What a Week!

Hello, friends! Wow, I missed my Thursday deadline twice in a row. I feel like I'm tripping at the finish line here. But in my defense, it's been a very strange week. Let me tell you all about it.

Last Friday... my nephew was born! Since this will go on the Internet, I'm pretty sure I'm not allowed to post pictures. Suffice it to say, my nephew Kylen was born two weeks early and I was incredibly surprised when I got the phone call. I've proceeded to talk about nothing other than my adorable nephew since then. Just ask Sarah; she was with me all day on Saturday.

Speaking of Saturday, Sarah and I went to DISNEY! And I'm definitely allowed to post pictures of that, so here you go. Pictures say a thousand words!

 

  

Last Sunday -- wow, it really was a crazy weekend -- University Lutheran had a sending-off for me during the worship service. They said a prayer over me, and then after church there was a delicious cake and a card signed by a lot of UL people. I felt so special and loved. (Also, if you like cake... we have a lot left. Please eat my cake.)

This week, we did some tabling (joy) and handed out all of the magnets we possessed (non-sarcastic joy). We had quite the crowd yesterday, with Julie, Anna, Liz and Cricket all joining PJ and I. Wednesday I had my last-ever staff meeting with PJ and Matt, which made me sad. I've really enjoyed our meetings. At least we came out of it with one more inside joke. (Maybe you are the one person who really wants a squirrel sweater.)

On Wednesday evening, the inevitable happened... I got roasted. In the picture, you can see all of the random items I acquired. (There might no longer be room for my mom in my car.) My personal favorite moment was Pastor Jay describing my attempt at lizard herding and giving me an inflatable lizard to remember it by. Among all the funny memories was also a serious moment: Pastor Jay gave me a memory book with notes from several of my favorite Florida people (including Cricket and Bear). He also is having a plaque made with my personal meaning statement: "Helping others find their place in God's story."

Yesterday, I had to say a sad good-bye to some more of my favorite Florida people: the Damayan gardening crew. There were many sweaty hugs exchanged and I promised that I would have a garden of my own someday, which I do fully intend to do. I've learned so much from Mark and Burgen especially about gardening, and from Maddie about pretty much everything else! Thank you so much for an incredible year, guys.

Today I had lunch with Rina and she told me all about engagement rings and wedding dresses, which are the two things on her mind right now. So exciting! Other than that, this morning I finished up church calls and now I'm blogging to avoid packing, packing, and more packing. Tonight I'll be having a laundry party at Anna's, tomorrow I'll probably pack (and pack and pack) and Sunday will be my last worship service at University Lutheran. I'm excited to see the Paul twins get baptized, but I'm not excited to leave UL. It's such a wonderful place and I will miss it so much!

When I write in this blog next, I'll no longer be in the Sunshine State. Ahhhh!

Catching Up and Looking Ahead

Hello, friends! I apologize for not writing a blog last week. I'm not sure, but I think I forgot. So now I have two weeks to catch up on! However, they were very similar weeks in a lot of ways.

For example, I had the delightful opportunity to hand out football schedules to incoming freshmen during orientation. PJ wasn't around last week, so I bribed Matt to help me out on Tuesday and Julie joined us again on Thursday. This week, PJ has returned and we've gotten back into our regular, very exciting routine.

Last week, per the usual except for the lack of PJ, Matt and I had a staff meeting. We picked through this Sunday's readings to find the gift of God, how we can give ourselves as gifts, and how we can celebrate the gifts we've been given. What we came up with had the general theme of "growth." Then we saw the newsletter article Pastor Jay had written up, and we were very excited because our theme was right on target.

Perhaps one reason I didn't think about writing a blog last week was because Pastor Jay had given Matt and I some reflection questions to write about. My personal favorite was: "What is next for University Lutheran?" This question was tricky for me, because I, personally, will not be around for what's next for University Lutheran. (In fact, one thing that's next for University Lutheran is me leaving!) But Matt and I both enjoyed playing around with the possibilities, and it was interesting to learn that we came up with pretty similar ideas.

(One thing I wrote about was inspired by worship on June 7th, when Cricket, Eva, Becca, Ava, Wyatt, and Alexa all came up at communion one after another. I said, "I imagine that UL will have to become more child-friendly when all of these kids (so many girls!) become Sunday school age.")

Last Friday night, I went contra dancing for my friend Elm's birthday, which was great fun! We also went to a barbershop quartet performance over at Tallahassee Community College on Saturday. And I have more fun plans coming up this weekend -- Sarah and I are going to Disney!

That's all the news for today. It's strange to think that in two weeks, I'll be moved out and gone. Soon this Iowa Girl will be returning to Iowa. In case you're wondering about what comes next for me, the answer is that I don't know yet, but I have a few possibilities. However, if you ask me the question "What is next for Mary?" I'll answer it like this: "My niece or nephew is due in 15 days!!" :D

Happy June!

Hello, friends! Happy June! The time of year has been on my mind a lot lately, because now that it's June, I officially have less than a month left of my time in Florida. Gah! Where has the year gone? My fun stuff in Florida bucket list is still mostly un-checked-off, but work-wise I feel like I'm at a good place. This week in particular has been interesting.

Last Friday PJ gave me the daunting task of creating the curriculum for Vespers next year. In his words, this is a way I can "leave my legacy" on University Lutheran. I've been enjoying this far more than is probably healthy. First, I reviewed what we did this year. Then I set the major goal for next year's curriculum. Then I divided it into goals for first and second semester. Then I divided the semesters into units, and the units into weeks... And now I'm almost finished writing an outline for each week. It's fun! I like having the opportunity to do something as  overarching as this.

Last night, we played host to a bunch of 7th graders from Stuart, Florida. They were on their class trip to the Capitol and came to us to learn what college is like. We fed them spaghetti, meatballs, garlic bread, and Publix cookies, and then talked about their impressions of college and how Jesus can fit into their life during college. I enjoyed the conversations we were able to have (and I was reassured that a year of college students hasn't made me forget how to deal with middle schoolers). The highlight of the night for PJ was learning that someone who came to this night 5 years ago is coming to FSU because of it. Again, in his words, his "heart just swelled." You don't often get to see the results when you plant seeds, so this was incredibly special for him.

Per the usual for summer, we handed out magnets on Tuesday and Thursday. Tabling was... well, tabling. PJ is leaving me all alone next week, so I'm glad that some of the church members have decided to help us! Anesu came out on Tuesday, and Julie was there today.

This afternoon I went out to the Frenchtown garden. We weeded around the watermelon plants, picked tomatoes, cucumbers, and green beans, and played limbo with the water hose. Elm came today, which was great! We had some really good conversations in the van on our way to and from the garden. One of the facilitators, Maddie, is a religion major. She's excellent at coming up with in-depth questions to get us talking.

Then, this evening, Sarah and I went out to Food Truck Thursday. I've never seen so many ducklings and goslings in my life. We would be in the middle of a serious conversation, and then a duck would waddle by and do something funny and we would just give up. To round out my blog for the day, here's a picture of some ducks.

Order in the Chaos

Hello, friends! I'm writing to you from my living room couch, and I'm surrounded by a variety of interesting objects: a hammer, my Bible, my work notebook, some white ribbon, a pincushion, my favorite baseball cap, a synopsis of the Gospels, an iron, a hot glue gun, a list of all the LCMS churches in Florida, and the back of a picture frame. Let me tell you how all of these things came to be in my living room!

The hammer, ribbon, pincushion, iron, hot glue gun, and back of a picture frame are all ingredients for my long weekend activity: crafting. I made a few items for all of the babies in my life, although from that list of things I bet you'll never guess what I made (and I can't tell you, or it would spoil the surprise for the babies). I also made a craft apron for myself, because when I start making crafts, cleanliness is not my priority. I bet you couldn't tell that from my description of my living room!

My Bible and my work notebook are normally seen together. As usual, this week I wrote four devotions. My favorite one was probably the devotion for Tuesday. It involved the Ezekiel story about prophesying to dry bones. When I searched for a picture of dry bones, it came up with this:

Naturally, I thought this was hilarious and used it as the illustration.

My favorite baseball cap, which is a Harry Potter cap from Universal, is in my living room for two reasons. One, I wear it during our delightful hours spent in the Union handing out football magnets. Two, I wear it when I go to the Frenchtown community garden. Today the five of us (Maddie, Burgen, Megan, Mark and I) weeded one of the beds. With all of us working, we were able to clean it out pretty much completely. We also hunted down caterpillars in the tomato plants and ate some cucumbers and green beans. I brought back a small pile of green beans for myself.

The highlight, however, was watching the kids play a game of basketball and several of the girls perform a steps routine during their halftime.

The synopsis of the Gospels is the topic for this summer's Bible study, which I get to help teach. I led our discussion for the first time this Sunday, and I think it went pretty well! Luke 1 and 2 were on the agenda. We tend to overlook those passages because we hear them so much, but it was nice to take the time and examine them more closely.

And lastly, the list of all the LCMS churches in Florida. Tomorrow, I get to (read: have to) continue to work my way down the list, calling churches to ask if they have students heading to college in the fall. Last Friday, I knocked out 48 churches. Hopefully I get through at least that many again tomorrow. 

There you are, a sum-up of my week based on my messy living room. Until next week, farewell! 

Football schedule? Football schedule?

Hello, friends! It's so nice to sit down in a nice, quiet, shaded, air-conditioned room and write after a few hours spent saying nothing but "Football schedule?" in a sunny, hot, crowded student union.

(I really shouldn't complain -- we were in the shade today. However, it's Florida, and I reserve the right to say "It's too hot" basically every day!)

Anyway, Tuesday started our twice-a-week orientation schedule. We stand outside in the heat and hand out football magnets to people walking by. Sometimes that's new students, sometimes that's the new students' parents. Sometimes it's random staff people and other campus ministers! It gets a little tedious, but we've found ways to amuse ourselves. We chat with the people tabling next to us, who have included a pre-med group, an acapella group, and a Jewish group. Today Liz and Cricket came to visit us, and of course, Cricket was immediately the star of the show.

In other news, I volunteered to help with the Sunday morning Bible study for the summer. This Sunday will be the first one I get to lead. We're going through a synopsis of the four Gospels, discovering which writer included what and why. So far, it's pretty interesting!

And since it's summer, I get to do my favorite job: church calls. Tomorrow I'll start on the nice long list of all the churches in Florida, letting them know about LCMS-U and University Lutheran. I just can't wait. I'm very, very excited.

This Sunday I'll be doing a church swap with my friend Emily. She'll come to our worship service, and I'll go to hers over at the Mormon church. It should be very educational for both of us! I'm looking forward to it.

That's all for today -- I need to go dunk my head in cold water or something. Have I mentioned it's hot in Florida? ;)

My Shiny New Phone

Hello, friends! Today I've decided to write my blog from my shiny new phone. This gives me the opportunity to mourn my old phone, which died tragically in an accident yesterday. It fell out of my pocket as I got out of Pastor Jay's car and subsequently got slammed in the car door. This blog also gives me the opportunity to beg for your phone numbers, as I lost quite a few of my contacts because of this sad incident. (If you text me in order to give me your number, please identify yourself, otherwise I will have your number but not know who it belongs to!)

Moving on from my phone woes... On Friday I went to Yogurt Mountain with Evan to celebrate his new summer internship. It's a good thing for him my phone broke, because the embarrassing picture of him devouring delicious yogurt is now inaccessible. Friday night I spent at a going-away party for Gary and Jessica. Gary recently got a job in Washington, D.C., and they started their move today. On Saturday, Anna, her roommate Hillary, and I went to the Tallahassee Museum to do the zip line course, which was super fun!

I haven't done too much this week- volunteered at the Children's Home Society on Monday, had lunch with Justin on Tuesday, went to a circuit meeting with Pastor Jay yesterday, and had lunch with Laura today. I've also written my normal number of devotions and worked on some young adult ministry network stuff. Hopefully there will be some joint young adult stuff happening before I leave!

During our drive to and from Tifton yesterday, Pastor Jay and I decided to forego regular Vespers this summer. Instead, we're going to do trivia night at Brooklyn Water on Thursday nights, starting tonight. If you're in the area, feel free to join us! (I'll need all the help I can get...)

That's all the news from Tallahassee, except for this great story: http://m.wtxl.com/mobile/news/man-wearing-only-underwear-claims-to-be-god-tased-at/article_f623444a-fa49-11e4-8094-fb59da6c07a1.html

Until next week, friends!

New Friends

Hello, friends! As it so happens, I had the opportunity to make some new friends this week. Monday afternoon through yesterday afternoon I attended the Youth and Family Ministry Association retreat at Luther Springs camp in Hawthorne, FL. Let me tell you what I learned: youth ministers are crazy.

I did learn more than that, but that was the most amusing revelation of the retreat! By default, youth ministers are certifiably insane (myself included). No one else would willingly go into the profession. We had great fun together as we ate junk food and swapped ministry horror stories. I would tell you some of them, but you might require counseling afterwards and I don't have that kind of money.

In all seriousness, the retreat was a blessing. Our theme was "Detox." We talked about identifying the toxic things in our lives (words, thoughts, relationships, and culture), guarding our hearts against those things, and replacing them with life-giving, life-affirming, and life-changing things. Our small group discussions were wonderful and insightful. We were able to listen to, support and encourage one another in our various struggles. I appreciated the opportunity to learn from youth ministers who have been in the field a bit longer than my 10 months.

The retreat also gave me a new appreciation for prayer. I have, of course, always known that prayer is a powerful thing -- but it's one thing to know that, and another thing to see it in action. Simply the act of one youth minister saying to another, "I'll continue praying for you, and I want to know when your prayer needs change," is life-affirming. It gives validity to a youth minister's needs, which often go overlooked in favor of the needs of the congregation.

On the way back from the retreat, I gave myself a brief driving tour of the University of Florida, just to say I'd been there. If you're worried about me becoming a Gator fan, remember that my boss is a Gator fan, and therefore I must placate him until July (when I can return to not caring).

I've included two pictures for you this week. One is the YFMA crowd during one of our sessions; the other is the best picture I could get at UF without getting out of my car.