on forever about nothing... sorry, a little bit of venting going on there. Anyway, all this to say I actually liked yesterday's sermon. Even though most of Paul's sermons feel like I am in a history lesson (and don't get me wrong, I like a little bit of the history stuff... but not an hour of it...), yesterday's was pretty good. He has been talking about this "Thin Moments" in life where we find ourselves the closest to God. At conference (and it seems like everywhere), a lot of people have been wondering "Where God went?" He seems so distant to so many people and the reality of it is, He hasn't gone anywhere. We have built up this thick wall around us with the business of our lives, the school, the work, the meetings, the soccer games, whatever is filling our lives. We have pushed Him away and we have to thin out our lives in order to draw nearer to him. So the sermons have been about ancient ways of making ourselves thin to God. This week He talked about the "Jesus Prayer" which is one of my favorite prayers. There's just something so powerful in saying "Jesus Christ, Son of God, Have mercy on me, A sinner."

Home Again, Home Again...

It's been a little less than a week since I got back from GEM-K Conference and I am just now getting my head focused enough to write about it. Conference was amazing! It was so nice to catch up with old friends from last year and was even more fun to get to know all of the first timers to GEM-K Conference (this year we had over 10 first timers). This year was really neat because there wasn't a specific "team" that came over to run conference. We had a team, but not like last year when our team from OVCC went over to run it. This year there were two youth leaders from GEM (Cam and Tagg), four past GEM-Ks (Patty, John, Michael, and Kate), two people who love GEM-Ks (Liz and myself), Rod, and Matt and Hailey (and their kids). Being at Conference came so naturally this year because, 1) I had been there before and knew what to expect, and 2) I wasn't in charge of making sure the entire thing ran smoothly (by that I mean it wasn't all on our team's shoulders like last year, rather it was a total team effort and it was just natural).

So, the theme for Conference this year was taken from Chris Haw and Shane Claiborne's new book Jesus for President (sound familiar?) Matt was our speaker and he focused on a Mission theme: namely the Mission that God has for each of us and how it ties into God's Mission of bringing Shalom to the Earth. So our theme was Sheep... How does that work, you might ask. Well, in Matthew 10:16, Jesus says "I am sending you out like sheep among wolves" so... there you go. We are all sheep.

So, like I said, Matt was our speaker. In the mornings he would show a video and then we would break into our small groups and discuss the video. In the evenings Matt would speak in a sort of discussion format (similar to what we do in Community which is why I really enjoyed it). Every night he had the kids participate in section which he called "Agree:Disagree." How you play is simple: Matt throws out a statement and you walk to a side. You either agree or you disagree and then we discuss and argue each side. And you HAD to pick a side. There was no room for middle ground. All of the statements were set up in a way where you could come up with an argument to agree or disagree. I liked this part of Matt's talks because it made the kids (and myself) actually think about what they believe and why they believe it without being able to consult their parents or friends. They had to decide. Two statements that I remember most vividly were from the last night: "I have sinned if I bought a pair of shoes that were, unbeknown to me, made in a sweatshop." and "Everything we do is spiritual." Now, I have some strong opinions for these two, but I was surprised at the amount of kids which disagreed with my opinions. It was actually kinda sad.

All in all, conference was great! I love making connections with people, especially teens. I am so thankful for the opportunity to be able to attend and hang out with everyone (thanks again Matt!). It really was a wonderful time!

PS: the rest of my photos are posted on my Flickr. Have a look!

What is Poverty?

Today is our second full day of Conference and things are going really well. This morning Michael shared with us about his recent trips to Cambodia. He showed some pictures of where he lived and his brothers and family in Cambodia. He also showed us a pair of trousers (I've been hanging around Matt too long when I call pants trousers) he was wearing that his friend from Cambodia swiped from the garment factory she works in and gave him as a gift. It was crazy to actually see the face of someone who works in garment factories in Cambodia and to hear the stories of people passing out from the chemicals in the dyes while they only get paid $50 a month... The pants alone sell for a good 40 Euro (Michael said this, I don't know the brand but I hear it's popular in the UK). Michael told another story of one of his trips to Cambodia when he couldn't take any money out of the bank because his bank card didn't work (I've had this problem before no it was no fun). Oneo f his sisters/friends (she was pretty young and had lost both of her parents to AIDS) told him that she had saved up some money and handed him everything she had (about $10). He refused it at first because it was all she had and she started crying saying that if he didn't take it, then he didn't love her family. Sounds like a lame excuse I know but it was totally legit. In that culture it would be an insult not to take it as it was; a gift.

After Michael shared, we watched a short movie that asked the question "What Is Poverty?" Many people define it as a lack of money, but this guy proposed that Poverty was a lack of friendship. He asked, "If you lost everything, your house, your money, everything, how long would it take you to find food and water? How long would it take you to find a place to sleep? How long would it take you to find a job?" A lot of people I know would probably say a matter of minutes and maybe a week or so for a job. His argument was that if you are able to find everything you need to survive in a matter of minutes or weeks, then you are not poor. It was an interesting argument and I am not totally sure I agree with it fully, but I can definitely see a lot of that at school. All of the kids I work with are filthy stinkin rich but are so lacking in the love department that I would totally consider them poor...

I don't know. It was an interesting topic and it was neat to hear Michael speak a little. Tomorrow we are going to Vienna in the afternoon which should be a good time! For now I am going to attempt to take a little nap... I'm tired! Check out the pictures I posted on Flickr today of Conference so far.

2 Posts in One Day?

It must be something good if I get two posts in one day... My bag came tonight (around 9:30pm)!!! Praise God! And another praise is that Mike is doing much better. Matt and Liz went to visit him this afternoon and they say he looks much better. The doctors still want to keep him there to figure out what's wrong with them... So please keep praying that the doctors can figure out what's going on and that he can join us soon!