Harlem Globetrotters!

Each month my RA staff and I plan a fun event to do together. I believe that a team that works hard should also play hard together, so we do a little something each month. Our January event happened on Friday night. We went to see the Harlem Globetrotters over at Notre Dame. It was SO much fun! I've always wanted to go, but have never found other people that wanted to go with me. It was a fun treat to have this group go...everyone was pretty excited about going and had a fun time.

Globetrotters on the court!

f:Rachel, Kat, Taylor, & Kaleem
r:Grace, Heather, me, & Bryce

On the way home we stopped at Krispy Kreme and shared a dozen donuts! They were quite tasty and a definite crowd pleaser!

Enjoying the donuts!

National Pie Day!

January 23rd is National Pie Day. It is a holiday declared by the National Pie Council, not the U.S. government, so that means we do not get off work that day. :( I've been celebrating this day with my students for the past 3 years. I bake a dozen pies and invite the residents of my buildings down for pie. I had 79 people attend this year. It was lots of fun!

Here's a photo of 9 of the 12 pies. I made Dutch Apple, Apple, Raspberry, Mixed Berry, Blueberry, Cherry, Peanut Butter, Lemon Meringue, Banana Cream, Caramel Pecan, Pumpkin, and French Silk!

ACSD

This weekend I went to an ACSD (Association for Christians in Student Development) conference at Malone College in Canton, Ohio. It is a conference for the Residence Life staff from our area conference, so we took the RA staff along with us.

It was a short conference - just Friday evening and Saturday morning. We ended up spending almost as much time in the vans as we did at the conference! Some of the staff was a bit grumpy about that, but we explained how the folks at Malone come here 99% of the time, so it was only fair that we did the time once in a while to be at their location. I think they got it, but still weren't happy about it.

Friday night we arrived and had a nice meal in their student center. After that we headed across campus to a chapel for the "main session." We spent about 30 minutes in worship - real heartfelt worship! I was impressed by the students on their worship team. The main speaker was pretty good, but he spoke longer than I wanted to sit in a seat after the 5 1/2 hour drive to Ohio. We left the students on campus to stay overnight with their peers and us RDs drove to the hotel. We hung out in Alex & Chad's room talking about work stuff until almost 1 a.m. I think we may have ended up staying up later than some of the students!

Saturday morning we had another great worship time as a large group followed by the main speaker sharing for a while again. Then we broke up and went to various workshops.

I went to one on sabbath. The woman spoke about God's design for us to have rest each day and a sabbath once a week. She shared some scriptures from the OT and we watched a nooma video. I thought the information was good, but nothing earth shatteringly new for me. I did pick up several handouts that I think might be thought provoking when I get around to reading them.

My second workshop was on community. It was good content, but mostly reinforced my own beliefs about the value of community in the Christian church. The speaker was interesting and actually knows the president of Goshen. So, it was good to make a GC connection with him.

At the closing luncheon we have a t shirt give away. Unfortunately the person who was bringing the GC shirts (NOT me!) waited until the last minute to look for them and since they weren't where he thought we didn't have any to share. I felt bad about that and even worse when 10 of our 15 students ended up winning shirts in the give away! Next year we will just need to take twice as many as normal to make up for this year.

The trip back was pretty uneventful (thankfully) and we were all glad to be out of the vans when we arrived back in Goshen.

First week back

So, last week was the first week back to work. It went great! I have a new RA this semester. Someone wasn't performing up to the level that we expect, so she was given some new challenges to meet the expectations, but she decided not to continue on in the job. I had to scramble at the end of last semester and found someone to replace her. So I spent a couple of hour each day lat week with the new gal doing her RA training (something we spend an entire week doing at the beginning of the year!). It went well and I'm excited to have her on my team for this semester. She's a bit shy and needs to come out of her shell a bit...all in due time!

I decided to start eating healthier last week. Most people do this at the beginning of the year, but I decided to give myself a few extra days of eating poorly and then to get on the right track when I started the new year here at school. It's going well. I feel much better and actually find that I am in a better mood. Sometimes people mention to me in the mornings (and sometimes other times of the day) that I look really tired. I have been getting comments now about what a good mood I'm in! I like that change! That's much more the person that I want to be. :)

I was on duty last weekend, so I didn't think it would be a very good time, but it actually turned out GREAT! Deanna came over on Friday night. We had dinner together and put a puzzle together while we chatted and watched "What Not To Wear" on TLC. Deanna brought the new blender that she got for Christmas and we made smoothies...so YUMMY! It was a nice relaxed evening at home.

Saturday I went out to lunch and shopping with Rebecca. It was SO good to catch up with her. I haven't spent much time with her in the past month, so it was overdue. While I was driving home from dropping her off she called my cell and asked me to come to dinner that evening. Our friend Kristine was coming over and the more the merrier! :) That was a really fun time! Supper was great, we played some games, and talked/laughed a lot! I was sad to leave at the end of the evening. but knew it was time to get back to campus and make sure things were still standing...they were! :)

Sunday was full throttle as usual. I was at church early to do the set up coffee and snacks in the Living Room. After church the college students came to my house for lunch. It was a great time of chatting and catching up on one another's lives since we hadn't been together since the first Sunday in December. I got to take a nap on Sunday afternoon....wonderful! And then my staff came down for dinner in the evening. We celebrated Ben's half birthday since we won't be together for his in July. He was completely surprised by it! I really enjoy my team of RAs and find that Sunday nights are a real highlight for me. It's such a gift to work with great people like them.

Behind on things....

So I send out my Christmas letter and tell everyone to check out my blog and then I don't post in it! Not a very smart move on my part! Rather than recap the holiday season, I'll start at the beginning of this year and try to stay more current.

New Year's night/day we had a beautiful snowstorm in the Goshen area - about 14 inches or so. Most people stayed home that day, but my friends and I had a get together planed and we decided not to cancel it. After all, we grew up in this kind of weather, certainly we could handle it!

We had a progressive dinner with a twist - we went to restaurants. (I guess I should explain who "we" is - the Rissers, Rebecca, Cara, and our friend Kristine who was home from Uganda) We met at Hacienda - a favorite local Mexican chain - and had chips & salsa, an appetizer platter, and sodas. After spending about an hour there we piled into our cars and went to Buffalo Wild Wings where we shared a couple little baskets of wings - one boneless and one the real deal. Then we travelled to Applebees for the "salad course" where we shared an Asian Chicken salad and a spinach & shrimp salad - both were delicious! Our next stop was Chilis where we shared a double order of fajitas. Dessert was at IHOP where we shared some banana pancakes with strawberry sauce and the Crispy Banana Caramel Cheesecake"....YUMM-O! And then we went to Starbucks and got beverages to take back to my place where we played games. The whole dinner took us about 5 hours, but we had such fun talking and laughing! We ended up hanging out at my place for another couple hours. It was awesome! You can check out my friend Deanna's blog if you want to see photos of our time together.

Thursday and Friday of the first week in January I spent in school. My new semester started and I was busy learning while my students were still chillin with family and friends. It was good though, because now I'll have to miss two less days of work this semester - a nice thing for those that work with me!

This term I am taking two classes...

Historical Foundations: Students will develop an understanding of historical developments relevant to ministry practice and will reflect on the relationship between theology and the practice of ministry.

and

MC 507 Ministry Mentor : Upon admission into the Graduate School of Christian Ministries, each new student is matched with a mentor with whom an effective mentoring relationship will be established. Students are expected to meet with their mentors bi-weekly each semester for four semesters during their academic experience. Mentors will be asked to hold students accountable for their spiritual formation, educational assignments and personal ministry while teaching principles of mentoring. Students must register for this course for four semesters, with the first semester taken for 2 credits and subsequent semesters taken for 0 credits that carry a course fee.

Well, I think that's all I'll write in this post. I'll recap the first week back at work in the next day or so. Thanks for reading my blog!