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