Picture post of the year so far. Part 2

Hope that you guys liked the pictures from last time. I know that they where only a few last time. But don't worry I have plenty more. Hope you enjoy. 

This is the first craft that we did with the kids at Leap. We are helping teach the Ten Commandments. 

This is one of the Jump's kids designs to help advertise Jump's pie sale during the Sugar Beet Festival. I know it's upside down. Sorry about that.

The sky is just as lovely in the evening as they are in the mornings.

I know that selfies are getting old. But I thought that this one was worth taking. At the Food Pantry, during the Halloween season, we are required to wear either the glow in the dark neckales that I am wearing in this picture or one with twinkling lights. They are something fun to wear to celebrate and share cheer.

This is the sight that I have been getting used to. Wide open spaces.

The other side of the Mountans look familler. As we had head to Presbytery meeting.

Very familler in deed.

We got a chance to go out and see the Bear Paw Battelfield.

And it was a nice day to go out to see Bear Paw Battelfield. Very windy, but overall nice.

At a knitting group here in town. We were told about one of the ladies in the group goal to make scarfs for some kids at her daughter's school that she works for. This is one of three scarfs that I made for that project if she can use them.

A picture before the Parade of Lights.

Happy Holidays to everyone.

 

Picture post for my year so far. Part 1

So this is the Town of Chinook's Mascot. They are the Sugar Beeters after their largest industry back in the day, sugar beets. We learned that before the Chinook became the sugar beeters, they where tigers, so that is way the sugar beet is orange.

Beautiful sun rise in Montana.

This is an optical corse that Becca and I set up for the Preschool class. 

 

So this is an actual Sugar Beet. Pretty cool. We got to use them for the decorating contest at the Sugar beet festival.

The designs that the three of us came up with for the contest.

I will post more pictures soon. Hope you all have a wanderfull day.

Heart of Strength: Gift of Community

 

It always amazes me how much of a tight net community Chinook is out here in Montana. A few Fridays ago, I saw for myself just how close everyone is when Becca (a fellow YAV) was sick and had to have surgery.

 

I was expecting to explain to people that day that Becca would not be able to make it to work. In the morning working at the preschool I actually did have to explain what was happening. However when I went to TGIF (an after school program that is run by the local churches for the elementary children), I did not have to say anything. I was expecting to have to explain to them that Becca was not feeling well but everyone already knew that Becca was in the hospital and had to have surgery.

This week it seems everyone all over town have asked how Becca is doing. Just to let you know she is good and getting better each day.  What amazed me, as normal as questions are given the situation, it was the real concern that everyone had about her health.  I saw people coming together, not just to express the concerns and offer their support to help, but to pray for Becca.

 

Chinook has many times in this year to come together and celebrate as a community. I’ve seen this with the High School's Home Coming, and the Sugar Beet Festival.  I’ve heard that Christmas can be big here, too. But this is a first time I’ve seen them come together to support another in need.  And I was surprised by it. 

 

Should it surprise me as much as it has? I mean the programs we help with during our YAV year are about helping communities coming together to support each other. Maybe my surprise is just that I have not really looked at it this way. Community building is not always big or fancy programs or celebration but when communities like this come together to really support each other. This is probably part of the reason that I enjoy working with people. I am thinking about what I will do after this year.  I know that I would like to continue doing work like this. I want to be involved with a community when it celebrated or comes together in good times.  And I want to be there when a community comes together in the hard times when things are challenging. I know that I am right where I am supposed to be and learning more about it each day. 

 

I will add pictures to this blog now that I am able. I have finally got my computer working, so now I should have no problems putting pictures on my post. Hope that you all are enjoying this blog so far.

 

Heart of Strength: Patience

 

   On my way out to Sweet Home (the local retirement center) for the church service on Sep. 20. I was listening to a radio station in the car. The speaker on the radio was talking about the fruit of the Spirit. They said love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control as listed in Galatians 5 are the fruit of the Spirit. A part of me questions that. For me, when I think of fruit, I think of the finished product. For me, fruit is someting that can be enjoy and feast on. But when I think about these things, I don't see them as fruit. I see them as areas where I need to work on and produce. And I don't see them coming so easy. It takes strength and work for some to grow this fruit in their lives. They can be tools of the spirit to do good works, create fruitful lives, and make life thrive. Forgiveness as I mentioned before is a challenge for me. I cannot always forgive myself very easily. So can the fruit of the Spirit, be challenging too.

   Since I started working here in Chinook, my patience has been tested. I feel like many people think I enjoy politics because I'm from Washington DC. I have been asked questions about politics. It is as if, because I lived in DC that I naturally enjoy politics. After a few minutes talking with me, they quickly realized that I am not what they thought I would be. For the most part they seemed pleasantly surprised that I'm not really into politics.

   My patience has also been tested with communication. In the first week of my time here, I discovered that my cellphone wasn't working very well. It was very frustrating going that first week without my phone. Eventually, I got it fixed and now it is working fine again. Even though that was a challenge not to talk to my family right away, it was not my toughest challenge in the area of communication.

  My pronunciation of words, my dialect, has also surprised me as a point of frustration and caused me to be patient with myself. A three year old at the preschool that I am working at corrected me when I asked another child if they would like a crayon. I know now that I have a tendency of saying it differently than they do here in Montana. The kids might think that I talk a little weird, but Becca has pointed out to me that it is a good thing for the kids to learn different dialects. That the kids need to learn that people often pronounce words differently than them.

   However for me, the biggest challenge in communication has been to understand our schedules. Jack has mentioned that they are changing some parts of the site this year so all of the YAVs now will be working to some degree in each of the four areas of placement. The schools where we are working have some new employees who are just getting used to their jobs and have never worked with the YAVs before.  And some sites are seasonal so some will start later than others. Trying to find out if a site is ready for work and where we would go has taken some time. I know that there are a lot of moving parts to finding out where people should go.  But the goal is to do the most good where ever we are sent, and it will take time to work it all out.  It is still a challenge.  I simply would like a set routine, so I can find time to take care of myself.  So for those of you thinking about Chinook as a site, I would like to say that when you do come, they will have a better idea of how setting thing up so your transition will go easer for you. We are the test YAVs to see if they can offer more diverse work opportunities out here for an even richer experience. I think it is worth the process to grow these fruit of the Sprit.  After all, we are the instruments of God's good work. It can be a difficult task to committee our selves to do. When we stumble or find ourselves tested, God is in the process and the work, teaching us along the way. We just need to find peace in patients.

Heart of Strength: Forgiving One's Self

I am sure that in the course of this year, I will have a lot to tell of trials and tests of strength. However this entry is about my experienced in making mistakes and finding joy in moving past that moment. It was also inspired by a prayer stone my parents gave me when I left home. On the stone, one word was engraved.

Tuesday after Labor Day, Alex, Becca and I had a meeting with Jack. We got our schedules which had us working in some combination or another in each of the four departments of service. They consist of youth, children, elderly, and community service programs. We were told that we would start our scheduled work the following day.

After our meeting with Jack, we went to the library to get library cards. So I had the chance to checked out a book called "The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success" by Deepak Chopra. Personally, I thought it was an ok book. Some of it bugged me a bit and some of it was things I already knew. However, two things stood out to me since I hadn’t thought them before. 

One is that silence is hard. Even when we are not talking or around any sound, we are not truly in silence. Because our minds or still thinking about stuff and it is hard to empty our mind of the sound of thoughts. 

The other is the difference between our objective self vs. our realistic self. In one of my business classes I was assigned to read "The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People". In the second chapter it talked about “starting with the end in mind.”  How do you see yourself being remembered. I can safely say how I would like to be remembered by others, but I can't tell you how I see myself without feeling ashamed for coming up short of that ideally self. I have learned that this image of how I wanted to be seen might have some fragments of me, but it was overall an objective “me.” I have to face myself, flaws and strengths, honestly. I knowing that at times I am going to make mistakes jumping in to new work and building relationships with the people who I am helping. I also know that by jumping in and making mistakes I will learn how to do the job right. I know that I never want to make mistakes but the truth is that I am going to make mistakes sometime down the road. I am growing to be ok with that truth about myself and know that I will grow stronger because I am ok and I'm going to learn. 

I have also started become more active on Facebook again after being off for two years. I am glad to see what everyone has been doing lately. The weekend following the start of work here, a good old high school friend of mine updated her art gallery on her Facebook page.  

(Just to note: I loved to draw pictures all the time in high school. Any time I had a pencil in my hand and a paper in front of me I would love to drawl. My Seiner year of high school I drew so much that my hand hurt. I did draw in college but not as much as I did in high school and when I graduate from college I had a hard time getting myself to draw. It felt more like a chore than a joy to draw. I did not feel joy in the moment that I started or finished a drawling. Only in the brief moment in the process would I find joy.) 

But as I was looking through her artwork, I saw something that I felt that I was missing. The feeling of being ok. Of a simple joy and a simple love in her art. With me learning to be ok with myself, and seeing art with that same feeling of being ok. I finely found my old childhood feeling of the love of art. So once again, it is hard for me not to want to drawl because I am looking forward to each picture that I am working on and the next one I am going to work on. And if they are not perfect or my idea of good quality, I am ok with it. Why because I had an old friend tell me once, "the thing about drawing is that you can always erase a mistake." For me it can also mean, "If I make a mistake in work or in life I can always find a way to ask for forgiveness,  learn from my  mistakes, and continue to walk forward in life learning along the way".  I can learn from making mistakes and learning from others and their mistakes along the way. We can't undo a moment in time but we can make the next moment better by our strength to learn and forgive.

Oh, the word engraved on the prayer stone: “Strength.”  I know that there is still more to learn about “strength” and I am going to be open to learning what else comes of it.    “Strength” is my prayer. 

The Start of the Adventure part 2

Becca, Alex, and I were luck the day that we arrived in Montana. Our fights arrived earlier than expected and we missed the smoke from the fires. Our site coordinator, Jack, meet us at the airport and drove us for two hours to Chinook. When we got to our site, we had a chance to see Jack's church and meet our host families. Becca and I are staying with the Andersons. Alex is staying with the Edwards.

The Andersons own and run an apiary. Becca and I have had a chance to look around their shop and also got to see how they get honey from their bees.

The next day our orientation started with a walk around town. We went to the post office, visited some of the places where we will be working, meet some of the people we will be working with, and where interviewed for the towns local paper.  Finishing off the day, we went out to a meet and greet event to let the people in town have a chance to get to know who we are. There was  a lot of conversations with people we meet earlier along with many more new people.

The following days became more relaxedwith more places to see, paperwork, and discussions of what to expect. Most of the discussions where form how things have happened in the past years that Chinook has been a YAV site. For me, it was overwelming to try to remember so many people here in one week. I am starting to get to know some faces, but the names will come in time. Jack told us that it is ok if we don't know everyone right away. That is comforting to know.

 I have also learned a bit about the economy here in Chinook during the week. With my degree in business, I am nateurly interested in understanding how the local economy works. Here,they have a lot of small family businesses. Because of the land being rural, they have lot of farms that grow a lot of local goods. The railroad are very important because they are the main way to transport their goods they grow nationally. They also have a casino. I know that from a business perspective this is may appear to be a hard place to run a business and expect it to last a long time into the future. But if I look at it realistically, I see a place where entrepreneurs are born and raised. Thing change over time with business structure but they seem to have their needs met. If they lack in an area, then they build and adapt.

On Saterday, Becca and I helped work concession at the High School's volleyball game. They had two games going at the same time. I think that their was a total of five teams playing there that day. It seemed to me that when they finished a game and switch off playing a different team. When Alex showed up we got hem to help work concession with us.

The Start of the Adventure part 1

I know that the title of this entry is interesting. However, there is a reason for it. At the star of this adventure, all of the YAVs where brought together for a week long orientation. We would later find out that will we have another orientation at our sites. This entry will be about the orientation at Stony Point, NY.

I left Monday morning in August. My mother took me to the train station in DC where I was to catch my train. I ended up a delay that took several hours. With the extra time, we had talked and ate before my train did come. Finally early afternoon, I was on my train. I road the train from DC to Newark.

 When I arrived at Newark, The first YAV that I meet was Alex. Alex was also going to Montana and be one of the two other YAVs who I will be working with. As we went through the proses of getting from Newark to Stoney point, we ended up meeting up with more and more YAVs. Our group just making it to our orientation site before dinner ended. (Don't worry, they would have still taken care of us if we where late, but it would have been a wait before we could eat.) That evening we had some information given to us and worship service. After, I went to my asigned room and went to bed.

The fallowing day was a tough day. I was introduced to Becca, who was also going to Montana. (Meeting Becca was not the tough part of the day, I had just had a chance to meet her on that particular day.) We where introduded to the topic of injustice in our social systems. Right off the bat we where give a lot of information coming all at once of things to think about and wonder. By the end of that day, I was drained but excited. I felt challenged. Even though my college was tough, the descuthions and examples of the problems challenged me in a different way. If anyone asked me how I felt the difference between the two, I would tell them that I felt like a I had taken a hard turn from a road that I felt was forward to a new road going off into a completely different direction. Their was talk that the rest of the week would not be as heavy as that day was. They where right. The rest of the week gradually became more easier.

The rest of the topics did test me at times but most of it was for our preparation and understanding of how thinks can be at our sites. We played a few games to teach us, had talks with our small groups, learned new songs, and asked questions. We were incearaged to meet with everyone. We had a chance to visit with other places of worship. My group went to the Broadway Presbyterian Church and learned more about their urban ministry programs. We went in even smaller groups to local churches. It is nice to see and learn how the Presbyterian churches in New York take are of their communities. There our groups went through a commissioning survice. My church back in DC had done something similar before I left, but it was nice to be able to do it again with other YAVs who were leaving for their sites. We ended our Sunday evening with a worship service that had its own send of with communion.

My Becca, Alex  and I left very early Monday morning for our site out in Montana.

#YAV1516

Just Getting Started

Hello Everyone,

This whole process of applying, waiting, and responding to this YAV program made for a long year. But now that the entry process is almost over and the YAV year about to start, I am excited and a little scared. I have a week of Orientations starting Monday. The fallowing Monday we head out to our sites. One there, we get introduced to our home for the year, the work that we will be doing, and the people we serve. 

I looked up Chinook a few weeks ago on the Internet. Where it is located, how big the area was, the current number of people living there, pictures of the town, what stories and places that one could go, too. What I found was Chinook is a little town near the border of Canada in the state of Montana. There are two bigger towns about a 30 minutes car ride away. One of which has a university.  There are museums, library, churches, schools, few local stores, an inn, but mostly homes for their residents. From my earlier phone interview they enjoy their home sports teams and games. This town is a town where everyone knows you even if you don't know them right away. Overall this is going to be a change from the other places that I have lived. 

I have been thinking how I am going to go about sharing my adventure with focus. My dad thinks that pictures and video clips of my time there could be useful. I may use some in my later entries. However, I feel that some of the best moments there will be hard to catch with a camera. I will have to work on my writing to help tell the story of this adventure.