I am still alive!

Hooo boy. It’s been a whirlwind two weeks since I last posted. I apologize for the radio silence, but I’ve been trying to get my life in order during the busiest time of the year for me as a proponent of campus ministry and as a future student affairs professional. Here’s a recap of my life (with more detailed posts to come in the following week or two):

My job
Work has been busy but fun. I’ve been transitioning from my summer duties of helping with New Student Conferences and planning Gig ‘Em Week to my school-year duties of advising A&M’s F1:First-Year Photo Project, teaching a First-Year Seminar (FYS) and advising part of the Aggie Orientation Leader Program. Gig ‘Em Week went really well despite the Thursday downpour that left us soaked and mud-stained during the Pizza Taste-Off. My first FYS class also went well. I was very excited to be back in the classroom in front of 20 freshmen. It reminded me a lot of my FIG teaching days, and I’m pumped to get to know my students better as they transition through their first year. F1 is the most intimidating thing in my job description. I’ve never advised a club by myself, so I’m learning on the job while my sophomore executive members are learning on the job how to run a student organization. My students seem stellar though, so I think in the end this, too, will go well.

School
Oh, school. That’s what I’m here for, right? For now, school is okay. I just finished up my first week of class, and the assignments don’t seem impossible; several of them actually sound fairly fun. My main concern is the amount of reading! I know I can handle it, but it’s going to be a lot of work. As much as I hate to admit it, I think my horrendously boring HDFS class from last fall has prepared me for grad school by familiarizing me with APA style. I am also thankful for “Journalism & Democracy,” my capstone from last spring! It was very similarly structured to my classes here in grad school, so I don’t feel like the class format is too foreign. Thanks, Dr. Hinnant!

My church
Getting involved with Smackdown has been a huge encouragement and change in my life. As much as I want to think homegroups here at A&M are the same  as canvas groups at Mizzou, they’re not. They’re structured differently, they meet differently, they’re planned differently. There are some similarities, but there are a lot of differences. This is good and difficult at times. I’m adjusting to the new things, but I’m also excited to bring my experiences at Mizzou to my new family here at A&M. I’ve jumped right into follow-up with nearly 10 girls, which has been discouraging at times, but I’m starting to see some fruit from the perseverance God has given me. If things go the way they seem to be going, Smackdown is gong to be huge this year. It’s exciting but also a little daunting. Discipleship here at A&M is much more intentional and structured than it was at Mizzou. We have a lot of girls to meet up with, and my schedule is already getting full as it is! I cling to the fact that God will provide. He will provide the girls, he will provide the time to meet up with them and he will provide the words they need to hear. It’s a little intimidating seeing the list of things that need to happen this year, but I keep repeating, “I will climb this mountain with my hands wide open.” I’m giving it to you, God, and I know you will make it beautiful!

My house
The Den is, by far, one of the best things about my life here in College Station. It is so incredibly encouraging to live with four other women on fire for God who have caught the vision of our church. It’s been a huge blessing to have roommates who serve one another and pray for each other, who listen to one another and give each other a lot of grace. They’ve made me laugh until I cry, spoken truth over me and celebrate in the small joys I share with them on a day-to-day basis. In short, my living situation is wonderful.

Missing Mizzou
There honestly isn’t too much I legitimately miss about Mizzou, the school, itself. Yes, there are a few things, but I mostly miss the people. I miss my equipping team and my canvas group a lot. It’s been hard to be away from them during what is the busiest time for campus ministries: the start of school. I feel like I should be there following up with them! Fortunately, God gave someone the brilliant idea to create Skype, which has been a blessing for keeping in touch. I’ve gotten to hear about the good and bag things about the start of the year from several of my friends, which I have loved. It’s been beautiful to see how God has grown the younger girls and how he’s using them this fall. I am pumped to see what else God has in store for them!

Life Lessons
God has been teaching me a lot. It really won’t do it justice to elaborate here, but look for future posts about how God has made us so incredible different, how we shouldn’t compare ourselves to one another, how I’m realizing my desperate need for the Lord, how my apathy is often rooted in pride and probably a thousand other things. Needless to say, God is doing work in me!

So there you go. Proof I am alive, learning things, transitioning and adjusting somewhat well. I’m going to try to blog more regularly as a means to keep in touch with my loves far away and as a way for me to continually process my life, as I am realizing more and more that I am a visual learner and processor. I need to write things out. So that’s what I’ll be doing here! In the mean time, God bless!

Meanwhile, back in College Station…

It’s been a while since I wrote anything of significance about myself personally. So here’s a little catch up of what’s been going on in my life.

Must love dogs
In the past, I haven’t been the biggest supporter of dogs, mostly because my family dog, Molly, ruined all dogs for me. So it’s taken some time, but over the past year or six months, I’ve begun to warm back up to dogs.

This process was significantly sped up by the arrival of my friend Barclay‘s husky, Cobalt. It’s not that Cobalt isn’t somewhat cute, it’s just that Cobalt is the dog of one of my good friends, so I pretty much have to like him. Luckily the obligation part of liking him is slowly giving way to almost near genuine affection.The change in my feelings towards dogs has also been accelerated due to the fact that A&M’s mascot is a fluffy border collie, and I desperately want to meet her and take a photo with her.

Cobaltimore Bartlesby Bell, aka Cobalt

Reveille, the First Lady of Aggieland

*baby voice*
I have recently been surrounded by babies, which has been pretty heavenly. I love babies, so it’s been great to play with Ezra, Eva, Jackson and the babies in my church nursery. This weekend I get to go home and meet another baby, Elliot! (What’s with all the E-names this year? Must be this year’s trend.)

New and improved
I updated my “About Me” page and got a new header! You like? Now I just need to adjust my Twitter background…

Pass it back, Ags!
I met the Fightin’ Texas Aggie Yell Leaders and took a photo with them. Perks of my job/perks of my boss’s brother being a yell leader.

Thanks and gig 'em!

Awaken your wine
Today my friend and coworker Nick and I went to the Messina Hof Winery in Bryan because he likes wine, I want to learn more about it and he’s leaving Texas to go back to the Midwest in three days. $7 got us a tour of the winery, a sample wine glass and four wine tastings, though our tour guide ended up letting us try six wines since there were only four of us on the tour. The only bad thing about this whole deal was that the tour guide asked Nick and I

• if we were married
• if we were engaged
• if we wanted to get engaged
• if we wanted a room at the bed & breakfast

It was all in jest (I think), so it was more funny than awkward. I’m not entirely sure if the tour guide ever realized there were no romantic feelings between Nick and I, but despite all that, I still feel like $7 for the evening was a sweet deal. And I found out I like Port. Yum!

It all ends… 7.15
Tomorrow night I’m going to see the last Harry Potter movie. Crazy. We had a Harry Potter movie marathon and watched the first seven moves last week. It was a long 28 hours, but it was really fun.

Harry Potter was such a huge part of my junior high and high school identity. I went to several midnight book and movie releases, dressed up as Ginny Weasley more than socially acceptable, listened to Harry Potter podcasts on a weekly basis, studied for vocabulary tests using Harry-Potter-related sentences (It took me way too long to find that link)… I was a Potter-head if there ever was one.

My high school friends and I at the midnight release of the seventh book four years ago

It’s funny to think about what I did for the last several movies that came out. It’s definitely indicative of what stage of life I was in at the time…

• Order of the Phoenix: Midnight release with Caleb and Angela
• Half-Blood Prince: covered the midnight premier for the Columbia Missourian
• Deathly Hallows Part 1: watched it the Saturday after it came out and immediately left town to visit College Station when it was over
• Deathly Hallows Part 2: midnight premier with my new A&M friends

Dearly beloved
It seems that I might be reaching the life season of weddings. A few weeks ago I had the pleasure of attending the wedding of two people in my new A&M homegroup, and this weekend I’m heading back to the DFW for my dear friend Angela’s wedding. I wonder who will be next in this season of life! (Probably Thomas & Shelby in January… but after that, who knows!)

Rocky mountain high
In just a little over a week, I will be en route to the Rocky Mountains to visit my sister and all my friends working out at the YMCA of the Rockies: Estes Park Center for Colorado LT 2011. I am beyond pumped to escape the Texas heat, hang out with my favorite (i.e. only) sister and catch up with my dear, dear Mizzou Mark Twain Canvas Group loves!

So in the end, that was still somewhat of a lame post, but at least it wasn’t about the Ambien Walrus. Maybe I’ll write something of spiritual depth and fortitude soon. Until then, this is what’s been up with me!

First friend-dates

If I’m being completely objective, I’d have to say my move to College Station has been one of the easiest transitions I could have imagined. That’s not to say parts of it haven’t been hard or challenging, or that I don’t miss my Mizzou folks more than words can express. It just means that when you take in everything that could have gone wrong or how hard it could have been, this transition has been relatively easy.

It was a huge blessing from God to come here with a few close friends and at least a bunch of other friend-ish acquaintances . It was a great base for me to start rebuilding my support system and a great resource for meeting new friends. But the thing about moving somewhere and starting over is that you have to start over.

Not many people here really know me. I’d say maybe three people do, so far. (Which isn’t half bad, considering I’ve been here a month.)

In order to combat this, I’ve taken it upon myself to ask several friends and acquaintances out on first friend-dates. I just this term because it’s the best metaphor I can think of to represent what I’m doing. Essentially I find people I’d like to get to know better (as friends) and asked them to get lunch/dinner/coffee/ice cream/froyo/snow cones with me. And then we basically have a first date, if we’re being honest.

How many siblings do you have? Where are you from? What’s your major? How’d you get to A&M? How’d you find Fellowship Church? What’s God been doing in your life lately? Share your testimony. How’d you get involved in student affairs? What was your undergrad experience like? What do you like to do for fun?

I’ve had these first friend-dates with about 5-7 girls so far. (I’ve really only done it with girls so far, but I definitely want to get to know my homegroup brothers, too, so they’re next!) A lot of my conversations have been really blessed by encouragement and testimonies and being able to see God working in other people’s lives. It’s also been a blessing to get to know my coworkers and understand their background and education. But I’ve also gotten to share a lot about myself, where I came from and who I am during these conversations. People are picking up on my quirks already! (i.e. love of proper English, my Mizzou pride, my height, my ginger citizenship, my love of Gilmore Girls, how I got to A&M, bits of my testimony, my journalistic background, what student affairs is, etc.)

It’s been a cool opportunity to lay the groundwork for some really awesome friendships I can see forming in my future, and I’m excited for more first dates and more follow-up dates!

So I finally picked a home group…

So ever since I decided I wanted to go to A&M, I wondered how I would ever pick a home group to join at Fellowship Church. Everyone I met last summer at LT from A&M was in a different group! Connect, Ebenezers of the Essential Earth, Smackdown, Sons of Thunder, Tatonka… (Yes, the home groups at A&M have weird names.)

So basically I prayed about it for ten months. The first seven months it was an “So, God, if I get into A&M, any preference on which home group to join?” But then I got in to A&M, and the decision became more of a reality. And then I found out I’d have to be here this summer, and decision that was going to be put off until August suddenly drew closer.

So, after much thought and prayer, with home group kick-off this week, I made my decision. Drum roll, please…

SMACKDOWN

(or whatever they change their name to once they finally change it)

There are many reasons Smackdown won out in the end, but the big reasons are as follows:

• I have met a lot, if not most, of the people in Smackdown, and have hung out with several of them on more than one occasion.
• I really like everyone in Smackdown that I have met.
• I feel like I fit into their nerdy group.
• Two of my future roommates are in Smackdown.
• I feel that I will be able to use my gifts and talents to serve in a few areas in Smackdown.
• They need more girls, and I am good at praying for more girls. (See: Mark Twain last year.) Plus I myself am a girl.

I’m pretty dang excited to start hanging out with these people. Actually, I pretty much have been hanging out with these people for the past week and a half, so I am excited to continue to hang out with these people!

Summer home groups are a little different because Smackdown will be combined with two other home groups for the summer since fewer people are here. I’m looking forward to combining and meeting other people from other home groups in my new church this summer! PTL for a new community!

(But no one can ever fill your shoes, Mark Twain Canvas Group. Don’t you worry, Twain family. I love and miss, miss, miss you all!)