Cabin weekend

Please excuse my painfully long time since posting.

I've wanted to put this pic up for at least like two weeks now, so here it goes!!

It's the group shot we took from our cabin weekend up in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee. These are a bunch of friends I've made throughout the past 5 1/2 years I've been at Intown.

Even though I have not yet experienced the love that comes from having a spouse, I do know very clearly how satisfying and humbling love can be when received from a good friend.

I am blessed!

Admittedly, these quotes were worth the effort

I'm taking a class on Wednesday afternoons this semester called Integrative Theology, in which we learn how to integrate the basic tenants of Christianity into our lives and our future clients' lives. This class itself is pretty cool, but it's a lot of work. Every week we have to read chapters from three different books and then write a response page about each chapter. Usually I write about 4-5 pages/week based on how many chapters we have to read.

Admittedly though, the quotes I get to meditate on while reading for this class has really been worth the effort. My favorite book is one called "Conformed to His Image" by Kenneth Boa. One could easily read it for a devotional. My friend Jeremy actually went to a movie once with "Ken", who apparently lives in Atlanta and leads a group for Christian lawyers, so there's a fun fact for you.

Here are a couple from this week's reading, all from "Ken". As you can tell, some of the ones that struck me were not from "Ken's" original thoughts:

Satan's cause is never more in danger than when a human, no longer desiring but still intending to do God's will, looks round upon a universe from which every trace of him seems to have vanished, and asks why he has been forsaken, and still obeys. ~CS Lewis

Every Christian will become at last what his desires have made him. We are the sum total of our hungers. The great saints have all had thirsting hearts. Their cry has been, 'My soul thirsteth for God, for the living God; when shall I come and appear before God?' ~AW Tozer

Beautific vision: def. The blessed vision of God that will be granted in heaven to those who have known him in this life. It is the ultimate uniting with the true Satisfier of the heart's deepest desires. ~"Ken"

1 Corinthians 2:9: Things which eye has not seen and ear has not heard, and which have not entered the heart of man, all that God has prepared for those who love Him." ~God's Word

The quest for an internship

This process is taking a lot longer then I thought.

I started at the beginning of this month. Getting the contact information together for placement sites, setting out time to call, calling them and leaving messages, repeat.

I have had two interviews so far. One was great (see blog from Feb 14) and the other...let's just say it wasn't a good fit. I don't think the first one is going to let me know if I got it (I'm one of four interns vying for a spot) until next week. The second one apparently wasn't a good fit for anyone because I got a call back saying that they didn't think it was going to work. Honestly, I was relieved.

Now I've set my sites on two more places- Skyland Trail and International Counseling & Consulting. The first one is a private, residential facility for people needing care for mental illness. All of the feedback I've heard about it is that it offers great opportunities to practice your clinical skills and you'll need to use that huge DSM-IV that's collecting dust and taking up space on the shelf. The International one is a private practice that works with missionaries serving with Operation Mobilization. Hello, talk about a dream internship!! So I've emailed my resume to both places.

I'm trying to hold all of this with an open hand, realizing that I want to find a place that's a good fit for all but at some point realistically I just need to find a place.

Because in May, I'll start seeing clients!!

Craziest 45 minute phone call ever

I hope I can capture what just happened in blog but I'm gonna try.

SO while I was in Kenya Pastor and Martha went to a Kenya-wide pastor's conference and came back with a box full of books that some of my team had the privilege of writing KRPC Makuku on the side in black marker and putting them on the slum library shelf (it's really called that). I found a book in that box called AIDS is Real and It's In Our Church and I would read a bit here and there until we left and I was addicted. I thought oh I'll just order myself a copy when I get home.

I COULD NOT find this book at all anywhere once I got home. I asked my teammate Fouk b/c she's the woman who knows how to get things and she found it on this website www.africachristiantextbooks.com . So while I was with Jennifer visiting Carly last September I filled out this shifty website order form and ordered it. No response.

About two weeks ago I get this random email from a Dr. Ron Rice who says they got my order form but have had problem with the site. Could I please email him after Feb 16 a reminder and he would help me get a copy. I barely remembered ordering the book at all since this was 5 months ago so I was stoked and in disbelief that I was going to get one.

I remembered today that it was after the 16th so I emailed him. HE JUST CALLED ME. Apparently there's only 48 copies of this book and they're all at this missionary woman's mom's house in Duluth, GA which is like 15 minutes away from me. Dr. Rice is trying to get the books up on Amazon but it's been really time consuming. This guy is the only US liason for ACTS (African Christian Textbooks) and he said they do have the books at a seminary called NEGST if I've heard of that. Hello, of course we lived like 10 minutes from that campus! So I could have gotten it in Kenya apparently. This guy's also a retired Presbyterian pastor who's been working in Nigeria for the last 4 years getting materials on AIDS to Christians and Muslims amongst other things.

All that to say he's going to contact this women's mother, see if I can get one of the lone 48 copies, and then he might ask me to help ship the books up to him in Seattle b/c that's where Amazon is and he'll probably need to get them to Amazon. He also told me about this sweet article below and he said that World Vision has the corner market in the US on materials about AIDS. I've had the hardest time finding good lay materials in the US on AIDS that's not like my teammate Matthew's textbooks.

So....anyway, what the crap this is awesome asante sana to me.

Here is the cool article

Doomed

Here's some news you can use. Apparently the new kind of peanut butter I've been eating for the past few months is now being recalled because of a salmonella outbreak that spans over 39 states.

That's what I get for buying Peter Pan peanut butter over Skippy. I just wanted a reduced fat peanut butter and that's all the store had. Blasted attempts to eat better.

Maybe that's why I got so sick back in January?

At least I can bring the jar back to the store and get my sweet $3. Maybe by now they have restocked the reduced fat Skippy.

It's a Valentines week miracle!

Another awesome thing that happened later on Valentines Day...I was able to do a home improvement project in 15 minutes!

You would think that someone who wanted to buy a home would also be excited about doing home improvement projects. However, I tend to not do things so logically. After many attempts at this I am painfully aware that I am a home improvement nightmare. Usually I try to avoid these projects as much as possible. Hence, the really nice framed picture that's been sitting in the hallway for the past 10 months. But no longer!!

Somehow while I was cleaning I got the courage to put it up, wall anchors and all, completely by myself. It only took 15 minutes and as you can see it looks awesome. VICTORY!!!

The other neat things that happened this week was getting a sweet card from my dad that I loved and have it up in my room so I can keep looking at it. I also got a really neat giraffe bowl from my friend Martha who lives in Kenya. I got the bowl via Opal who just went to Kenya and she brought it back for me. Neither Opal nor I had ever seen anything like it, so we were really intrigued about where Martha got it. She probably has her secret Kenyan-only stores.

Really special stuff!!

The interview

Today is Valentine's Day, or depending on your situation, National Singleness Awareness Day. Clearly for now I'm celebrating the latter.

I started off my day waking up at the crack of dawn which would afford me a full 95 minutes to get to my interview in East Point on time. Right before I left I saw a card with my name on it fastened to our wipey board. Curious. So I grabbed that on my way and it was a neat note from Jamie celebrating today. Aww..so nice. I kept it with me for moral support.

I really didn't have to be nervous about the interview because I was armed with the mad skillz I developed from my brother who spent time with me this week nailing me with every possible question Target's ever threw at him. I passed with flying colors he said. Plus I had God, and the card.

In true Atlanta fashion, on the day I actually allow myself plenty of time to get somewhere I needed none of it and arrived a full hour early. I've never been to East Point before so it was nice getting a tour of the place. I found out later it was the home of Greenbriar Mall, which was the first mall in Georgia and at one time held the first CFA in all of Georgia. Nathan, I'm sure you'd appreciate that fun fact.

I sat in the car and read for a while and then went inside. I was at Atlanta Christian College, which is my top internship site choice. I arrived before my professor, which actually was pretty cool because I had time to read all of the comics he had tapes to his door.

The interview did go very well. I'm up against three other applicants from my school who are interested in this internship, one of whom went to this college as an undergraduate student. I'm supposed to find out by email in the second week of March if I got it. In the meantime I'm thinking of applying at a mental hospital and a women's prison. Yeah....I'm hoping the college student thing will pan out =). But seriously, I'm excited about the other places too.

Off the subject, here's a quote I read today that I really liked: "Do not be afraid, little flock, for your Father has chosen gladly to give you the kingdom." ~Dallas Willard, a paraphrase of Luke 12:32.

Visitor status

I cleaned out the rest of my cubicle today so that Blaire won't have to work in a pigsty (picture of former pigsty included here). Although, she's still getting my totally ghetto chair. I also had to give my keycard to the front door back so now when I go to the MTW office I'm officially on "visitor" status. This is a new thing in our world in an effort to become more secure. I think being on visitor status includes wearing a white nametag and getting stared at.

This finished off quite a stressful week for me. I had a ton of homework to do leading up to having a weekend class all day Friday and Saturday and most of Sunday. By Sunday I was happy with glee to be done and able to run my little heart out at the gym with Christina and Amy Mo. Apparently I was so happy I almost tripped off the treadmill while telling a story about the class. I felt really lame until Christina did it too like two minutes later.

So now my new identity is counselor in training. I think that's going to work for me. I still fight my new life sometimes, but I think I'm hitting acceptance stage.

My life is weird

Ok, so I no longer go to work.

Monday was my last day in the Internship Department at MTW after 5 1/2 years together with those folks. My send off included lunch at Mi Casa so I could enjoy the spinach and shrimp quesadilla one more time and an awesome time of prayer and cake in the afternoon. That part was the hardest for me. My fellow co-worker Daniel, who is never emotional about anything, teared up and prayed this really heartfelt prayer as many others did. The cake came from a favorite recipe of mine that Jamie made for my birthday several years ago. She dug the recipe out from the depths and gave it to Heather, who whipped up quite a masterpiece. What a thoughtful thing!!

This week I have been going to school like normal and catching up with schoolwork and other random things (like applying for health insurance!) before I start my new work-from-home job on Monday as an MTW recruiter.

Yesterday I kind of hit a wall with the whole staying at home thing. I haven't been a full time student in 5 1/2 years, and really all I know is working and coming home and being done with some studying thrown in there during the last year and a half. Now my "work" is really never done until the semester's over. There's always, always, schoolwork that can be done. Also, I can do my other "work" really whenever I want without going anywhere. In some ways it's a sweet setup. But I've started to notice how different it feels. And different is good and it's also...just different. I'm still trying to figure out a schedule and routine that works, so I'm productive but also have some down time for relationships and fun. So then I was driving around in Atlanta traffic trying to get some errands done and I found myself racing to get home before Jamie got there just so I could talk to her. I think this extrovert's going to need some lunch dates or something that's for sure!

If you think about it, please pray for me in this transition. I am so fortunate but at the same time I miss the banter, the cherry cordial's, and Carrell, Bill, Ron, Daniel, Jamie, Gina, Heather, Allie, Jack, Jamie (the MTW-side of Jamie) and others so very much.

I'm including pictures of Soxie here because we have been getting to spend some quality time together. Isn't she cute?? And I recently noticed that she purrs when I come into the room and say her name and she's starting to come now when I call her. That's really cool since she's eight years old and I've only had her for nine months!