February RA fun night

Once a month my staff has a fun social event that we do. I believe it builds deeper connections between us and adds some great memories to the RA experience. Yesterday was when we did our February fun event. We had a working/playing evening at my place.

We started by gathering together at my apartment and then headed out into the Connector to organize furniture. There are 11 different lounges in the Connector and each one is supposed to have a specific set of furniture in it. Students have moved furniture from lounge to lounge and floor to floor to accommodate their personal furniture needs, so it was our job to move everything back to where it belongs. It took us about an hour to complete the move...just working up a good appetite we decided! :)

Bryce strikes a pose during the furniture rearranging.

Then we went back to my apartment and made personal pizzas. We had lots of different toppings - sausage, chicken, ham, pepperoni, peppers, onions, pineapple, pesto, etc... We visited while creating some culinary masterpieces. As the pizzas baked we quickly ran through our weekly meeting agenda. Then we feasted on our pizzas, sun chips and veggie tray.

The gang ready to make their pizzas!

After dinner we played a game that I learned from my friend, Kristine over Christmas break. It was fun and caused quite a bit of uproarious laughter! At the end of the evening we were sorry to leave, but knew that studies and other duties were calling our names.

My circle of awesome RAs!

Pottery Bayou

Friday night I went out for the evening with my friend Rebecca. Her birthday was last month, but we've both been so busy that we haven't had a chance to see one another since then. We found that we were both free on Friday, so we took the opportunity to go do something special to celebrate. She wanted to go eat at the Boathouse restaurant down in Winona Lake. I, of course, didn't have her present yet, so I decided to try and find something fun to do in addition to dinner out that evening as her gift. I used my friend (Google) and found a place called "Pottery Bayou" that was a block over from the restaurant. It is a pottery painting shop. You go in, choose your piece to paint, and paint it. Then you leave it there and they put a glaze on it and fire it for you. I have to go down next week to pick it up. It was a lot of fun! We got to sit and talk while we exercised our creative side. We both ended up painting mugs and were pleased with how they turned out. I am excited to see the finished product! :)

Here are some photos of us painting...

Showing off our mugs!

Rebecca painting the sea around the bottom of her mug.

Me working on some little detail of a flower.

After dinner we went over to the Boathouse and had a delicious dinner! We shared a grilled chicken salad and a chicken/bacon wrap. Tasty! We also had a chance to have some deeper conversation about the things God is doing in our lives. It was a wonderful evening!

LEAD Retreat

This is a looooong post. Sit back and read a bit of the good work God is doing in this stubborn woman's life....

This weekend was good. Really good. Not a superficial fun playing around good, but a significant life "tuning up" good! Our church has a leadership group called the "LEAD community" which consists of all the ministry leaders from church. I am a part of this group due to my roles with college students, the Living Room, and our Home Group Support team. This weekend was a retreat led by our church overseer, Keith from Wylie, Texas. I have been looking forward to this because Keith is always an inspirational speaker and I needed a break from work!

I drove up by myself on Friday evening and proceeded to get a little lost...very frustrating for me - someone who prides herself in being able to travel all over the country without getting lost. So, I arrived in a bit of a sour mood. Satan took the opportunity to stir that sour mood and fed me all sorts of lies about not being worthy of being there and picking at the tender wound of being the only single person there (at least of a "certain" age). I busied myself with making coffee and didn't really enter into worship or the things that Keith was teaching on - I was too busy stirring my pot of self pity and discontent. After the session was done we all hung out in the lounge area snacking and visiting. I finally started to loosen up around the time that we all went to bed, but was still in a bit of a funk. I knew I needed to do some business with God, but instead put in my ipod earphones and headed off to sleep.

I planned on waking up early and talking to God before the morning session. I ended up sleeping in longer than planned and then the morning session with Keith got moved up 15 minutes early and I had to bust a move just to be presentable. Again I busied myself with the task of making coffee and didn't engage much in worship. Then Keith stated talking. He was speaking words that seemed directed straight at my heart! I sat there at full attention taking in everything he was saying.

He was speaking about change. Here are a few of my favorite quotes and how each resonated with my own life these days...

"Relationally we either getting bitter or better." -I have been avoiding some of the relational challenges in my life and instead of life getting any better, I can sense the bitterness that is creeping in and showing up in ugly little snippy comments from time to time.

"Jesus is on the move on the Earth - if we are standing still we end up getting further from God." -I haven't been actively pursuing God in daily quiet times. Rather than being at a stand still with God, He feels further and further away.

"Community is the enemy of depression. Isolation is its ally." -When I start feeling overwhelmed I hole up in my apartment and instead of feeling more "rested and focused" as I think I am going to, I end up feeling lonely and sad and hopeless.

At the end of his talk I was thrilled that he said we were going to have a time of prayer for each other in the afternoon session. If I'm real honest, there was a little fear mixed in with the excitement...what if the word someone had for me was a bit too "insightful" and laid my heart out in the open for others to judge. What rubbish! Satan is so good at deceiving us - whispering little lies in our ears to hopefully make us shrink back and run when God wants to pour good into us.

The final session came around - the one where we were going to pray for each other. I sat near the back and started singing along with the worship music that was playing. Then the tears started to flow. I felt God revealing some hard spots in my heart and it was like he was rubbing ointment on those spots. Kind of like when you have a knot in your neck and it hurts, yet feels SO good at the same time when someone works it out. I sat there for a while with God ministering to my heart until a friend (Brenda B) came over and prayed for me. We talked and prayed for about 10 minutes. I don't remember exactly what she prayed over me, but I know it was good! I came away with a vision/plan for some steps I can take to really grab hold of God in a fresh way so that it doesn't feel like he's so far away. She also spoke some important words of encouragement that I know came straight from God's heart to mine. When she left I sat still crying, but more tears of joy than ones of being overwhelmed and lost. Then two more dear friends (Tracy & Chrissy) came over to pray for me. They hadn't seen Brenda pray for me, but the things they prayed echoed what Brenda and I had talked/prayed about. That was a real confirmation to me of my prayers with Brenda.

I left the retreat with a much lighter heart than I've had in quite some time! I feel life in my bones like I haven't in a long long time! I am excited to see what new things God is going to reveal to me and to serve him with my all!

Until later....

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!

Poker night

Tonight was poker night! I learned how to play this summer and played off and on with friends until school started in August. I didn't find the time to do it during the fall semester, so it became one of my goals for Christmas break to have a Poker Night. It was a lot of fun. Megan and her husband Dave came, as did Love. Kyle from church came and brought along his friend - Lindsay who used to live in my residence hall back when I first started at GC. It was a nice mix of people and a pretty relaxed game. I was the second one to lose all my chips, but that was ok with me. I realize that I'm still not very good at the game, so I don't expect to win. We, as always, did not play for money - just bragging rights. Love walked away with the bragging rights this time! People brought yummy snacks and were here for about 5 hours. Overall it was a success! I'm looking forward to when school is out and I can host these games more often.

p.s. I love you

Today I cried and cried and cried...over a movie! The Rissers, Cara (home from Texas), and I went to see the new movie "p.s. I love you" starring Hilary Swank. It was such a good movie. It made me laugh and made me cry. It dealt with a woman's grief over the death of her husband. It had flashbacks of their relationship and promises of hope for her future. She didn't deal with her grief in entirely healthy ways (or moral ways at times - this was made by Hollywood afterall), but I don't think any of us deal with grief in accordance with the "5 stages of grief", instead we sort it out as we go along with the help of those around us.

Much of the movie rang true to me and offered something I could relate to. Of course I haven't dealt with the loss of a spouse, but I do face the uncertainly and scariness of a future alone. I think it hit me in a poignant way with this being the Christmas season with its focus on families and "that special someone" in your life. I appreciated how the movie didn't end all neatly wrapped up in a predictable "chick flick" ending, but instead left the viewer with a sense of hope for the future amidst the uncertainty of the present.

It is my prayer that during this holiday season and into the new year that I am able to carry that same sense of hope for my own life - that while not entirely sure what is next or if I'll have another person by my side, I am able to continue to hold on to the hope that whatever it looks like I will be ok - more than ok in fact...I will be great!