Set-up Week

Who knew something so tiring could be so much fun.
This week I have gotten to do so much stuff and it is becoming increasingly difficult for me to explain what exactly I am do.
Let's start with this...
I am the kind of person who finds things to do. If something needs to get done I like to work until the job is finished. I see now that God really did put me as Operations Coordinator for a reason.
My job description basically tells me to deal with food, allergies, supplies, chores, and making sure chores get done. Most of these things can't be done before volunteers get here. This has enabled me to really get things done.
I really feel like I have been able to help my staff this week by doing the odds and ends things that no one wants to do. I have put up shower curtains, built supports out of 2x4's, and driven an hour away to get keys made.
I knew God put me here for a reason, but I thought that reason was to help people who are living in poverty. Now I see that not only has God done that, but he put me here to support my staff.
Yesterday me entire staff came back from doing initial home visits

clarifying note:
Initial Home Visits or IHVs are the first step for us as a staff in choosing a home to work on.

Anyway. They came back from doing initial home visits and they were really discouraged. It is so frustrating here to have to turn around fifty times while trying to find a house by following directions that go something like this:

Go up 27 until you see the gas station
turn right and veer right
Once you see the hill with the rock go two streets and turn right
look for a trailer with a red roof and a white porch
Turn immediately there and look for the three dogs
Turn at those dogs and drive for awhile
Pass Jon's house and turn left
We are the third house on the right.

We seriously get directions like that. Immediately we have a dilemma. Which direction are we going on 27!!!!
It is so frustrating.


But I digress

My staff was really discouraged and they were tired from all of the driving and not finding houses. I had been building support posts all afternoon in the hot sun and was tired also. But they were by far more tired then I was and I felt like they just needed a hand. So I went and made dinner for all of them.
Everyone else had tons of stuff they needed to do and I was able to help them and this gave me energy.

My co-worker Penny said something today that really hit home for me. We were driving in the middle of nowhere and we found a trailer we were looking for.
She said, "That has to be the house. That person is definitely living in poverty."

I've been looking for homes to fix. God is looking at the person who is living in that poverty. The person who doesn't have the money to fix the floor that has rotted away because their toilet leaked and no one would fix it. God looks at the person who can't get their wheelchair into their house because they don't have a ramp which makes them unable to leave their house.
God is showing up here and we only have two more days before volunteers arrive. THIS IS CRAZY!!!
We have so much stuff to do still. I feel like we need to kick it into high gear..... but we did that yesterday : (

This is what it's about though and I am so excited to actually get the construction started.

This blog was supposed to be a video blog but for some reason it won't load. So I am typing things out.
Prayer requests:
That I can find time to read my bible (it s getting increasingly hard to do so)
That we would find quality homes to work on
That God would change my attitude from finding a home to finding the person living in poverty.



Oh and i found two ticks on me today... Luckily neither of them bit me woot!
I am tired and I've typed a lot so good night I miss you all.

Mountains, Places, and Square Dancing

So to start...

why have I never been square dancing before???

Last night we had an Appalachian culture night and a man and his wife played themed music for us as well as square dancing. 

SO MUCH FUN

Never in my life have I square danced and I am really sad that I this is truth. 

The man and woman who called out the moves and played the music was a married couple and to put it the best way possible, if I were to choose someone based solely on their looks to lead a square dance it would have been this couple.

I found out my staff and my position for the summer. It is going to rock!

I am the operations coordinator. And I know that this wasn’t the position I wanted however I am so stoked to be doing this.

The Opco (operations coordinator) orders and decides what foods to get and stuff like that. This is good because I can now order soy milk which my entire staff will be very grateful for.

My staff is really cool. Most staffs have three girls and one boy and that is exactly how my staff has turned out. Joleen is my fellow first year and she is a very excited person to be around. She may have more energy than me, but I am fully ready to defend my energy status. Penny Pope is my returner and she has a very heavy southern accent. She is very cool. And Micah is my center director (my boss) is a very chill person and reminds me of my first boss at Caribou.

Everyone keeps coming up to us and saying we are the cutest staff. It may be because we are stationed in the city of Sunbright in Morgan County Tennessee, or possibly because we are the coolest group. We are seriously like twenty minutes from being in the central time zone. We are also the western most county. I truly feel like this is a God thing because I am actually almost as close to home as I can be which will make family visits easy.

So far life has been really good here, there are a ton of things I am supposed to know about construction and it is definitely overwhelming but I already want to come back next year. I want to be a returner! I think the only thing that could make this summer better is having all my friends from home here with me learning these awesome things.

We leave next week for our counties and I cannot wait to actually get there. Our center has a private bathroom and is awesome!!!!

As far as spiritual fulfillment I was really nervous that my staff wouldn’t be as prayer/bible focused as I want to be, but the first thing out of my returner’s mouth was that she wanted to pray before every meeting. Then my CD (center director) said she really wanted to go outside and lay under the stars and pray before each meeting so that it would be not like a chore we have to get through. I couldn’t be more happy with my group.

I also got to play guitar tonight as well. This made me happy because it was really awesome.

Well sounds good, talk to y’all later and I will eventually do a video blog but I gots to go!

Peace out!!!

First Couple of Days

So to start, the video blogs are not happening yet. There is about twenty minutes a day of private time and that is used for showering. So I apologize and I know it sucks that you all don’t get to see my lovely face ; )

                I am learning so much about construction and am realizing that I really am not going to be doing any actual construction…. Who knew?

                Really what I am going to be doing is just advising the volunteers as they do the work. This is good, however it may limit my actual getting ripped ability.

                I guess I should really say that this first post is really going to be very all over the place. I am sitting right now trying to learn/play a card game and there are so many people around. So once again…

I apologize.

We find out the people that we are actually going to be spending the summer with tomorrow night. It is going to rock! We still have about ten days of training but next Sunday we will be leaving for our counties.

I want to give you all the basic layout for the day. So to do this in a conducive way I have decided to make a list. So here it goes

7:20 get up and go to devo’s

7:45 go to breakfast

                                Note: every day we have different chores and which may include but is not limited to cleaning the bathrooms, dining area, or doing the dishes. Dishes suck because it’s doing the dishes for over 100 people. But for the most part is like my new friend Victoria said, “Construction boot camp.”

                There are so many people here and I am doing my best to learn everyone’s names but you all know me and my ability to remember names is very limited. For example:

                I have asked the same girl what her name is and have told her each time that if I ask her again to punch me in the stomach. I KEEP FORGETTING!

So I am putting it here her name is Mary.

It’s kinda sad because the guy to girl ratio is so off that there will only be one guy in each staff group. I know what some of you are saying. Those are good odds ; )

However, I really like the dudes here. They are all really cool and I want to be on their staffs as well.

It’s late and I am ready for bed so I will post again in the next couple of days when there are more interesting things going on. Just know that I miss everyone and God is really doing awesome stuff here.