Week 13

we have reached the end of our first semester! first of all, i want to thank everyone who has put time, effort, money, sweat, tears, and prayer into making our program as successful as it has been. thank you to all of our great volunteers. we appreciate you so much and hope that you continue to come back in the new year!

this past week was crazy as we geared up for christmas, had many new faces in our classroom, and attempted to have an all day program wednesday, thursday, and friday since nashville schools let out at 10:30 am.

we had the very talented sissy (shown here with katiebell) come in and make gingerbread houses with us- her children joined us too, as well as my sweet friend emily and her kids anna and taylor. we had quite the crowd that day!








during our full days, we did lots of different and fun activities. we put on goofy olympics which included a mummy wrap (left), human sewing, and great relay races and songs.






we went to the movies, went to feed the children, and spent some time at....


....the purity dairy factory!



on friday, our good friend lisanne who runs room in the inn and who everyone has grown to love immensely, brought great presents for our group!







here we are with lisanne:


the week was great, and we loved spending time with each other for full days instead of just afternoons. we all look forward to when we can do it on a consistent basis.

again, thank you to everyone for making a successful first semester. look forward to seeing you in the new year!

meaghan

Week 12

top moments of the week:

1. natalie schooling everyone in bowling.
2. a lesson in being grateful and making our mothers presents!
3. driving together through the snow, singing christmas carols in the van :)



on the power of consistency..


routine is scary for me, i will be the first to admit that. in the past month or so, now that we have made several weekly commitments and our weeks look fairly similar, i have found myself several times broken out in a cold sweat, thinking and dreading being locked into a routine. for our friends, routine is special and necessary. they are thrown off if we don't do our usual wednesday activity, or if just one staff person is missing. they are "creatures of habit" to the extreme of the definition. now that we are three months into the program, even our participants have started to complain that we do the same thing every monday, or every friday...

you can imagine how this crippled me with fear. should we break all our commitments at the end of every semester and start afresh?

this wednesday at feed the children, staff member reggie told stephanie that there is no group of volunteers that works as hard as we do or gets as many boxes done as we do. they oftentimes have to stay longer because their volunteer groups goof off, but not us. they are so grateful for what we've done, and grateful that we keep coming back.
brittany, the volunteer coordinator at feed the children, told me that she is amazed at our improvement over the weeks. she set our goal at 120 boxes or 3 pallets this week, and we surpassed our goal by more than double- 280 boxes.

we are making an impact because we continue to come back, and we continue to work hard. of course i want everyone to have a great time at friends life, but more and more i am discovering that our goal is not to just have fun. serving is new and exciting in the beginning, and can give people a great high of knowing they are helping other people. that fades over time however, but that does not mean service should fade. we still need to work hard, we still need to show up. there will always be boxes to be made because there will always be people who are hungry, even when it stops being fun for us.

we also continue to have a great time at blood:water mission. we continue to get their mailings done and they continue to marvel at how fast we knock them out, but more than that it is becoming a time of fellowship for everyone. the entire staff of blood:water gathers when we are there, and does a fantastic job engaging our participants (and vice versa). it is a sweet time for our friends to see young people working hard to make a difference in this world.

happy snow day to all!

meaghan

Week 11

This week was another week full of excitement and new experiences! After being off a week from Thanksgiving it was nice to be back with everyone.

On Monday we had our weekly dance lesson with Trish. Everyone is beginning to really get into the swing of things (no pun intended) and learn all the moves! Jonathan, who usually is one who is a little reluctant to participate, jumped right in! We all cant wait to show off our new stellar skills! After our lesson we all got ready for Young Life Movie Star club. Hannah Montana, Dog the Bounty Hunter's Wife, Troy Bolton and Jennifer Hudson and just a few of the movie star's who made an appearance!

Opryland Hotel was on the agenda for Tuesday. We were all excited to go look at all the Christmas decorations and lights. It took us a little while to find the right place to park but everyone was patient and we soon got to the hotel. We brought along camera's for everyone to use to take plenty of pictures of whatever they wanted. We all had a great time walking around enjoying all the Christmas decorations. Our end mission ended up being to find the main Christmas tree. We were able to find it right before leaving. We almost missed it because it was so large it didn't even look like a tree!

Feed the Children was our usual Wednesday stop. This continues to be one of the highlights of our week. This week we unwrapped tea boxes and taped more boxes. It has been so fun to see all of our relationships grow with the staff at Feed the Children.

On Thursday we were supposed to go to Blood:Water but they had a change of plans at the last minute. We decided to get a few Christmas presents for the men at Room in the Inn. We drove to the Dollar Store and everyone got to pick out their own gift. We all decided that it would be best to get the men something that they could use. Everyone picked out great gifts like a blanket, shampoo, socks, and toothpaste. After we got all of our gifts we went back to the church and wrapped them and all made Christmas cards to go along with each gift.

We set up for Room in the Inn on Friday. Young Life Leaders Brooke and Christi have been coming to help us set up. Its been great to have their extra hands to help us out! We set everything up and put out our wrapped Christmas gifts and cards at every bed. After that we hung out for a bit and played a few rounds of Uno. After a long week everyone was pretty wiped out (including me!). It was good to relax and spend some time with each other just hanging out!

Stephanie

Week 10

happy thanksgiving, everyone! its incredibly hard to believe that the holiday season is upon us already, but here it is nonetheless.

we spent most of the week this week thinking about and planning and preparing for our thanksgiving feast which took place on friday night and was a great celebration of all we've accomplished so far this year!

on monday, before and after our dance lesson (of course) we planned our menu. we decided what kinds of things we wanted to eat and which foods we would need to buy to make those yummy dishes. it was fun to see everyone's family traditions come out, as they often do when cooking a thanksgiving meal with new people ("..but sweet potato casserole is supposed to have marshmallows." "no its not, its supposed to have brown sugar on top."). of course natalie couldn't understand why anyone could NOT like sweet potatoes (i must say, i agree), so steph got an earful all week.

tuesday we put our grocery lists into action at the green hills kroger! thankfully many of our friends have actually worked at kroger before, so this was familiar territory. this did not stop some from being extremely nervous about what we were going to do- make them shop ALONE. steph and i set up camp at a starbucks table and handed out slips of paper with the item they needed to bring back to us. for all their nervousness, they did extremely well. we asked jon to get us some milk, and he came back with the right size, the right kind, and as s'latina noticed, he even checked the expiration date! i was also so impressed by s'latina, to whom we gave the daunting task of not only finding pasta and stuffing, but doing the math to figure out how many boxes we would need to feed 25 people. she did so well- we're proud of you, s :)

each time we go back to feed the children, i feel as if everyone has a better time. the last few times we've been able to work with the feed the children staff and really crank out some boxes. this wednesday everyone worked harder than i've ever seen them. brittany (the volunteer coordinator) estimated that we packed about 280 boxes that day, but mark and i have a sneaking suspicion that the real number was much higher. we are enjoying the small wednesday-afternoon community we are forming. the ftc staff has been so patient and willing to teach us all. it really has been amazing.

at blood:water, which we went to on thursday, they continue to have to give us more and more mailings to send out, because we are getting so fast! b:w m is another place we have had a great time getting to know the staff, and was so glad to find out that its kristy's favorite place to go!

friday evening was our big thanksgiving celebration. before we drove over to the herndons, we set up room in the inn in record time, thanks to a couple of volunteers- brooke and christi. afterwards we were able to put all the things we have been learning into place by setting tables, warming casseroles in the oven, and making the stuffing. thanks again to cindy, jack, natalie, and neil for opening your home to us!

friends life has the week off for thanksgiving, so we will see everyone back in december. to carrie, jon, katie, kristy, michael, natalie, s'latina, stephanie, tricia, steph, suz, and mark (and everyone else involved in friends life)- i am thankful for each one of you!

meaghan

Week 9

happy 2 month anniversary to the afternoon program! my how the weeks have flown by...

in response to the constant question "can i turn on my cell phone to see what time it is?" we decided to start a life skills lesson on telling time, which we started on monday. we used our little cut-out clocks to practice showing time on a real, analog clock and practiced counting by fives so we could figure out the minutes. its a tricky lesson to learn and one we will definitely need to continue working on, but i was impressed at the progress everyone made.

we also had our weekly dance lesson and have discovered everyone's favorite type of dance- tap! not to mention plenty of freedance to the high school musical soundtrack and michael's new favorite (thanks neely), the sound of music.


on tuesday we took a field trip that i have been looking forward to for a long time... to the adventure science center! if you haven't been, i highly recommend it. kristy's favorite part was the intestinal slide which ended with great bodily function noises when you landed on the pad below the slide. see the above picture! everyone also loved the new space wing where you could shoot off rockets!

wednesday was exciting at feed the children for two different reasons- one, we were able to pack FOOD BOXES! and two, we had the privilege of working alongside some of the FTC staff who we had never met before. it made for a fun day of hard work- we packed 280 boxes in an hour and a half! i was especially proud of katie bell that day. after starting off in a cranky mood, she was able to turn her attitude around in a huge way and definitely earned "hardest worker" award!

since we will be away at camp starting this afternoon, we agreed to set up room in the inn for hillsboro on thursday instead of friday this week. this is our second week running and our first time doing it without the fabulous lisanne. this is a challenging endeavor, filled with tasks that require a lot of manual dexterity but everyone was great about being persistent in their efforts. we make 13 beds with fitted sheets, flat sheets, and pillow cases which is tricky in general, but these beds are simply mattresses laying on the floor which makes it more of a challenge. we also set up 3 tables with place settings for 12. jon was in charge of spoons, s'latina was our expert table decorator as always, michael did pillow cases, and natalie did a great job with putting the fitted sheets on all the beds. she was frustrated at first, but kept at it and improved so much in just one day.


now we are all off to fall weekend camp in georgia, see you next week!

meaghan

Week 8

so, what happens when post-halloween sugar comas, the end of daylight savings time, and the hospitalization (don't worry, she's fine) of my trusty side-kick and reliable staff member steph all happen at the same time? well, this week happens.

something natalie told me on monday stuck with me through the entire week. she told me "we're all best friends now. we're like a family, like brothers and sisters." aside from the shock i felt from having my very sweet but very very literal friend throw out a metaphor (ok fine, simile), i felt as if we were about to experience the negative aspects of this statement in addition to the positives. and we did. the transition from becoming acquaintances to becoming a family comes with the freedom to answer honestly when someone asks you how you are doing, instead of the typical "i'm fine." this is both very hard and very beautiful, all at the same time.

that being said, we still experienced some great moments this week. on monday we decided that we would clean out the 12-passenger van we are borrowing from the daycare next door as a favor for their generosity. everyone pitched in and we cleaned it inside and out, leaving a thank you note signed by us all.

wednesday at feed the children we were again able to pack our favorite hygiene boxes (pictured below) to give out to families in need. this day we packed 200 boxes!

thursday we went back to blood:water mission to help them with their thank you card mailings. everyone sat right down and remembered their jobs from last time. we finished so quickly they didn't know what to do with us! i was so proud of everyone's focus and efficiency.

today we are being trained by lisann, the member of hillsboro presbyterian who runs Room in the Inn. for those unfamiliar, room in the inn is a program in which many churches participate during the winter. they send buses around to pick up some of our fellow nashvillians without homes, bring them back to the church, give them a hot meal and a place to stay. we have partnered with room in the inn at hillsboro and will be helping to set up the beds and tables every friday, and will hopefully be able to serve a meal at some point!

thank you to all friends, supporters, parents, and especially my wonderful program participants/new family members, i love you all dearly.

meaghan

Week 7

monday, october 27

we continued our monday routine this week. after a few weeks of trying out different combinations, the life skills/dance lesson/cooking for young life seems to be the best for us. for life skills we continued our laundry series (last week we worked on folding t-shirts) and learned how to fold blankets, sheets, and towels. we practiced folding towels by ourselves and also how to fold big blankets with a partner when they are too hard to fold by ourselves. we then had our weekly dance lesson with trish!

tuesday, october 28

on tuesday we carved the pumpkins that we picked up at a pumpkin patch last week (and which have been rolling around my trunk ever since). we split up into pairs and went through a lesson on how to cut the top open, scoop out the seeds, make a pattern, and cut the face into a jack-o-lantern! (click on the slideshow to the right to see all our pictures) they turned out so great and everyone was so creative with their faces. while scooping out seeds, we made everyone at least try to use their hands at first and it was great to see natalie even use her hands, after much deliberation!

i'm not entirely sure how it happened, something about challenging ryan to a sit-up contest, but after pumpkin carving we had a bit of an impromptu exercise session. we learned the correct way to do sit-ups and push-ups, did jumping jacks, and stretched. our friends gave the staff quite a work out!

wednesday, october 29

at feed the children this week, we got to do our favorite job for the whole time- packing boxes! we packed about 120 hygiene boxes that will be given out to families in need. everyone has their own specific place in the assembly line and everyone is getting extremely good at their jobs! i count the boxes and put them on the assembly line roller, stephanie is in charge of shampoo, s'latina does cleaning products, tricia is tissue boxes, katie is hairspray, kristy puts in paper towels, michael does toilet paper, natalie puts in make-up kits, and finally jon puts in feed the children brochures and mark and steph tape up the boxes. we have all learned a lot about working together to accomplish tasks and love to see the amount of boxes we can finish in our time there skyrocket!

thursday, october 30

yesterday we made our way outside the city to finally visit the rippavilla corn maze before it closed. (our first visit was canceled due to unforeseen circumstances) the theme of the corn maze this year is space, so the pattern of the corn maze is a giant solar system! at different places around the maze were educational boards about each of the planets, meteors, and other space trivia. we stopped at each one we came to and had mini-lessons about the solar system.

friday, october 31

happy halloween! today we had a halloween party and everyone came in costume to celebrate the occasion. we made some halloween masks, bobbed for apples, watched a bit of a scary movie, and, of course, took lots of pictures! bobbing for apples was by far the favorite activity. s'latina was able to grab all 8 apples in 4 minutes while getting soaking wet. what i was most proud of though, was that everyone took a turn and got their face wet, regardless of how much they hate to get messy!

Week 6

sorry for the late update, everyone! last week proved to be a tough one with many people getting sick (including myself) and other crazy situations.

monday, october 20

on monday we did a review of our previous laundry lesson and spent some time practicing folding shirts. it took a while but everyone eventually got the hang of it. kristy folded so well we all decided she should get a job working retail!

we had our 3rd dance lesson with trish and these just continue to get better. we continued with the ballet and switched it up with a little country line dancing!

tuesday, october 21

tuesday we took a trip in the what we have now christened the "party van" out into the country to go pumpkin picking. we learned the attributes of a good carving pumpkin, had everyone pick some out, and voted on our favorite four to carve next week. on a whim we stopped at a small apple orchard on the way home and took a stroll through the apple trees. we also got to check out their store and found some great peach cider!

wednesday, october 22

at feed the children we spent lots of time taping and stacking boxes- something we are getting very good at! this wednesday was an extremely productive one in the warehouse. people were focused and getting the job done. jon and our new volunteer ryan were in charge of stacking boxes and i've never seen him (jon) work so hard since we started the afternoon program! at the end we did 80 boxes (2 whole pallets) instead of our typical 40. yeah!

thursday, october 23

today was our first day volunteering with blood:water mission. we spent time putting thank you cards and receipts into envelopes to mail out to donors. it was great to get to know the blood:water staff and we look forward to working with them even more in the future!

friday, october 24

HIGH SCHOOL MUSICAL 3! On Friday we had a release party for HSM 3 in preparation for going to see the movie Sunday with Young Life Capernaum (which was rockin'). we played some high school musical games, hsm trivia bingo, and hsm name that tune! then we got ready by watching some of the best dance scenes and singing along at the top of our lungs. it was a great time!

see you next week!

meaghan

Week 5

monday, october 13 - election talk and ballet

on monday metro had off of school for fall break so we missed a few that were out of town and doing other things. somehow, though, i was able to get everyone excited about playing a presidential/election trivia game i made up. i was thoroughly impressed by how many of the questions our friends could answer about the election coming up and presidents in the past (who was the tallest president ever? the shortest?). michael just might be the most well-informed 20 year old i've met in a long time!

the answers are lincoln at 6'4" and madison at 5'4", by the way.

our second dance lesson with trish was an amazing improvement over the first. as everyone gets to know her and lets their inhibitions about dance go, we are all dancing up a storm! natalie was more joyful than i have ever seen her, laughing this huge belly-laugh and breaking out some moves i've never seen. i believe she even showed us the "swimmer" move from the 60's :)

we spent the last part of the afternoon program, like every monday, cooking for young life capernaum. every week i feel more confident that people know their jobs, what to do, and just let them go for it, although they might be getting sick of cooking mac n cheese every week! we'll see.

tuesday, october 14 - blood:water mission

today was our orientation to blood:water mission, where we will be helping out every other week. for those of you who aren't familiar with b:w m, they are an organization which helps to build freshwater wells for villages in africa. they are very community oriented and work directly with the african villages and different african organizations, allowing each village to take ownership of the new well. they have kindly agreed to let us help them with their receipts each month and different projects such as mass mailings. this week we went and met the staff and went through an orientation about who they are and what they do and they let us see some great pictures of the people they are helping out. each time a picture of someone came up, inevitably one of our friends asked for their name, most of the time stumping the b:w m staff. it was so sweet to see their gift of counting each person as a unique individual with a story. now the staff will make sure to know names before they show us pictures!
(picture above is friends life afternoon program with the b:w m staff)

after we left blood:water, we were able to spend some great time celebrating jon and his full 20 years of life with some delicious cupcakes!

wednesday, october 15 - feed the children

one of our weekly jobs at feed the children is to construct boxes for packing using tape guns, which can be extremely tricky as evidenced by the many cuts on my left index finger. the highlight of this particular trip was that after weeks of trying and trying, stephanie was able to tape a box together completely by herself! s'latina was helpful as always and got to help mark move some pallets around. all in all, it was a great day and jon found his calling as a professional sweeper!

thursday, october 16 - life skills day: teeth!

for our weekly life skills lesson, steph (staff) gave a great talk about dental hygiene. we first went over teeth, why we have them, how many we have, why its important to take care of them. we then made our own little sets of chompers using marshmallows and toothpicks and learned the correct way to brush in order to remove plaque but save our enamel! we also practiced flossing, which was pretty funny to watch- i got some great pictures. everyone now has calenders to put in the bathroom and whenever they remember to brush their teeth twice a day, a smiley face goes in the calender. if they do this for an entire week, a prize might just be forthcoming!

friday, october 17 - edwin warner cart tour

we spent some time at the edwin warner nature center a couple weeks ago, which everyone really enjoyed. we did a scavenger hunt and were able to hike the trails a little bit. while we were there, one of the staff people offered to take us on a tour by cart (for those of our friends who might not be the quickest walkers) of the entire park. it should be beautiful with all the leaves changing, and the weather looks like it might hold up!

see you next week,

meaghan

welcome!

welcome to the blog of the friends life afternoon program! we are a newly formed organization which provides opportunities for community service, learning, and, of course, fun for young adults with developmental and physical disabilities.

our first step was to create an afternoon program which meets monday through friday where we spend time out in the community as well as in the classroom. this is what we've been up to!

Week 4

unfortunately, we are coming into week one of the blog during week four of the afternoon program and time is short, so you will just have to take my word for it that we have had a fantastic time.

i feared that a routine would never come, that each day would continue to be crazier than the last until it spun way beyond my ability to control it, but as we near the one month anniversary of the afternoon program i can feel us creating a rhythm as we get to know one another. the participants are a little calmer, the staff is a little saner, and we are still having as much fun as we did on day one.

monday, october 6- an experimentation with dance

first of all, we celebrated a 20th birthday with our very own Katie, the third birthday we've had since the afternoon program began. happy birthday, katie bell!

i have heard nothing but wonderful things from parents about a woman named trish, an ex-special education teacher who now teaches dance and music to people with disabilities. we have been in contact for the past two weeks and on monday we were finally able to have our first lesson with her. i was unsure of how everyone would like it after many claims of "i don't like to dance," even though i swear i've seen each of our friends dance like a crazy person at young life capernaum. it was a hit! jon galloped around the room and i believe i even saw s'latina, who swears to hate dancing, lift her arms during the ballet lesson. trish bravely agreed to come back next week so we'll see where that takes us!

tuesday, october 7- a change of plans and dealing with the weather

on the schedule for tuesday was a gardening project i was planning while we still had nice weather, even if it is a little late in the season to plant. two things changed this: one, we all woke up tuesday morning to torrential downpours and two, i got a call from alecia in the young life office saying that the recycling center we installed there was full and ready to be picked up! instead of gardening we had a lesson in recycling- how do we do it, why do we do it, and what actually happens when something gets recycled? we then went to the young life office donned with non-latex gloves and trash bags and proceeded to sort through the cardboard, paper, plastic, and aluminum. natalie broke down boxes while s'latina and michael learned the difference between corrugated cardboard and paper board. as a recycling nut, i've never been so proud!
the weather cooperated for a while and we took our newly sorted recycling over to the hillsboro recycling center to complete the process and took a great photo (shown above)!

wednesday, october 8- feed the children

we went back for our weekly visit to feed the children this wednesday, after a week off while they did inventory. as usual, everyone's focus waxed and waned, but we were able to tape and stack a few hundred boxes in the first hour and a half or so. after our break/snacktime, we went back and were able to pack hygiene products in the boxes we had just constructed. everyone is always excited about packing boxes because it gives us all a concrete picture of what we are actually doing for people. each box goes to a different family in need and we focus our attention on keeping track of how many boxes we've filled. this day we packed about 40 in 30 minutes- we were able to help 40 families! hardworking awards definitely went to stephanie and kristy.

thursday, october 9- life skills lesson: laundry

thursdays so far have been reserved for in the classroom instruction on different life skills areas. a few weeks ago we had a lesson on how to set the table and talked about good table manners, this week we learned how to sort, wash, dry and fold laundry! we started with an activity about sorting colors, using starbursts and m & m's which we ate afterwards (and during). we then moved on to actual clothes, sorted them, washed, dried, and folded them, and voila! my roommate claire has a full basket of newly cleaned clothes. as we practice these skills more and more we hope to translate them into community service, such as doing laundry for the homeless or for room at the inn which is hosted by hillsboro pres!

thanks everyone for a great week,

meaghan