Week 5 & 6

I've made it to Kansas City!!  Very exciting!!  No more emergency room trips on my end, but I did have to go to the doctor for a long-lasting stomach virus.  It lasted around a week, if not longer....  Yet the doctor kept insisting it would only last 48 hours even though it had already been four days...

Anyways!  So going to Kansas City was amazing!! After a bit of a delay we left, and we made it to St. Louis at 10 or 11 at night.  My best friend, Hannah, met us at the hotel.  We must've looked like in the movies (or a really bad version of it) as we ran and jumped into each other's arms.  My best memory here so far would probably be that.  It was so wonderful and unexpected seeing her.  We had only known for about a day that we would even be seeing each other.  And then the day of, I found out I was staying 10 minutes from where she lives!  Very exciting!! 

The next day we went to St. Louis and got to tour around a bit! That was fun!  I got to get pretty close to the Arch, go into some cool buildings whose names I have forgotten...  I also got to have AMAZING gormet sushi!  And I got a bunch of neat souveniers!

We've done some other really cool things like go to this coin meseum, shopping, and an art mesuem too!

 

With the shopping we did, I did go a little overboard. ;) But it was a lot of fun! I also got to see some cats at PetsMart




As for this WEEK and not this weekEND, work has been interesting.  I work with "Lessons Learned" which is where after a disaster, we receive the reflections and comments on what should change.  The complaints and compliments basically.
So far though, I haven't been able to do much...  I got to staple some papers today....  And I sat in a conference with the LOG Chief (I'm in LOG (Logistics) in FEMA Corps), so that was exciting.  And another big head.  By mistake, I managed to call the conference and everyone tried to figure out where the echo of their voices were coming from while I frantically tried to figure out how to hang up.  Luckily they never realized it came from me.  This happened a couple of hours ago so I'm still pretty emberassed. 
I attended a new church this past Sunday.  A couple of families were pretty nice to me but it isn't like the church in Vicksburg by any means.  Hopefully I'll like it more as I keep attending.
Please keep me in your prayers, I'll try to post again when I can.  

Week 4 & (almost) 5

    So, this has been an interesting week, not my best week, I admit.  The start of this week was with Dr appointments and an ER trip, I'm fine, no worries, but I did get a lovely IV.
    After that was Induction! That was great! There was a misunderstanding so I almost missed out, but I'm very thankful it worked out.

Trying to think now what else has happened...
Oh! Yes! So we got more snow, kinda icy snow.  But it was really pretty!  I brought winter with me here! :D To many's excitement and others' dismay!

We also did an assignment where we went to a part of the town and looked for things that would be beneficiary or contrary.  It was a very pretty area!  It still had flaws, like trees that could collapse, power lines, etc.  Then we went to other areas in town where there was more poverty.  Both the "rich part" of town and the "poverty" parts of town had good and bad.

And below is a picture of the entire Corps.  FEMA and Traditional.  If you look on the right two rows back, the tall guy wearing the red shirt, I'm right behind him to the left! :D Between him and the blond-haired guy.

 

Now on to week 5!  It's only Thursday, but oh well!  So Sunday, the lovely lady who has been driving me to church every week invited me to go to her house to eat tacos and play games with a bunch of college students and youth!  It was amazing to be around a bunch of Christians in a Christian home!  I miss being in a Christian home so much!

This week we have been doing our FEMA training, our specific training.  So for me I'm doing Logistics.  In case I haven't previously explained Logistics:  If there is a disaster I am the first one on site to help set up the shelters, get the resources in, organize all of that.  Which for me is very exciting!!

This weekend I am doing an ISP (basically volunteer work) cleaning in LOUISIANA! Pictures to come!  Besides that we haven't had much go on... Besides having the FEMA Corps from Denver here training with us. :) They're pretty nice!!

More to come soon, hopefully!

MORE PICS!!

Week Two & Three

So, during week two we just did lots of classes.  Sometimes we'd be up at 5:30am and not get fully done with classes, team meetings, and then dinner until 8pm.  Some of our classes would be 9 or 10 hours long!  After that week was over, on Monday, we were to go to Oxford, Mississippi, and do a ropes course.  The ropes course was awesome!! That's my favorite part so far of being here.  I'm scared of heights but I love to face that fear, so I really enjoyed climbing 40 ft poles and then jumping off!  It was a great way to test myself.
    First there was the rock climbing,

I made it about halfway, maybe a little under, but then stopped because I didn't think I could go farther. Later I felt bad, so they let me go again and I made it three quarters or so up! After that it gets pretty tricky, I noticed, from watching others.  I had run out of strength so I knew that time that I did my best.
    After, I climbed this wooden pole, walked across a log, then a wire.

I had to stop on the wire because one, my legs were shaking too bad, and two, I couldn't get the rope above me to move so I was stuck in place.  This one was very scary to me because with this one it required me to look down.
    Next, I climbed up a 40 or so foot pole, stood on it, and jumped off.  That scared me too....

    The flying squirrel was one of my favorites.  Five people are harnessed together, and are connected to someone who stands away from them.  The five people's job is to run away from the separate person, making that person fly high in the air.  Well, apparently the male team leaders and some other guys had waited for a smaller girl to do it, so one minute there are five normal guys and girls, and then the next there's three male team leaders and two tall, fit guys.  Even the instructor commented on how fast and high up I went.

   
    After the "high ropes course" we went to the "lower ropes course".  This one was for team building.  As a team, we went through different games and tasks.  Like all of us standing on a log and having to go around each other without stepping off of the log.  The point of these tasks were for us to work together and overcome the challenges as a group.
    Two of my favorites was the Whale Watch, and when we were blindfolded with one of our team members guiding us without touching us, so only through verbal communication.
    With the whale watch, we stood on a large board that sits on a log, causing it to not want to stay balanced.  Our task was to all get on it one at a time without letting the board touch the ground.  Once we were all on the board and had it balanced after letting it touch the ground about one hundred times, we were told we all needed to go to the ends of the board.  The setting was that we were adrift at sea and we can't let the raft sink, but that rescuers were coming and we had to make room in the center.  Once we did that we were told that the rescuers needed two groups of two to switch places.  We started with the smallest of us and walked across the board as carefully as possible.  After that, we were told that they weren't rescuers coming, but pirates, so we must move to the middle of the "raft" again!  After that we were told that all we could do was join their ranks and that was about it.
    My second favorite, we were told that we were, as pirates, supposed to have one eye, but we had an accident and so half of us were fully blind.  And we also had scurvy so no one could touch us. Blindfolded, my partner talked me through the WOODS!  I did run into a tree a few times sadly, but I had kept my arms in a careful position so I basically maneuvered myself through the thick patches of woods without direction.  My partner did do a great job, though!

    After the ropes course, snow hit pretty hard.  My mom said that they showed it on the news.  That was pretty exciting!! But because of that we had to stay an extra day.  The snow was absolutely beautiful.  I find the way it ways down the snow very beautiful.  When we got back, we had more classes, and hands of peace which is a relationship/team building day of events.

    One interesting part was, eating a sandwich, I managed to pull two ligaments in my mouth, luckily it is better, but that was definitely a whole new level of pain!
 
    I will try to post again next week or the next! :D If you guys actually read all of this then you are really awesome!!

Americorps: Week 1!

    So, I got here last Monday.  It's Sunday now so I have been here for 6 days!!  It has been a very hard week!  But it has gotten better.

    I got up at 4:30 or so in the morning and went to the airport with my dad.  They gave him a free pass so he could take me to where we board.  We did the typical movie scene where we hug, I turn to leave, then run back to say goodbye again.  I spent a while crying on the plane as I left my old life, my childhood, behind.
     I went from Missioula to Denver to Houston (Or was it Dallas...) to Jackson, Mississippi.  I took a shuttle from there to Vicksburg.  About an hour away.  We are right on the boarder of Louisiana.  I've already crossed over to Louisiana yesterday, but I will get to that later.
    We checked in and I got my room key and a sheet to sleep on, a big bin, a sleeping bag, and a blanket.  It was a restless night sleeping with two roommates and living in a dorm with 65 or so other people.
    The week has gone by spending it in classrooms, learning about policies, FEMA, and how things are gonna go.  It has me excited.  The first few days, I desperately wanted to go home.  I have never felt this homesick and even now it eats at me.  But once I got really busy, it got better.  So the classes have been nice.
    Being here has brought me a LOT closer to God.  I'm praying about little things, I'm seeing the blessings, and I'm staying in His Word.  Just yesterday I thanked Him for the lovely Valentine's Gift of a hot shower.  Thanking him even more today and yesterday, but I'll get to that soon.
    This week we do baselines.  I'm nervous, but thanks to my super human strength from going from high elevation to low, I'm hoping I'll be OK.  At least with the running.  Tomorrow, because it is a federal holiday, we go to Salvation Army to volunteer for 8 hours. So I am excited for that! We also get to do a LOT of hours in our free time doing volunteer work for non-profit.  I'm going to see if they can let me do volunteer work in nursing homes and in hospice homes even though they aren't non-profit.  I have had a passion for the elderly for a long time and for a long time I have wanted to go read the Bible, or if they won't let me, poetry.
 
    So, after a horrible and awesome week, comes the weekend.  Before I came here I found a PCA Presbyterian church 2.4 miles away.  This week has been so busy that I hadn't had time to call the church and ask if they could provide a way for me to get there.  So Saturday comes and I'm arranging the things in my suitcase and in my room I don't get much service so I have to take all of my calls outside.  So, sitting in my room with almost no service, I went ahead and just called the church, knowing nobody would be there.  Turns out, for whatever reason, a guy my age who is the church pianist happened to have been there and was only going to be there for 30 minutes.  He said he never answers the phone when he is there alone, yet he answered it.  So thanks to God, I was able to get a ride from two VERY nice people who have been extremely kind to me.  I don't know if, besides my church home in Georgia, I have ever seen this kind of kindness.  They even treated me to lunch!! So for right now, I have a wonderful Presbyterian Church to attend!!
    OH! And before I forget, so, in Americorps FEMA, I work directly for FEMA. More office work than I wanted, but hey, this is what God wanted, so OK.  You pick what you would prefer to do and then on Tuesday I find out what team I'll be on, who my teammates will be, and who my leader will be.  So, I chose logistics.  I would be helping take supplies to the places needing emergency supplies.  So if a disaster hit, my team would come running with supplies and helping set up the shelter, that sort of thing. But between disasters we spend our time doing whatever FEMA needs or wants.  Working on old cases, computer stuff, that sort of thing. So wish me luck!!
So in the hard times at least I will have that church to look forward to.  God has absolutely blessed me.

I will try to post every week about my journey since so many are asking yet I'm hardly able to talk to them to explain.

 

The Big Topic: Modesty

    I'm finally, and officially, reopening my blog again!  I am about to leave for AmeriCorps, so to keep everyone up to date, I decided to blog again.  I will be trying to post once a week about my experiences in Mississippi.  For now, though, I thought I would post about some Christian topics that are often spoken of.
 
     I hear about modesty all of the time from everywhere. Everyone has their own opinion.  I thought, perhaps, I would state mine.  I have read many blog posts, articles, and books on modesty.  I have read many opinions, so here I go!

    Some say that modesty is where you wear nothing but skirts, the tight collars, and hair pinned back or covered up.  Others say that modesty should be what makes you feel comfortable.  A lot ask where to draw the line in modesty.  In my opinion, I don't think we have to be highly strict like many, that if we want to wear a skirt we should, but if we want to wear a bikini because it makes us "comfortable", how is that modest?  Many girls feel frustrated that we must be careful what we wear and do while men cannot.  That it isn't fair.  That we shouldn't have to be modest if guys aren't.  Well, here is my question to you...  If Jesus were in our shoes, what would He do?

    Being modest should be to honor God.  By honoring God we dress and act a certain way.  By honoring God we don't encourage men to think impure thoughts by how we dress.  So really, if you question how you dress, perhaps you should ask whether that cute pair of shorts, or that cute tank top, or those skinny jeans would please God.  How would you feel if you ran into Jesus wearing shorty-shorts and a tank top?  Or how would you feel if you were wearing a skirt or dress? 

    Many girls throw responsibility onto men about how they should think.  How they should know better than to eye girls walking by.  Well, God put responsibility onto us not to let our brother stumble.  Look up Romans 14:13-23.  It speaks of food, but why should just meat limit us?  Shall we never be a stumbling block?  A friend said if she knew a certain guy felt lust when he saw a girl wearing tights, she wouldn't wear it.  Well, isn't it somewhat rude not to do that to others?  There could be another guy who feels the same way.  I would never want to do that.  Just this morning in church I wore a skirt that was slightly shorter than expected so it made me feel bad.  It wasn't that short, a business, pencil skirt.  But to me it did.  So once again, it's a personal feeling.  Where God compels you.  God may say those types of skirts are OK, or not OK.  But in cases like booty shorts and tights.  I don't think we need God to have to tell us that it's wrong.

    In conclusion, ask your brothers in Christ what trips them up.  Think of whether God would approve, or whether Jesus would have worn something like that if he was a female in this day and age.  Honestly, I imagine Jesus dressing in Duggar (If you haven't heard of them, look up 19 Kids and Counting! They are excellent role models!) style clothes.  And let me say, in my opinion, I think the Duggars rock the look!!

    Hopefully this blog post isn't that bad!  I am finishing this in Americorps now so I'm not sure if it came out alright or not. :-)