What I learned. . .

Time goes by way to fast.  I can not believe that commencement is in a few short days.  Where did these past nine months go.  This year went by even faster than last year did.  It seems like life has been put on fast forward and I can’t find the pause button.  These past few weeks have been fast paced.  Abaco, finals, preparing for bike trail and appellation trail, all these things plus all the little things thrown in leaves little wiggle room. I want to make this week the best it can be, but I don’t want it to be so overwhelming that I am merely surviving.  I want it to be filled with good memories not thoughts of, “only six more days.”

I realized that to have great experiences we have to make them.  Everything must be intentional, not just to do lists, but attitudes and behavior.  For the next part of the week to be unforgettably amazing I have to make it that way, and I will. 

I am expecting this last part of the week to be the best.  The appellation trail will be awesome, the last few days of babysitting will be a blast, and we will all enjoy each others company.  Ahhhhh yes, I’m ready.


Sasha

Ministry Hours. . .

My ministry hours were split up into three different things which include, advising youth, writing letters to women in the church, and tutoring kids in math and spelling. 
There have been many ladies this year who have greatly encouraged me.  They have given so much.  It may have been time, food, energy, transportation, prayers, you name it.  All of them are so giving so I wanted to give back.  I don’t have much to offer really, but I thought that I should at least let them know how much I appreciate them all so, I wrote them little letters thanking them for being who they are.  After I did this I wanted to add a little something extra.  It is a work in progress, but I plan to make some sort of baked item and pretty it up for them.  I want it to be special to let them know how influential and inspirational they are.  The letters alone took about 3 hours altogether (there was a lot of stopping and starting due to the schedule)  Making the rest will probably take another couple of hours.

The rest of my service hours were spent tutoring kids with their schooling.  This was certainly an adventure.  First I helped these two girls who were ten and eleven.  They were working on spelling.  Now, it has been a long while since I have had to take spelling classes, and I am a horrible speller, so I was a bit nervous.  Luckily, there were directions and rules so all I needed to do was explain the rules and assist them as they worked on their papers. 

The next day I helped two boys with math, specifically subtraction.  I thought that this would be no big deal.  I can subtract, I have been doing it for like 15 years. . .I realized that I have been heavily relying on my calculator for the majority of those years.  I actually had to jolt my memory and remember how to subtract double digit numbers, I know this is pathetic, but its true.  Anyways once I got my brain working again, I was able to help these boys with their math problems.  It was interesting to watch them work them out.  They both have ADHD so I had to keep capturing their attention and regaining their focus.  They are both very smart and able to do well, as long as they are occupied and their minds are engaged.

Bike Trail. . . .

Our bike trail was so much fun.  It didn’t exactly turn out how it was expected to, but we had an awesome time.  We left the training center around 7 and then had an hour and a half drive to the C&O canal.  We got started riding as soon as we arrived.  We rode a few miles and had some tire issues so we stopped to fix that.  Then we rode maybe another mile and we had one of our chains break.  We tried and tried to fix it, but our effort did not produce results.  We had to double up on a bike, which was quite entertaining to watch, while we pulled another.  That did not work out so well so we tied two bikes together so that the person in the front pulled the person behind.  We rode like this until we reached the van.  We probably only went about 10 miles.  We were out there for nearly 4 hours.  Despite all the stopping I got a pretty good workout.  It was a great time spent on the C&O canal.

Privilege

I learned a lot about privilege this week.  As I was in Abaco I saw those who had more than enough and those who had barely any.   Being privileged is not a choice or something that we can change.  It is what is given to us, what we have to accept.  In America we consider those who have the latest technology and the biggest homes to be privileged.  In some parts of Abaco those who have clean clothes and electricity are the privileged ones.  It is all a point of perspective.   What is important?  What do we consider a privilege? 

While I was in Abaco I felt very privileged.  In America I feel like I am barely making it.  It all comes down to necessity vs. want.  Kids here feel like they need new toys and games every day or week.  Kids in Abaco are grateful for the one toy that they have.  My week in Abaco has me reevaluating what is truly important.  I have realized how well off I really am.  I need to look at the things in life that I have and be grateful.  I have a family and a home.  I have a car that runs and money to eat.  I would say that I am a very privileged person.

Plan B

I learned, am still learning, and will continue to learn to expect the unexpected.  When this week started I had a schedule.  I knew what I needed to get done and appointed the appropriate amount of time to do it.  However, plans always change.  I have had to be super flexible and juggle each thing that i needed to complete.  It was difficult and seemed impossible.  Once I thought I knew what I was doing, that also changed.  I have decided that planning my week is important, but it is by no means is the final product.  I have also accepted that things are not going to happen the way that I want them to so I should accept them and be happy about it.

I have made it thus far and will do my best to finish the requirements, but it is a struggle.  In a little over 24 hrs. we are departing for Abaco.  I still have much to prepare for, but somehow I am going to make it happen.  No matter how impossible it may seem, or how crazy I will be when this week is over, at least I know that I did my best to complete it.

Run...Run....Runnnnnn

For my physical fitness hours this week I did a few different things.  We had our daily workouts with pastor Tim as well as some moving and dancing around during our practices for skits and songs.  These activities benefited my overall health because each were great workouts and also very high energy.

This week with Tim we worked on endurance.  We started off with jogging a lap to get our blood pumping.  Then we would go straight into the mile.  The first day we did one mile and the next we did a mile and a half.  We all took turns and each of us sprinted/ran 100 meters at a time until we made it a couple times around the track.  We did this each day and then ended with 400 push-up as a team.  From the first day to the second my mile time improved.  Hopefully as we keep running I will be able to trim of some more time.

This week what grabbed my attention was our music theory class.  I have had many music classes in the past, so I remembered a lot of what Mr. Dave taught us, but one thing that I didn’t know was the circle of fifths.  I have heard about it, but never learned it.  At first glance I was totally confused, but as he explained it I began to understand it.  It is a great formula for knowing and learning key signatures and somethings that I will most certainly use and hopefully remember.

I learned key signatures a bit differently.  The way I learned I pretty much had to memorize each key.  The circle of fifths makes it possible to learn without memorizing.  It is a sequence of key signatures that are spaced equally apart.  All that is required is to know the whole, whole, half, whole, whole, whole, half pattern.  Once this is known all key signatures can be determined. On the outside of the circle is the major keys and on the inside are their relative minors.  Rotating clockwise around the circle the 5th interval can be determined. Moving counter clockwise the 4th interval can be determined.  Learning to read the circle is the difficult part, but once it is known it is a piece of cake.

Sasha

Body shop. . .

Once again this week my body shop hours were taken care of by our morning workouts.  This week we did three days on the track of Liberty High School.  We walked, jogged, and ran around the track.  We did this in several different ways.  Some of it we ran with our team, other parts we did as partners.

We also did some additional things to running such as push-ups, and exercises with the weights, weight ball, and pole.  One of the things we did was hold the weights directly in front of us with our arms straight.  We held the objects out as long as we could before our arms gave out on us. 

This week I was able to do much more.  Consistently pushing myself has payed off.

In one of our body shops this week I was having a really hard time catching my breath.  This caused me to not only slow down myself, but my whole team.  I wanted more than anything to keep going, but my lungs kept stopping me.  I was so frustrated that I was the week link holding my team back.  I pushed as far as I could but just didn’t have enough strength in me to keep going.  As I started to slow down Tim came up beside me and told everyone to go on ahead of me.  In this moment I felt defeated.  All I had left was 200 meters, but I couldn’t make it.

Just like this example I have had multiple times of defeat and failure.  I am learning that sometimes it necessary to not make it, to fall short, to stumble.  We are nothing in our own strength.  When we do life on our own we fail.  This is the way God intended it to be.

The joy of the Lord is our strength.  He gives us breath to fill our lungs and sustains our lives.  God is our ultimate power source of which we have full access.  In order to grab a hold of this we must know that we need God in everything we do. By ourselves we can’t make it. When we do life ourselves we fail, always.

This week body shop was not an option.  We all worked out together to work to improve our team work skills.  It was tiresome and required a lot of hard work, but together we all made it through the week.  All the days began to run together, but here is a list of some of the things that we did.

Running the track
Walking
Jogging
Running the bleachers
Jumping
Push Ups
Lunges
Relays with the weight ball
Push Ups with weight ball
Bicept Curls


We did all these things and more Tuesday through Friday.  My three hours of body shop was most definitely met. ll these exercises improved our team work as well as benefitted our physical health.  Needless to say we were all pretty soar after a couple days of these intense work outs.

Ministry Hours. . .

For my first four ministry hours I tagged bathrooms, but this time I was not alone.  My mom and my sister helped me out.  We made the cards and then went to several different locations posting the cards in bathroom stalls.  My whole family went to Applebees and when we were about to leave my mom and I posted some more in the restroom.  It was so fun being sneaky while brightening someone’s day. 

This simple act of tagging can do a number of things.  First, it is so much fun.  Second, as we made the cards we were reminded of God’s love.  Lastly, the people who read the cards are given a little bit hope.

For the other four hours i spent time with my grandparents.  This may not seem like much of a ministry opportunity, but it most definitely is. Both of my grandparents are not believers and my grandma is suffering from Alzheimers.  Because of this and other reasons my relationship with them has been a bit distant.  I had the opportunity to really talk to my grandpa about my beliefs.  Even though we may not see eye to eye he at least supports me in what I do.   He has become so much more open and accepting. I also talked to my grandma and even though she can not remember if it is hot or cold outside I know that the things I speak to her about God will not be forgot because it is a matter of the heart rather than the head.

Body Shop.. .

For all of my body shops this week I went to the gym with my mom.  It was so much fun to workout with her.  We encouraged each other to keep pressing on.  It was also quite funny because everything my mom does is hilarious.  Anyways……

First we did 30 min of strength including, arms, legs, abs.  There were machines in a circle around the room and each one was timed.  Once the light turned green it was time to start, when the light blinked it was time to move to the next workout.  At first I didn’t think that the time spent on each workout was enough but my body told me differently the next day.

To prepare for the leadership bike ride I decided to give the exercise bike a try.  I peddled two and a half miles.  This really gave my leg muscles a work.  I realized I probably should have been preparing for this a long time ago. 

While my mom went to do her red light therapy, I peddled some more and more and more.  I went another mile and a half before I called it quits.  I have to say that it is much easier to work out while listening to music or watching tv.  I guess it just gets your mind off the pain.

Running is my biggest struggle; it is the thing I hate to do the most.  If I had the choice of running or writing a paper, I would choose the paper, and I hate papers.  So despite what I want to do I did what I should do so. . .  I ran.  I must say running on the treadmill is not as horrible as normal running.  On the last physical fitness test my time was over 11 min.  I wanted to try to run 1 mile in under ten minutes. . .and I did it…Yay.  It was hard, but I’m still alive and that’s all that matters.

Including warm up cool down and stretching all of this adds up to about 2 hrs and 40 minutes.  With my remaining 20 minutes I did crunches, and arm workouts.

Body shop. . .

My First body shop I started off with stretching and a quick warm up.  Next, I did arm exercises to tone my arms.  After that I jumped rope for quite a while.  It looked like so much fun and it was for a little while until my heart was beating out of my chest.   It was an excellent cardio workout.  After jumping rope I ran down the street and through a neighborhood.  I ended my body shop with a cool down and more stretching.

For the next two body shop’s I did a combination of running and walking.  I am working on building my endurance by running, but it is a long process.  I run out of air before I am even tired of running.  I am hoping that by keeping it up it will become less of a struggle.

Expect the unexpected

I have learned to expect the unexpected.   No matter how much preparation I do life still happens. 

At the beginning of the week, I made a schedule for myself.  There was a lot on the schedule this week so I had to be very intentional about every hour of time I was permitted.  I had everything planned perfectly according to what the schedule said, however the week did not necessarily go according to schedule.  I had read rearrange things so many times, that I quickly ran out of time.  It is so hard to get things done when there is so much expected of me that is unsaid.  I can only do so much with knowing so little.  Even today I was forced to choose between getting homework done and cleaning the house.  Obviously homework is more important, but because we had to clean the house today before break , my homework did not get done.  It is frustrating, but I know it is not the end of the world.  I just wish there was better communication so that my plans would not be ruined every week.

More Freedom....wow

Hmmmm What Have I learned this week. . .  

  I learned that it pays off to be organized.  I have been telling myself over and over that I need to get my act together and plan.  Well, this week I have done that.  I planned everything, body shop, homework, memorization, bible reading, everything.  Instead of wasting my time on pointless things, I made the best use of my time and ended up with more free time. I learned that when unexpected things pop up in my schedule it is okay because if I use my time wisely I have a little bit of wiggle room. My stress has been cut in half and I feel so much more accomplished.  I am going to continue to plan my weeks so that I actually have control over my life.

Body Shop. . .

Body shop was awesome this week.  I focused and two things, running and arms.

On Tuesday I went to the girl’s house and did a 30 min. workout.  I started with stretching and a brief warm-up.  Then I ran around like a crazy person in our backyard.  It was more of an obstacle course than a track.  After I ran I did my many arm exercises using heavy book (because I do not have weights).

Thursday morning I somehow woke up early and went for a jog.  I started from the girl’s house, made a huge loop to 32, and finished back at the house.  It took me about 30 min. to complete my run.  When I got back I went straight back into arm exercises.  I did this for the remainder of my time.  All together this workout lasted 1 hr.

Friday, I started of body shop with a 10 min. warm-up.  Then I went into my arm exercises for 10 minutes.  After this I ran up and down the driveway at the girl’s house for another 10 min.  I quickly got bored of running up and down and up and down so I decided to do some gymnastics.  We all know that running builds endurance and leg muscles and obviously arm exercises increase arm strength well, gymnastics does everything.  Once upon a time I was able to do many tricks; however I have since lost almost everything.  I decided to start out simple and attempt an aerial (cartwheel with no hands).  Sadly I did not get it, but I am still going to work on it.  After the attempt at gymnastics I did 10 more minutes of arms.  All together this body shop came up to about an hr.

Saturday, after our body shop we all ran to Linda Spafford’s house for the service project.  We did run rabbit run the whole way there and then walked back to the office when our job was completed.  Altogether this was about 30 min. of walking and running.