Guess what!

Spring Break starts NOW! We are leaving for New Orleans today and will stay through Sunday. Then we are heading to Mobile, Perry, and finally Tampa! I can't wait. This is going to be the best spring break EVER!!!!

Double birthday day!

It's my birthday, which means 2 days till Spring Break, which means 2 days till my birthday party in New Orleans!!!!!! I can hardly wait!!!

I got 31 birthday spankings with a giant blue clown shoe in front of a bunch of third graders! They got a good laugh!

Perspective

I was going to write about this being the last day of my twenties. About how hard it can be to get older. And then I heard from Ben that one of our closest friends here just got arrested. This the second friend to get arrested this month. Sounds like I might need to rethink who these friends of mine are. Maybe I am hanging out with the wrong crowd. Oh yeah, his crime, being Latino and driving without a license. Kinda makes my whoas about turning 30 seem very petty.

This just makes me so mad. Why does this have to happen? Why haven't our laws changed? Over the course of this year I've had my eyes opened to just how wrong our immigration policies are. If life was good in Mexico, if they could have been able to provide for their families, they wouldn't have left. But they had to, you could say they were pushed out of their country.

Our country has plenty. Our country is not only wealthy, we are wasteful. We have so much we can afford to get rid of the extra. Just yesterday I was thinking I might need to pack up some of my things and take them to Goodwill. There are millions of people who would gladly take my extra, the things that aren't good enough for me anymore. And yet what do we do to those who already have so much less then us. Fine them and throw them into jail.

Two weekends ago Dustin, Jamie, and about 8 others, all Latino, from LaGrange took a 17+ hour bus trip to DC to participate in an immigration rally/march. They said about 500,000 marched to the Capitol. I wish I would have gone. People like me need to be at these rallies, people like me who can have a voice for the voiceless. This week Anton is leading a Holy Week Pilgrimage for Immigrants through Atlanta and the surrounding areas.

Sometimes I forget about the hardships our friends here face. This month we have celebrated birthday's, shared meals, hung out.. things you do with your friends and family. This is a sobering reminder of why I am here. We are here to build relationships and share Christ, but we are also here to be a voice for those who aren't being heard. I hope Arturo is bonded out soon. He has to be there for my party tomorrow. It wouldn't be right if he wasn't.

Shiny Pans

I think I romanticized what it would be like to live in Christian community before Mission Year. I first thought about living in community because it would be economical. Living with people means you don’t have to spend as much money on stuff because you share what you have. I don’t think I realized how hard it actually can be to share your things. A while back I noticed that my pans were getting really dirty. I would always put foil on them to keep them clean. It was just what I did. I noticed that some of my housemates did not put foil on the pans and they started getting really stained. I was kinda mad, because these were after all my pans. I like shiny things! Well, I guess I’m not that good at sharing after all! Shiny pan or stained pan, it’s still a pan and it still helps bake my cookies. If you really share what you have you have to, in a way deny your ownership. Or at least realize that is just stuff!

Figuring out how to share, my things, my space, my time, has been much more challenging than I ever thought, but most of the time it’s so worth it. I am so thankful for my roommates. We have so much fun together. Zach and Margareta have a huge 84 Caprice. This car has to be the greatest Mission Year car ever! A couple weeks ago we all piled in the Caprice and made the short trip to Alabama for a night of wings and bowling! For some reason the guy that worked at Wing Stop gave us 50 free wings which brought our total wing consumption to 100 wings!!! Wings, black light bowling ,and old country music made the night fun, really fun.

In a few months when this year is over I know the thing I will miss the most about this year is living in our home. After about a month or two the excitement of community wore off. I wasn’t sure if we would ever really function as a family. But now, most of the time, it’s one the best parts of my year. The community we have in our house is real. The friendships we have made with kids in our neighborhood are real. Even though I sometimes get tired of answering the doorbell, I am lucky to live in a place where my doorbell constantly rings. It’s good to be needed, and loved.

The Great Outdoors

Georgia is really pretty. We have recently had a chance to do some hiking in the mountains, well the foothills of the mountains! It was wonderful to experience and explore God great outdoors! Makes me think back to being a kid when my favorite place to be was in the woods and my favorite thing to do was hike and climb mountains.

Focus

I've been having a hard time focusing. I'm realizing I desperately need structure. By nature I am not focused. I get easily distracted. I can't clean our room to save my life, it's impossible for me to keep my things organized. I want to, but it's REALLY hard for me. I feel like my life is scattered right now. I'm having a hard time focusing on my purpose here with Mission Year. Looking back at my life my track record is to try something for a little while and then quit and move on to something else. That's what I did in college, that what I did after college, and I feel like that is what I am doing here. What I really want is to do one thing really well as opposed to dabbling in lots of things.

I loved teaching because it offered me the structure my life needed. In that structure I had freedom to make my own lessons, but I knew what the end goal needed to be. This year I'm not sure what my end goal is supposed to be. Plus I'm confused as to what I should do next. Should I move, should I stay, should I teach, should I go to grad school, or what I really want, have a baby. The list just keeps going.

Teaching at my service site is a bit challenging because I don't exactly know what my end goal should be. Several of the kids I work with are really far behind and I am trying to help them play catch up. It's challenging because where they should be at the end of the year, in reality won't happen. It's hard for me to focus on what is the most important thing they can get from their time spent with me.

This past weekend Jamie and one of our neighbors taught me how to knit with a loom. This weekend I finished making a scarf. I have wanted to learn to knit for years and I can't tell you how cool it was to hold I scarf that I made!!!! I'm such a wanna be crafty person. It felt so good to have a finished product. I can look back and see what I have done. I want the rest of my time here to be like that. I want to look back and feel accomplished, like I've done something of value. I know the relationships and quality time I've spent with neighbors is of value, but I want my year to be more than hanging out with people. It's been more than that but I really want my last four months in Mission Year to really be a valuable, not only to me, but to someone else too.

Mr. Spanish Speaker

A friend of ours has asked me to teach him to read in English. I love teaching kids how to read and was excited he asked me to help him. English is so hard though. I was one of those lucky people who learned to read with ease. It wasn't until I started teaching phonics and first grade that I realized that English is nuts. The 26 letters in the alphabet make about 40 sounds individually, then there are all the weird letter combinations that make even more sounds.

I think most Americans take English for granted. We expect that US immigrants should learn English and get extremely annoyed when they don't. I think we forget that it is hard. And it's even harder if you aren't around English speaking people that often. From the people we have met, the men speak much better English because they are at work, while the women stay home and therefore aren't around English speakers.

This year I've said I want to learn Spanish, and I have learned some, but I don't think I have as much initiative as some of my Hispanic friends. In the words of Mr. Bud Man, I salute you native Spanish speakers who are trying to learn English. Maybe I can learn from you and soon I'll be able to learn Spanish too!