Catching up

Forgive me, I get behind and keep putting off updating the blog. Suddenly a week’s passed since I last wrote. My bad. Here’s a quick run down of the last week.

The weekend
I drove up early in the morning and met with a good friend, Christina Saad. She started attending Point Loma Nazarene University this year. Since I'm planning on applying to the school in November, I was excited to get a tour from a current student. After her showing me around the campus, my thoughts were, beautiful campus, Christian atmosphere, polite, kind students, pretty conservative and the school is positioned right at the beach. It was already a favorite of mine, and walking around the campus and being able to look to a view of the ocean from almost every spot we stopped, it’s hard not to love. --- Christina and I then drove from there to my friend Jenna’s (our SOYO Youth President) house. Jenna’s sister and a friend also joined the group, and we all drove up to the Torrance together. Friday evening was pretty relaxed and I got to catch up with some good friends.

In the morning we had our SOYO meeting. At the end of the meeting the service project for the day, was making three blankets for St. Innocent’s orphanage! I hadn’t heard about this beforehand, so it was a very pleasant surprise! I was very excited to be able to bring those down afterwards and give them to the boys. In the evening, we had Vespers at St. Matthew’s Church, and returned to the hotel.

Sunday we had a wonderful service at St. Matthews. After saying good bye to friends, the group who had come up from San Diego went out to lunch together. We hit the road and returned South. Christina had returned to San Diego with another friend, BUT, she had left her dorm keys in my Project Mexico car. So after getting back, I had to go and meet up with her. As fate would have it, she was at a concert, a free concert for Jason Mraz! I was thrilled to go and meet up with her, and some other Christian friends at the concert. It was a little bizarre, we had been listening to Jason Mraz on the way back to San Diego, and in a matter of minutes be listening to him live in concert! Just thinking about it still kind of amazes me.

The beginning of the week…
Monday and Tuesday were spent doing projects. Right now we’re trying to find get personal Bibles and other items for the boys to have so that they can have daily personal access to Christian material. Monday, I met with Fr. Michael and Alex. It’s always nice to have that meeting and just clarify what’s up for the next week - in addition to discuss any questions, comments, or concerns we may have. Working with them both has been great.

Wednesday, I drove all the way out to Calexico. I’m applying to get a Sentri pass which speeds up getting into the states tremendously. However, since our local office was booked through December, I had to drive 2 hours East. It was pretty disappointing when they asked for a couple files that weren’t required of other people in the past. Ah well. This summer when I was here for the week long trip, the group was told that the key to missionary work is patience, patience, patience. So take a deep breath, and wake-up tomorrow ready to go again.

Yesterday we had our bi-weekly meeting up in the States. Right now we really want to push the iCan Give 20.4.24 campaign. If you haven’t heard about it yet visit http://projectmexico.org/Campaign.aspx and check it out!!! When I got home I hung out with a few of the boys. Haha, it’s really nice to just be able to goof around and take a bit of a breather. One thing I do really appreciate is that it’s a big family here, so you can be yourself. With that mindset, I believe I’ve been able to get to know the boys on a more personal level. I’m talking with a family member, not someone I met less than two months ago.

Today has been spent working on different projects. I had to do another vehicle check, and I’m again appreciating learning a little bit more about cars and trucks. I think it would be really nice to work for a mechanic for a summer or maybe take an elective class in college on automotive repair and maintenance. It can save you so much time and money in the long run. I’m also working to put together weekly and monthly schedules for myself. I’m realizing that if I just go with the task at hand, some of my smaller projects will continue to be pushed to the side more and more. Basically, I am just establishing days of the week as my watering day, or car day, and so on. Like anyone in their normal lives, I am having to set a schedule so I don’t have my room full of half done projects. To finish of the day, Fr. Michael invited me over to watch Flipper with the family. Always a blessing to spend time with the Nasser family. :-)