Tuesday, October 1, 2013

4 weeks later...

Has it really been 4 weeks since my first blog post?? Oops…. As you can tell just from that, life has been pretty busy. We finished up training 2 weeks ago and finally got to move up to Green Bay (another reason I couldn’t post, because we're still waiting for internet up here). As I think I mentioned before, there are 2 teams; Menasha and Green Bay. While I reallyyy miss being with the 9 who are still in Menasha it is so nice to finally not be living out of a suitcase anymore! The other 3 girls and I are living in what was once a convent, while the 2 guys are at a rectory 15 minutes away. Our place is a work in progress as it was all mostly empty rooms in the beginning of August. To give you a visual, it’s basically a long hallway with lots of rooms off of it, plus a basement for laundry and such. But people here have been AMAZING with donations, especially the parishioners from Resurrection Parish (the parish I’m doing youth ministry for)! Thanks to them we have new beds, couches, tables, kitchen supplies, and the list just goes on and on. Even after a couple weeks here people are still asking what we need. I’ve truly felt the love of God through everyone who’s helped during this time.

Besides moving in and getting settled, we've begun getting our youth ministry programs off the ground as well as continuing to do retreats. The main age groups we’ll work with are middle school and high schoolers. Talk about challenging ages haha. Being the more introverted person that I am it’s been a real challenge trying to step out of that and be the “courageous” person to start conversations. In case you want a quick laugh at how pathetic I am I’ll give an example. Our first week in Green Bay we were going to join the middle schoolers at Resurrection School for lunch. I just thought this was sooo awkward and that the kids would be like who in the world are these random old people and why do they want to sit with me? So we walk into the cafe and I feel like I’m back in middle school trying to figure out where to sit... super awkward. I walk by a table filled with 5th grade girls and smile at them and a few of them wave and say hi. So I say, “I’d sit with you but there’s no room” and immediately like half of them go “oh you can just pull up a chair!” even though it’s a table where the chairs are already attached. I was shocked and also felt really dumb for being so nervous. A bunch of 5th graders just welcomed me to their table without a second thought….. Needless to say I’m working on not judging situations so quickly anymore as well as not being a baby haha.

Besides the challenge of getting over my innate awkwardness, I’ve been having an amazing time here. My teammates (both Green Bay and Menasha) are soooo awesome! I don’t think I've ever laughed so hard and so frequently haha (granted it is pretty easy to make me laugh, but that's besides the point). I’m already learning so much from them. I see so much joy, devotion, and empathy within each individual. You just can’t help but feel blessed when you’re constantly surrounded by pure amazingness.

This week we find out who our spiritual directors are and get to have our first meeting with them. We also have our first Cor Jesu, which is a night of adoration and praise and worship (kind of like LIFT from back home). Next Monday we’ll have our first bible studies for both young adults and high schoolers. And of course more retreats are on the schedule too. I have lots more I could talk about but I’m going to end this post here. I promise I won’t go another 4 weeks without blogging. Hope you’re all doing well, I’m keeping you in my prayers!