Easily Amused

Me and my sisters took our cousin out to a movie and lunch as a Christmas Eve date, and...well...we had extra time...so we went to Petland and played with two super cute puppies (one a little more hyper than the other...lol).

Christmas!

So, I fail at this whole blogging thing lately, but "Merry Christmas!"

As we celebrate the incarnation of Christ, I pray that you would be awed by the power and might of the king and God who lives in heaven, interceding for us before the face of the Father.

(And, if you live in the Tri-Cities, enjoy the white Christmas!)

Snow

Wow. It's not often we get the promise of a white Christmas in the Tri-cities, or very often that it gets this stinken' cold.

It's beautiful though, and, in some ways in makes internship (Kenya) seem all that much closer.
A) I don't tend to think of things as "soon" until I'm there, and
B) Being home has helped kind of push internship further off into the distant future because of all the stuff there has been to do here
But, cold means Minnesota. Minnesota means school. School means internship, and internship means Kenya. (Yeah...welcome to the mind of Jessica. Freezing my rear off makes me think of deserts on the equator. Right... )

Enjoy the snow, and make sure you get some sledding in -- slippery roads mean slippery hills after all...

37 days!! (and some housekeeping details)

Sorry.

I just got really excited all of a sudden at the idea that I really am going to Kenya! (And, that led me to realize that I need to catch you all up on what's going to happen with this blog starting in January.)

So....here's the deal.

Because of the nature of the trip, our site supervisor has requested that we treat an information about where we are and what we're doing as sensitive -- which makes me feel like Jason Bourne (minus the amnesia...and the assassin training...so...maybe not so much like Bourne...but...whatever.)

Therefore, starting in January, you will not be able to access this blog, unless I send you an email request (every time you want to read the blog, you'll need to sign in using your Google account -- if you don't have one already, the email will guide you through setting one up. It's really easy).

This means that, if I don't have your email, you need to somehow get your email address to me (comment, Facebook, telepathy, etc), so that I can send you the invite come January.

If you don't get my newsletters, I probably don't have your email....

Thanks, guys!

<><

Do You Have It?

I'm still not sure what Africa smells like. It all just smells like set pieces to me, but the exhibit it pretty powerful nonetheless.

You go through the experience with headphones and an mp3 player that narrates "your life" for you, encouraging you to become that child for a few minutes as you look at pictures and artifacts that immerse you in the sights and sounds of the story.

At the end, you enter a health clinic and find out whether you are positive or negative for HIV. All of the children featured have lost at least one person to the AIDS virus.

I know that quite a few people came out of it feeling like they really had lived the life of the child whose story they heard.

By far, the most fun group to send through the experience was the high school kids from church. Instead of having normal Intersect this week, they all went through the exhibit.

I think that some of the World Vision staff were concerned at first when they heard us giving the kids a bad time both before and after the exhibit -- doesn't really fit with the whole "smile, and be kind and welcoming" thing -- but they eventually figured out that we knew them and weren't just being rude to random exhibit guests. (Really, after a four hour shift of greeting people and trying to help them get signed in on the computer, what are you supposed to do with a massive line of high school kids, stare at them somberly in preparation for the stories they are about to hear? Not so much.)

Quite a few high schoolers decided to sponsor children, though, and it was fun hearing them talk about what they were going to send in their letters and whether they were going to write to the child's whole family or just the kid themselves.

There was a lot of, "Look at my kid." "Look at the one I got." "Did you see mine's name?" etc going on. Terri's response to Malia picking out a child to sponsor was "Oh. I feel like a grandma now!"

<><

It's December!

The kids at the drop in center came in all excited after school yesterday announcing, "It's almost Christmas!" so, we spent the rest of the afternoon decorating with lights, trees, ornaments they had decorated, and swaths of red and green fabric, and coloring paper Christmas trees to hang up on the walls.
By the time we were finished, it looked like someone had given Santa's elves too many candy canes and then set them loose.
(The rainbow colored paper chain that dips and stretches all the way around the room makes an interesting contrast with the red and green that came out of the craft closet yesterday...)

This December is a little warmer than the one I experienced last year.

While Minneapolis is buried in snow and below freezing temperatures, it is still warm enough here to have spent the last Saturday night in November outside, playing capture the flag, in a t-shirt and a pair of jeans -- at least for those of us who are warm blooded.

And, in a month and a half, I'll be someplace even warmer.

It's supposed to be 85 or 90 degrees in Kenya when I get there! In January!

At Breakneck Speed

Wow. I can't believe how much time has passed already -- or how long it's been since I've updated this thing. A month and fourteen days until I leave for Kenya, and almost that long since I've posted anything...

Life seems to be running past at breakneck speed around here, so, a quick update is in order.

Shoeboxes are over (8,925 boxes went out from the "greater Tri-Cities area." Just over 1,500 of those were Bethel boxes, which means a ship load of other churches and groups got very involved this year.) We lived down in the church for a week and, with assistance from a couple of clusters (who just happened to have leaders *cough* Gary and Phil *cough* who didn't want to load everything by themselves...), plus whoever else we could get our hands on, loaded three semi trucks full of packing cartons.

NaNoWriMo is over, and, after lots of frantic last day typing, I am the proud owner of a 50,000 word novel -- which now needs an ending and some serious editing before it sees the light of day...

Monday night childcare is over until February, so, me, Katherine, Tyson, and Shannon no longer get to torment children, and said children no longer get to torment us. Not real sure which direction around is more accurate.

CHECK is still going, and the World Vision Experience AIDS exhibit is right around the corner. Set up for it starts tomorrow! There will soon be an African village in the Fellowship Hall at church. I've been told it even smells like Africa, although I'm not real sure what Africa smells like.
I guess I'll find out tomorrow!

Now that I've overloaded you with information, hopefully, I will get back to more regular (and more interesting) posts.