Wednesday - Week Five

And... we are now officially on a week and a half break from the Focus "Month," while one of the girls and I head off for Haiti to run a VBS.

We spent our morning modeling bracelets for THE BLOG - which is now up and running - and posting our final items. Go check it out. The money will all go straight to a well in the Makungwa area of Zambia (Africa). And, it will make us feel like our time has been well spent!

Tuesday - Week "We Have Moved Well Past the End of a Month"

This morning we met to work on the blog again. (One more day and we should have it up and running!) We ate donuts and hung out near a bunch of seniors playing bridge and telling Confucius jokes. And, as you can so clearly see from the picture below, it was all hands on deck at all times.

Haha. No. We really did have everyone working at one point or another. Although, we jokingly pointed out the irony of calling this a Focus Month, seeing as A) We collectively have zero level focusing skills - squirrel! and B) We clearly can not read a calendar, as we have officially extended past the month mark.

But, we can do life together and work on web design, even when two of us should really be packing for a trip to Haiti.

Monday - Week "We Have Moved Well Past the End of a Month"

We met at the community center this morning to work again on the fundraising website that the students are putting together. It's not live yet - hopefully before one of the girls and I leave for Haiti on Thursday(!!) - but it is starting to actually look like something that we would want to direct people towards.

Soon and very soon you'll be able to see it in all of its finished state, but, for now, we'll let you peek at a screen shot. We're rather happy with it.

Sunday Picnic

Friday afternoon, we had gone in to talk with one of the pastors at my local church and received permission to set up an information table at the church picnic and "do something creative." Being us, that "something creative" was planned on Sunday afternoon, when I pulled my sister out of her room to brainstorm. But, I think that it worked out well!

We talked with a few people at the table - and directed a lot more towards the name tag table! - and gave out probably half a dozen pieces of literature. Eventually, we decided to get a little more hands on with things and started wandering around the picnic and handing out pieces of chalk.

Stick figures seem to be our signature "thing."

This time we drew 274 large stick children to represent the 274 American kids who are trafficked within the US each and every day. 

And, like last time, the figures got people talking.

For the first time (as far as I know) that anything like this has happened at the church picnic, I would have to say that it was a success. :) We like it when people start talking.

Church Picnic

Once a year, all three of the church campuses get together for a picnic and some baptisms. Have I mentioned that I think watching baptisms is one of the coolest parts of church-as-an-organized-religion? Standing at the edge of the water, surrounded by hundreds of people, just feels a little closer to New Testament than, say, dodging cars in the parking lot on the way out of a Sunday morning service.

And... we (the Focus Month group) got permission to set out an information table on human trafficking and do something "creative" to build awareness!

We collected every teenager we could find (while my mom watched the table for us) and drew 274 child sized stick figures on the sidewalk surrounding the picnic area to represent the 274 American children who are trafficked on US soil EVERY DAY.

It was a little less church-as-an-organized-religion but still very much church, in the sense that it was a group of people striving to bring glory to God by living life the way that Jesus told us to. And, that, is cool.

Saturday

So... we leave for Haiti on Thursday!!!

Our last team training was this morning, and we spent several hours pulling the VBS together, answering questions, separating out hundreds of craft kits, laughing with and at each other, praying, eating pizza, talking about things that I'm sure some people thought they would never talk about (Sorry, guys, I lived with a team in Kenya for sixteen months. Some things are just no longer awkward.) and generally letting it sink in that we really are leaving - and soon.

The kids and adults on the team are amazing, and I am ridiculously excited to see both the good things and the hard things (and the hard-but-good things) that God does in us and through us over the course of the trip. We are as prepared as we could possibly be for a team that has never been to Haiti before, and, I hope, pretty fully aware of just how un-prepared that automatically makes us.

And, to be fully honest, I am more than a little excited to just get out of the States again, even if just for a week and a half. :)

Friday at the Library

This is morning a small group of us met up at the library to work on the website/blog for just over two hours. Turns out that group web design takes longer than it seems like it should. :)

Focus "month"

The last few weeks have been crazy, but crazy in a good way: running around town with the Focus Month kids, getting ready for a trip to Haiti (We leave next Thursday!), watching my sister and her band play, youth group on Sunday and Wednesday nights, college group on Thursday nights (the fact that I get to be in a small group rather than just lead one has been a nice switch up), occasionally remembering to clean in my apartment, etc.

As expected, the Focus Month has looked nothing like what I had planned or imagined, but it has been a very cool thing just the way that it is. We meet every morning and typically hang out until mid afternoon, working on anything and everything and more or less living in the park. Literally, two of the kids were laughing yesterday that, if something apocalyptic were to happen and communications went down, we would still be able to find each other, because we would just have to go to the big rock at the park and...there would be the entire Focus Month group.

We do a lot of laughing and a lot of teasing each other and, for some reason, a lot of talking about personality types.

We've looked at AIDS, homelessness, human trafficking, clean water, local hunger, and a dozen other things that come up in everyday conversation. They've run awareness events and fundraisers and spent hours upon hours brainstorming. And... we've fed squirrels, played with fire, climbed rocks, and eaten pizza.

Basically, it shouldn't work, but it does.

I can't promise that we'll have changed the world when we get to the end of all this (whenever that end happens to be), but we might have succeeded, just a little, in changing ourselves and creating new-to-us way of being family and doing church. Or, at least, that's where it looks like it's going.

It also looks like it might need a new name soon. How long are you allowed to call something a "month," before people start to wonder?

Thursday - Week Four

We met at the library this morning to work on a fundraising website for a well project. And... proceeded to spend the next two hours attempting to come up with a name for said site. When you get a table full of home schoolers together, you may just end up with titles in Spanish, French, German, Kiswahili, Creole, and Latin before you get one in English!

(And, one of the girls might start talking about Latin root words. Not that we're strange or anything.)

At the point where we finally had a site name and url, we decided it was high time for a lunch break, so we piled into vehicles and ate lunch in the a park. A new park, even - not the one that we have been practically living in for a month. :)

After food, we met with one of the pastors at our church and got permission to set up an information table on human trafficking at the church picnic this Sunday and possibly do something creative to go along with that. Which, means that we'll have our work cut out for us tomorrow!

Wednesday - Week Four

Today we started out the morning with a trip to the food bank to drop off 40-some odd pounds of food and then found a store willing to let us hang a poster from the Polaris Project that have a phone number to a trafficking hotline, as well as basic information about human trafficking and what it looks like.

We also found - completely by accident - a geo cash and stuck in a random slip of verse that one of the girls had saved from youth group on Sunday night.

We did some more brainstorming on the rock and spent time randomly climbing up and jumping off of the various climbing surfaces of the two rocks, ate some lunch, wandered through a craft store, and dropped off two of the Polaris posters, one in Spanish and one in English at one of the local libraries for the librarian to hang up.

Basically, we did life together. (And, I may or may not have resorted to forcing them to chose, "right, left, or straight," at every intersection. :D)

Tuesday - Week Four

Haha. So, today may have been one of our less "productive" days, as far as actual measurable progress of any kind is concerned. But, that doesn't mean that it wasn't a good day.

We met at the park in the morning (have you started to notice that we spend a lot of time at the park?), brainstormed on top of the rock, brainstormed at a table, poked our fingers through the holes in said table, stepped in the river just long enough to decide that it was COLD, watched the boys try to scare seagulls, ate lunch, went to the mall (with the partial intent of hanging up posters), wandered through stores, found another girl from the youth group and temporarily co-opted her to wander with us, hung out on some benches, and talked about just about everything you could think of.

But, sometimes, saving the world looks an awful lot like just doing life together.

Monday - Week FOUR

We met up at the park again today, and did part of our brain storming on top of a giant rock. It was less than magically successful, but, then, our second guy showed up and gave us an instant idea. Fresh brains are a wonderful thing!

We spent our day making trafficking awareness posters, printing / copying them at the library, making a free Slurpee run, and popping into various shops around town to see if they would let us hang a poster. We were one for four by the end of the afternoon when it came to shops actually letting us put up said posters, but it's a start. :)

Set The Slaves Free

We met Saturday evening with the biggest group that we have had all month to set up and run the "Free the Slaves" fundraiser during the Sm**vies movie night.

The kids sat in boxes, held signs, ran the donation table, talked with all sorts of people, and got plenty of chances to exercise their patience - and their puppy dog faces!

One of the girls who has been around since the beginning jokingly told me that she ought to be getting credit for all of this as a leadership skills class. She might just be right! They have pulled off all sorts of things that most people would never think of doing with their summer, and they constantly have new ideas bubbling up. It's been pretty amazing to see the kinds of things that a group of teenagers can do when they're just given permission to "GO."

They raised $81.97 in two hours, in everything from twenty dollar increments down to three cents at a time from a little girl who wanted to "free" one of the boys. (And, quite a few quarters from random kids who were out working the crowd!)

All in all, I was pretty stinking impressed. These are some awesome kids.

Friday

This afternoon we met at the park in order to track down the folks at Sm**vies. Turns out that they are letting us hold a fundraiser tomorrow night during the pre movie entertainment.

We'll be sticking willing victims in boxes cages where they will stay until enough money has been donated to free them. All of the money will go towards a care package for women who are coming out of human trafficking.

It should be pretty cool.

We spent the rest of the afternoon making signs with statistics about human trafficking. There are two more, but you'll have to come to the Sm**vies showing tomorrow night to see them!

7:00-8:30pm

Bring some change to donate, or let me know if you want to be put in a box cage.

Thursday

Today was another crafting day, trying to get ready for the water fundraiser. One of the girls made these little magnets, a wool felted owl, and worked on some coasters. I got a few more bracelets made, crocheted a dish scrubber, and started on a backpack, BUT... we need more people!

(Guys, we have ideas for some woodworking type projects - think power tools - so you wouldn't have to be working on "cute" things.)

Friday we'll be meting at H*ward Am*n park (green dock) at 1:00 and doing some not-craft things. If you're bored and looking for something to do, feel free to join us!

Wednesday - Week THREE

Today we met at my parent's house to start the crafting process for the well fundraiser. We had purchased some leather scrap yesterday, thinking, "oh, this will be easy to make bracelets out of."

WRONG

Haha. It took three of us nearly two hours to make eight of them - not counting the first few attempts, which were not worthy of seeing the light of day.

We may have been getting slightly faster towards the end, though, or just more slap happy about it all. But... we have at least a few bracelets made, and they are selling for $3 each, if you would like to purchase one. All of the money goes straight towards a water project!

(There should be prettier pictures of the things we have for sale by Thursday afternoon.)

Tuesday Adventures

Monday being the 4th of July, we didn't meet, but we did get together on Tuesday to work on the random assortment of things that have become the Focus Month. :)

We did some research at the library, went to Wal Mart to get a few supplies - and proceeded to pay nearly all in ones, that one of the girls very patiently fed into the self check-out machine, one after another, after another...

We went to the park to talk to someone about a possible fundraiser for this weekend (the money will go towards a care package for women who are coming out of sex trafficking) and then headed to a craft store to get ideas for another fundraiser (this one will go towards a well or clean water project).

By the time we were finished at the stores, it was time to head of in non-Focus Month related directions. I had to laugh, though, because one of the girls, who showed up mid-day, after returning from a family trip, told us, "My mom was trying to convince me to stay home and take a nap. And, as I was telling her that I had to come, I realized that I sounded sort of addicted to this."

There are worse things to be addicted to!

Saturday Brainstorming

Only one of the girls was able to come today, so we met at the library and pulled out some clean sheets of paper and colored markers and pens. (I s.t.r.u.g.g.l.e to brainstorm in bullet points and single colors. Luckily, all of the girls agree with me on that one! Our brainstorm sheets tend to look like a rainbow barfed on them. :D)

Every time that we get a new person involved in the brainstorming process, the whole thing gets a little more balanced and we cast our net a little wider.

All of the people who have been involved so far have been awesome about jumping on board with anything, but the "regulars" have very distinct passions that leave us happily juggling issues and ideas. One of the girls is passionate about human trafficking. One of them is all about clean water and community development. The third lights up when we're talking about the homeless.

We're coming up with quite the list for the next two weeks! Many hands make light work. You want to come join us?

Friday Wanderings

Today we made the very valuable discovery that, when one is attempting to yard sale for items needed by the pregnancy network or WARN (Washington Anti-trafficking Response Network), one should NOT go on the weekend before the 4th of July. Folks don't like having yard sales that weekend.

We did find a few nice baby clothes - and a boppy - some children's clothes and two unused canvases (which will go towards some art project over the course of the next two weeks). And, we drug a guy along on his first ever yard-saling experience.

We also scoped out the farmer's market, bought a pound of very tasty cherries, had a picnic in the park, and made friends with a VERY calm squirrel, who the girls named Oliver. Oliver was very found of our cherry pits and even more found of the piece of corn chip that we smeared with peanut butter.