The Past month at God's Resort

This past month has been a blur of emotions and events that my mind has still not wrapped around yet. All of February was so stressful at work because we were recruiting, interviewing, and picking new students for the Honors Program next Fall. It's a lot of work and a lot of emotions in a very small office and to say the least everyday was tiring. Emilie, Eddie, and Abi moved in and that was amazing, but a whole period of transition. I love all three of those people so I didn't expect any problems transitioning to community in a bigger group, but the whole month has just been hard. Reshaping boundaries, letting in new perspectives on your ministry, and sharing life with three extra people in a very close and personal environment has been rougher for me than I thought it would be. No idea why actually, but I do know I have experienced a range of emotions from godly to ungodly this past month and in the end I hope to come out of it a better person. God has really opened my heart to the selfishness that still lurks in its crevices and the ugliness of it all has really defeated me at times. As Megan said there is a difference between having community and having a community that does communal living. When community now means giving up what I considered my personal space it brings a whole new set of challenges. Figuring out how to operate in a Christlike manner communally is something I have got to figure out though if I am going to live on a team with five strangers next year. Having Eddie, Emilie, and Abi down there though has been a huge blessing. I hadn't realized how much I had cut myself off from my community until they all started showing up and I wanted to push them away. I no longer wanted to be transparent or share life honestly with them and that was a pretty fruitless place to be in life honestly. So I guess all of the stress and confusion of reentering my community is God trying to bring me back to a Truth I had pushed away. He has exposed the shallowness I had allowed in my relationships with the people He has given me to love and when I see that sin exposed I cannot help but strive towards eliminating it no matter how ugly the process is. Our good friend Peter and Eric are moving in as I type and it is just incredible to see the little community of close friends God is placing in our greater community at God's Resort. I know these next few months we will see something incredible if we are sensitive to His spirit and continue to strive after His teachings. We can use your prayers for our community that we will trust and love each other to the fullest capacity we can each day.

Community vs Communal living...

...we dont have it all figured out.

Mentoring

There are a lot of young teens at God's Resort. Only one of them is a guy, the rest are girls. They are 12 years old and as we all know, that is a very hard age.

One of the goals that we had when Katie and I moved to God's Resort was to start meeting once a week to talk and hang out with the "older girls"

We started in the fall, and i can admit that I didn't do such a great job at it, Ashley and I would meet about once a month. Katie did an amazing job meeting with Dominique, they would hang out once a week, eat together and just talk. It was such an amazing experience for them.

At the beginning of this spring semester Katie called me out on my lack of commitment to meeting with Ashley. So this semester we have been able to meet once a week. We usually go to Starbucks (Ashley usually orders a mocha frapuccino, which she used to call a moco frape) and talk for about an hour.

At first we would pick a random topic, on the spot and read what the Bible had to say about it. For Valentine's day I got her a year long devotional book. This has helped a lot because we read the devotional together, and then talk about the topic. This has been great. (especially when Ashley reads real loud about purity, sex and boys and the people around us give me a knowing look)

The "younger" kids have gotten jealous of the little extra time that the older girls get. E came up to Katie and I one day and told us that she had a proposal (her words not ours). Her proposal was that since Katie and I had extra time with the older girls, we should find time to spend some extra time and do fun stuff with the younger kids; and declared herself Katie's "partner" (which is the word that the young kids use for the mentor- mentee relationship) and that I was to be the other kids. She didn't really want an immediate answer, she wanted us to think about it, and then asked us every time she saw us what we thought of her proposal.

This is the amazon link to the devotional book Ashley got. Its a simple book, but very straight foward and to the point: Designer Genes Devo Book.

Lots to come!

So march is here, and we have been busy busy busy

spring break staring this week, Katie and Abi will be heading to New Orleans to serve with the College Age from College Heights.
Those of us staying are hoping to hang out with the kids since they wont have school.

at the end of the month College Heights has its "week of service"
their goal: to get the backyard ready for summer. with an area that the kids can play in that is safe.

Then, April... i cant even think that far ahead.

Finally the sun came out!

The sun finally came out last Friday after what has felt like weeks, even months of gray skys and cold. We grabbed our soccer ball and the kids and headed for the empty parking lot across from our house for a little fun and in the end a lot of pictures. Here are some great shots of the kids and our extended family here at God's Resort:

Where did February go?

It feels like last month literally blew by. Life was so busy that it was hard to stop and think about anything that was happening. I got accepted to Mission Year, an inner city ministry program, and will be moving in August somewhere unknown to me at this point. We obviously had our fun fiesta for Valentine's Day. We got a new roommate Abi, so now there are three of us. Eddie and Emilie, two our dearest friends, moved in next door to us. We went to Texas to a homeless outreach center to serve the homeless, but more likely we were the ones served. Here's a few pictures from that:

I am getting ready now for Spring Break during which I will be going to New Orleans with the College Age to rebuild houses. I am so excited for this trip. I am actually hoping to visit a Mission Year team while I am down there, but we'll see.

Things at God's Resort are going really well. The neighborhood has come alive with the warmer weather we have had off and on the last couple of weeks. We have had so much fun playing with the kids outside and getting to talk to people more. Winter is so hard because no one comes out of their homes. The kids have been coming over for homework help a lot more which is good because a lot of them have not been doing so well as we thought they were. Ashley and Dominique had a big social studies project and both of them did really well (A's)!!! There are a bunch of new tenants to get to know as well. It really just feels like having a huge extended family all around us. We have moved into the new auditorium at College Heights and it has completely changed our Sunday mornings, but so far we have really enjoyed all the changes. It just seems like lots of new things are going on and everyone is on one wild ride I guess.