Week 5

I feel like this week has gone by so fast, I can't believe that tomorrow is Monday already and I have to work again. This weekend I had the joy of babysitting Lincoln Frost all weekend :-) He is the most adorable 15 month old you will ever see. His mom and dad, Carl & Carolyn are both really involved in my life and I have been watching Lincoln almost once a week since he was born. Carl is on staff with my church at school and they came out to LT this summer to help run the program. They had to go to Michigan this weekend for a wedding, and to make things easier on them Lincoln stayed here with me. Probably the biggest thing I learned from this weekend is that I never want to be a single mom - it was hard work!! The first day went really smoothly, and Lincoln woke up at 7am instead of his usual 6:30am. We spent the day playing, going to the pool and hanging out with Aaron.

Friday night was a rough night, Lincoln was up most of the night because his teeth are still growing in, and he was up for the day by 5:45am...giving me about 3 or 4 hours of sleep :-/ Needless to say we both took naps that day! We also spent part of the day at the playground at the mall with one of my friends Jazz. It was fun to watch Lincoln get excited over everything to play with. Sunday morning I was reminded of how much Lincoln loves me..he slept in till 9am!!!! I couldn't believe it, I always said I wanted to train my kids to sleep in, well I guess I have the magic touch. The weekend was full of lots of cuddles, books, and interesting toys - I think the fly swatter and empty apple juice container were his favorites :-)

Project day last week (6/24) was a long day, but surprisingly not exhausting. We met at the grassy knoll at 8:30am for a time of service. My group went to the church whose building we are using this summer to help them prepare for VBS. I had the privilege of cutting 200 strips of fabric - it only took 2 hours...But I did get to hang out with Jenna during the project, and I enjoyed getting to know her a little better. After our project we went back to our houses for a quick lunch before we went back to Grace church for our workshop. This week we took a strength's test. It's not a christian book, but it is very helpful in figuring out what your individual strengths are. Mine were: Woo (winning others over), Communication, Positivity, Maximizer (focusing on strengths instead of weaknesses) and Achiever. I think these all line up pretty well with me...and it was funny to see how different Aaron and mine were. We answered the exact opposite on almost every question, but that just means we compliment each other well :-)

After the workshop we finished project day with 4 hours of quiet time. I went to my favorite Starbucks and enjoyed some time alone. Every time I have been to that Starbucks the same people have been working and we usually strike up small conversations. When I was working on memorizing Psalm 63 on the the guys working was teasing me for talking to myself, and I told him I was actually memorizing. As I said that an older woman walked by and told me that it was a great thing I was memorizing (my bible was on my lap). It was pretty excited to get encouraged like that!

More to come soon!

Beka

Week 4

This past week has been crazy busy! Last weekend 8 of us went back to Indiana for some of our friends (Liz & Steve Garst) wedding from the church we all go to. It was a long drive, we left after our project day at 10pm, drove all through the night, and got home at 11am. But we didn't fall asleep driving and we didn't get any speeding tickets - so it was success! It was really nice to be home for a day or two, I got to love on Captain Jack and see my family, plus Aaron's family came down and had ice cream with us. :-)

This week work has really started to pick up, the boardwalk art show was over the weekend so we were really busy during that. I got to wait on a lot of adorable old ladies looking at all the artwork - some of them even had big sunflower hats! It wasn't quite the same as little girls with bows as big as their head in their hair, but it was still cute.

Project day this past week was fantastic as usual, we met as a group at 8:30am...well that part wasn't really fantastic, but oh well ;-) We started off our day by spending 3 hours with the Lord. I went to starbucks, its one of my favorite places for quite time. I spent the first part of it working on the memorizing the last part of Psalm 27 - I really enjoyed working on memorizing it, I felt like when I kept repeating it I was thinking more about what the verses meant to me and using it as a time to honor God.

Once I finished working on my memory verses I spent some time reading through the Psalms and 1 Samuel. I kept getting distracted by all the people at Starbucks - it was the first time I was there so early and it was busy! There were several business men having meetings at some of the small tables, and I was getting very annoyed at them...every time a young woman walked by they would stop what they were doing to take note of her. I just got so frustrated by guys...but then I became very thankful for all the wonderful men God has surrounded me with! So, if you are reading this and you are one of the those men - thank you for trying to respect women! And if you know a guy like that, you should thank them also! I think sometimes we forget how rare that can be. Ok, I'm done with my rant :-)

After our quiet time our houses met back up for lunch before we went back out for the second part of project day. After lunch we met back up as a group and recited our memory verses as a house. The house that knew it the best won a prize - Neil (Ball State's pastor) cooking them breakfast! Of course our house won...we are pretty fantastic! I was really impressed by Aaron, (it happens a lot!) he was the only guy in his house that memorized it, so he went up by himself and said it in front of everyone! :-) Our house said that he should be allowed to come eat breakfast with us.

Then we broke up into groups that worked together and spent an hour praying for the people that we work with and our work environment. Once we were finished praying we worked as a group to come up with ideas on how we could bless our co-workers. Some of us made snacks to take to work, others took Gatorade to the valet department etc. I decided to go buy fun serving pads for all the servers at work, we have these old ghetto ones. It was really fun to take them to work the next day and see everyone get so excited over them! The best part was when Sergei was the last one to pick and he got stuck with a pink Hello Kitty one! :-)

The final part of our project day was a cookout on the beach. We had invited our friends and co-workers earlier in the week. We just wanted a chance to hang out with them and develop relationships with them. One of the bussers from my work, Honor, came to the cookout. I was a little sad because literally every other server was working that night. The art show had kept us so busy they all had to work :-( But we have plans to go to the beach later today, so we still get to hang out. Anyway, the cookout was a lot of fun. We had several games of Frisbee and volleyball going. We hung out till it was to dark to play anymore - it was a great time to hang out and relax.

Friday night I got off work early since I had been there since 6am, I was so excited to actually have an evening off! I usually work every night that we don't have stuff to do with LT; this was my second night off since we got here. It was fantastic - Aaron and I got to go on a date, we went and saw Toy Story 3 in theaters. It was great, but a little sad - we both almost cried at the end!

The church that we use for our main sessions on Monday and Tuesday has a huge children's program during the summer, so any of the students in our program that didn't have to work went to help out this week. I got to hang out with the infants...such a challenge for me ;-) There were a set of twins in my room, they were 6 months old and adorable - I even got to feed them. It was a fun way to give back to the church for being so gracious and letting us use their building so often. We will be doing this every Sunday until we leave.

More to come soon!

Beka

Project day on 6/10

First, let me apologize for the delay in posting this, I went back to Indiana this weekend for a wedding, so this is the first time I have had to write.

Project day this past week was long & fantastic! We met at 8:30am at the 'grassy knoll' to find out what we would be doing for the day. We all went to a local church in Virgina Beach and helped them clean out some old rooms; they are working on turning some of their old buildings into school rooms. We worked at the church till about 11:30 and then spent some time praying for the church as a group. Once we left the church we went back to our houses to eat lunch before we met back up at 1:30. We met back up at the grassy knoll to talk about what was coming next, extended quiet time with the Lord. Carl and Ryan, both staff members at Ball State, shared about the importance of spending time with the Lord, and how it doesn't always have to be this mind blowing time, but that it is important to just spend time seeking the Lord. Once they explained what we were doing we were sent off to find a quiet place for the next 2 hours. I spent a lot of time praying and writing in my journal as well as praying over some of the psalms. I really enjoyed the chance to spend an extended time with God, and to pray for a lot of my friends.

At 4pm each of the school, Ball State and Virginia Tech, met up separately to talk. We spent a few minutes talking about how our quiet time went before we began talking about what was coming up next. Our final activity for project day was to go out onto the boardwalk with the hopes of sharing our stories with different people. We asked them the same questions we did at our last project day, but added an extra question at the end: "If I could share my story with you in 2 to 3 minutes would that be ok?" So to practice we spent the next hour going around the room and sharing out stories with different students. It was a great way to practice telling my story in a short amount of time, but I mostly enjoyed getting to hear all the different stories for other students at Ball State. After we finished practicing we separated for dinner before we met back up at 6:30 to head out to the boardwalk.

Once we split up into groups of 3 and decided where we would be going on the boardwalk we headed off. My group had the first part of the boardwalk, streets 1-4, so it took us a few extra minutes to drive there. We didn't waste anytime getting to know people, we started talking to our parking attendant, Lisa. When we asked her if we could interview her a few cars pulled up, so we told her we would stop back on our way home when she wasn't so busy. This was the first time I was genuinely excited about sharing my faith on the boardwalk. Before I was either annoyed or nervous about going out, but this time I was just so excited for the chance to talk to people and share with them the most important part of my life. We met some awesome people, in 2 hours we only talked to 4 couples because we had such awesome conversations with them!

My favorite person that my group talked to was a young woman named Andrea and her son. She was one that I got to share my story with, we all took turns sharing our story. First, when we were talking with her and asking her our questions I assumed she was a Christian by her answers, when we asked her to name a time she had experienced God she replied '5 minutes ago on the beach'. When I asked her if I could share my story she got excited and said of course I could. I got about halfway through my story before she started crying! When I finished my story she said that she was a Christian poet and that she had been praying to God at the beach a few minutes ago about how she wasn't inspired to write anything. She told me that she loved my story so much that she was going to write about it! I got so excited, it was one of the first times I have shared my story with a stranger, and I felt so blessed to see how it positively affected her. :-)

Needless to say I left the boardwalk feeling so excited about the day, but it wasn't finished yet. We still planned to see our parking assistant Lisa before we left. I really enjoyed talking with her and listening to her story. She worked several dead end jobs for a few years, was involved in drugs, and involved in an abusive relationship, and one day decided that she wanted a better life. She is now working 3 different jobs and going to school to be a nurse! She is 6 months away from graduating - I was so inspired to hear her story! Once she finished telling us her story Joel had an opportunity to share his story with her, which he was really nervous about. But he did an awesome job, and I'm sure she was blessed by it. She told us we could come back and visit her anytime, which we plan on doing :-)

At the end of the day I was so excited by everything I had seen God do throughout the day, and although it was exhausting, it was my favorite project day thus far :-)

Week Two :-)

After wrapping up this week I have decided that this year will be totally different compared to last year - but in a very good way. God is definitely working in my life and challenging me. We have spent most of this week talking about relationships, both friendships and boyfriend/girlfriend relationships.

This week has been emotionally exhausting after all the serious but good conversations I have had. The speakers have brought up a lot of things in both my friendship relationships and my relationship with Aaron that have sparked several conversations. Mike, one of the pastors at Virginia Tech talked at main session on Monday and Tuesday night; he shared about the importance of having accountability in relationships, guarding your heart, as well as physical boundaries.

Then on our project day on Thursday we had three different workshops to help us put into practice what we had spent that week discussing. Carl, a staff member at Ball State finished up our project day by helping us learn how to handle situations when our peers might come to us in a vulnerable situation, whether they are sharing some struggles they are having in their relationships, or any other type of difficult conversation.

Project day on Thursday started a little differently then it normally would for me. All the students met at the beach at 9am, Neil shared a little with us and then we were told to go on our own and pray through some of the psalms before we met back up at our condos at 11am. When our group broke up individually I saw a yellow lab that I had met the week before playing with his owner. Being the dog lover that I am I took a minute to go over and play with him. His owner, Mike, asked me what our group was doing and I started sharing with him about LT and that we were a group of students from my church back at school. This sparked several questions from Mike about God. He was very curious to learn what I thought about God, which ended up turning into a 2 and a half hour conversation! I had the chance to share my faith with him in several different ways, it was so scary, and all I had originally wanted to do was pet his dog :-(. However, God used this situation for me to build a friendship. While Mike and I don't see eye to eye when it comes to religion, we did build a friendship. Mike and his dog (loco) come to the beach every morning to play, so I am confident that I will see him again soon. Even if our conversation didn't strike any thoughts in Mike, which I find hard to believe, God definitely used it as a way for me to step outside of my comfort zone. It was probably the first time in my life I have had to actually defend my faith, I actually hate biblical debate. At one point I just wanted to tell Mike to have a good day and leave, but instead I talked with him and voiced why God was so important in my life and how He has changed me. It was pretty exciting!

Today I got to finish my week with a day off of work. I spent the afternoon with two of my housemates doing what girls do best...shopping!! :-) It was a great way to end an emotionally draining week.
More to come soon!