1. A few days after discovering that I had a small, furry, beady-eyed office mate, I walked into my office after lunch break and found a mouse pad. On top of the mouse pad was a plastic bag with a dead mouse inside. Jeff says he's trying to find more for me.
2. Camp got a new super-nice camera. I got to test it out at Winter Camp weekend.
3. Winter Camp was a lot of fun. Although most of my time was spent doing media stuff, I got to lead indoor initiatives (our first time trying it out, and it worked really well), saw the ice climbing wall in action, and even played a round of nighttime broom ball.
4. I pulled my first all-nighter putting together Winter Camp video footage so that the kids could see the premiere on Sunday morning.
5. This week is the Missions Conference at church. Although I couldn't attend on Sunday, I sat in on a Russian missionary's presentation last night at Awana, and plan on attending a Friday dinner and the church service this coming Sunday.
6. A family is really interested in hiring me to work for them a couple nights a week. Please pray for this.
7. Because I was exhausted from the weekend's all-nighter, I slept all Sunday afternoon and most of Monday. Then I realized I had committed to go to the Jefferson House and that there was also an EMS course that evening. After spending an hour at the Jefferson House organizing the clothing basement, I went home for half an hour to eat before heading to Cedar for a 2-hour course.
8. Last week I brought Challah bread to Awana for foreign land night, and people wanted my recipe. Since I'm cheap in that I make a bunch of things from scratch, I decided to start a "Bargain Baking" blog. http://bargainbaking.blogspot.com/
Thursday, January 31, 2013
Wednesday, January 23, 2013
Memorization
I'm a listening leader at the Awana Truth in Training Program at my church. Anyone who is familiar with Awana knows that there is a huge emphasis on memorizing verses, Biblical definitions, and answers to spiritual questions.
I'm a big advocate for memorization, especially at a young age. It's refreshing to be able to have a verse pop into your mind the moment you need it. I am reminded of the persecuted who have had the Word of God taken away from them, so all that they have left of God's promises is what they have memorized. Memorizing scripture, in my opinion, is also a wonderful way to pray without ceasing. With all these benefits, I do have one problem with memorization: people can use it as a measurement of how "holy" one is, and can even use it to judge themselves. This causes a separation from a true relationship with God and mere religion. As a leader, it is always a challenge to try to balance memorization without having my kids feel inferior or, worse yet, not taking anything they memorize to heart.
Even though I was never in Awana, I do remember lots of memorization as a kid. In fact, I'm not really sure what my motivation was to memorize verses as a child, but I'm glad I did. In junior high youth group, we could memorize verses and do a few other things to earn a free trip to Six Flags Marine World, so naturally I had to take that challenge. In high school, as part of our spiritual preparation for our mission trips to Peru, we had to memorize verses, including all of Romans 12. I never had any motivation to memorize verses once I entered college. I guess it's hard to bribe adults to say verses. (Though I would still say a bunch of verses in exchange for a trip to Six Flags!)
Last spring, when I still had Netflix, I was going through the spiritual movies section and ended up watching a film about a foster child with cancer and his struggle to find love before he died. The father figure at his group home was a strong Christian man, who said that, ever since he became a Christian, he memorized one new verse every week, so by that time he had memorized over 1000 verses. (And yes, this is based on a true story.) That inspired me to memorize more, but I thought it would be more meaningful to memorize a whole book. I decided to start with James, but I only memorized through chapter 1 before the busyness of summer camp overtook my life.
Lyvvie came into my office yesterday to say a few sections from her Awana book. As she studied the next section, I mentioned something about memorizing things before. I opened up BibleGateway and had her see if I could still recite Romans 12 and James 1. Let's just say that I needed a few more helps than what Awana generally allows!
With my random day off in the middle of the week today (I choose to take Wednesdays off because that's one of the days that it's almost impossible to "accidentally" schedule me to work, unlike Monday which is also a day I try to take off), I decided to do some reading. This is the first year that I'm actually trying to read through the entire Bible. I also decided to do some other reading, since I haven't read a book in months. I picked up Twentysomething, which I started back when I was in Tennessee but haven't read since. It mentioned the Westminster Shorter Catechism. Now, I may have gone to a Presbyterian preschool, but I grew up very non-denominational, and even now that I'm involved in the C&MA, there are still no real universal church guidelines. I had never heard about the Westminster Shorter Catechism until last year when I was reading a different book. Now that it seems to appear in all my books, I decided to check it out.
In Awana, kids often are asked a question that they have to memorize the answer to. I thought the Westminster Shorter Catechism would be a good "grown-up" version of that. I'm not setting goals on it since I seem to fail on those (like I did with James), but I will try to memorize each one at a time until I get it. So today, I started memorizing question number one:
What is the chief end of man?
Man's chief end is to glorify God and to enjoy Him forever.
I hope to see this memorization come to mind in His perfect timing.
I'm a big advocate for memorization, especially at a young age. It's refreshing to be able to have a verse pop into your mind the moment you need it. I am reminded of the persecuted who have had the Word of God taken away from them, so all that they have left of God's promises is what they have memorized. Memorizing scripture, in my opinion, is also a wonderful way to pray without ceasing. With all these benefits, I do have one problem with memorization: people can use it as a measurement of how "holy" one is, and can even use it to judge themselves. This causes a separation from a true relationship with God and mere religion. As a leader, it is always a challenge to try to balance memorization without having my kids feel inferior or, worse yet, not taking anything they memorize to heart.
Even though I was never in Awana, I do remember lots of memorization as a kid. In fact, I'm not really sure what my motivation was to memorize verses as a child, but I'm glad I did. In junior high youth group, we could memorize verses and do a few other things to earn a free trip to Six Flags Marine World, so naturally I had to take that challenge. In high school, as part of our spiritual preparation for our mission trips to Peru, we had to memorize verses, including all of Romans 12. I never had any motivation to memorize verses once I entered college. I guess it's hard to bribe adults to say verses. (Though I would still say a bunch of verses in exchange for a trip to Six Flags!)
Last spring, when I still had Netflix, I was going through the spiritual movies section and ended up watching a film about a foster child with cancer and his struggle to find love before he died. The father figure at his group home was a strong Christian man, who said that, ever since he became a Christian, he memorized one new verse every week, so by that time he had memorized over 1000 verses. (And yes, this is based on a true story.) That inspired me to memorize more, but I thought it would be more meaningful to memorize a whole book. I decided to start with James, but I only memorized through chapter 1 before the busyness of summer camp overtook my life.
Lyvvie came into my office yesterday to say a few sections from her Awana book. As she studied the next section, I mentioned something about memorizing things before. I opened up BibleGateway and had her see if I could still recite Romans 12 and James 1. Let's just say that I needed a few more helps than what Awana generally allows!
With my random day off in the middle of the week today (I choose to take Wednesdays off because that's one of the days that it's almost impossible to "accidentally" schedule me to work, unlike Monday which is also a day I try to take off), I decided to do some reading. This is the first year that I'm actually trying to read through the entire Bible. I also decided to do some other reading, since I haven't read a book in months. I picked up Twentysomething, which I started back when I was in Tennessee but haven't read since. It mentioned the Westminster Shorter Catechism. Now, I may have gone to a Presbyterian preschool, but I grew up very non-denominational, and even now that I'm involved in the C&MA, there are still no real universal church guidelines. I had never heard about the Westminster Shorter Catechism until last year when I was reading a different book. Now that it seems to appear in all my books, I decided to check it out.
In Awana, kids often are asked a question that they have to memorize the answer to. I thought the Westminster Shorter Catechism would be a good "grown-up" version of that. I'm not setting goals on it since I seem to fail on those (like I did with James), but I will try to memorize each one at a time until I get it. So today, I started memorizing question number one:
What is the chief end of man?
Man's chief end is to glorify God and to enjoy Him forever.
I hope to see this memorization come to mind in His perfect timing.
Sunday, January 20, 2013
I'm Not a Mom
Sometimes I have to stop and remind myself that I'm not one. I'm not married; in fact, I'm as single as one could possibly be. And while you'll find several orphan advocacy sites in my browser history, I have never even made the first step in the adoption process, nor do I expect to do so for a very, very long time. I never ended up becoming a nanny, and I haven't even baby-sat for awhile.
So why do I have to remind myself that I'm not a mom?
Maybe it's because kids are over all the time. And I'm not even talking about the retreat guests. Earlier this week, I had challenged Lyvvie to Risk, promising that if she could beat me, I would try to play Movie Star Planet. (Apparently it's a hit tween game right now; I choose to just make fun of it whenever she mentions it!) She came over yesterday to finish the game we've been working on all week, which of course I won. However, I did tell her we could play Risk as many times as she wanted with the same stakes, so we had a rematch. Just as our game had ended, there were suddenly three kids in my kitchen who all wanted to take my computer to play Movie Star Planet! After a just-for-fun, crazy fight that would put pro wrestling to shame, we ended up starting a game of four-person Risk, but gave up after a few rounds and started to make homemade soft pretzels instead. I just finished all the cleaning from that!
Perhaps it's because I actually am the parent... of a hermit crab. I adopted a hermit crab from the nursery a week ago. His name is Ferb. (Believe it or not, I actually wasn't the one that named him!) But I don't think this is the case because I'm not that good of a parent to Ferb. I feed him my leftovers every now and then, set his crabitat next to a heater, and other than that I occasionally bug him just to make sure he's still alive. In fact, he rarely comes out of his shell when I pick him up, but he seems to always come out when Kirk is holding him. (Of course, Ferb also pinched him, so I'm not sure who he likes better.) I know I'll also be bad at hiring a sitter, because I let Owen hold the hermit crab, and he dropped Ferb! I'm hoping that I one day become a better human parent than a crab parent. Then again, children aren't so picky about their heat and humidity level. They also don't dig a hole and stay there for days... well, at least not until they become teenagers!
It could be because of my volunteer activities. I work at camp, which of course involves children, but what do I do outside of camp? Let's see... Truth in Training: children. Jefferson House: children. Toastmasters: old people! Two out of three times my extracurriculars directly involve working with children. Last week we hosted a children's workers' retreat. Although I am a children's worker in several aspects, I rarely thought about the seminars in that context and instead thought "ooh, this would be good for when I have kids someday". Even the day-to-day things I "volunteer" for are something only me or a mother would do. While working on this post, I took a break to do some laundry. Someone else's clothes were in the dryer, and while taking them out, I noticed that a pair of pants had a hole in it. Next thing I know, I'm sewing that hole up, all the while thinking "These aren't my pants. Why am I doing this?" Last summer, several people referred to me as the secondary camp mom. Yes, it makes total sense that Paula would be the primary camp mom, but being only a year or two older than most of the staff (and younger than several others), this name just made me feel old!
Or maybe I've come to face reality that I can no longer be thought of as a kid in any aspect, so I do the next best thing and hang out with them as much as possible. I sit in the unofficial teen section at church. In fact, I don't even know anyone my age there. Sometimes I just feel like acting my shoe size instead of my age, and the other eleven-year-olds don't seem to mind! I always laughed at the fact that my sister eats baby food. However, after grocery shopping this afternoon, I came home with ten containers of Gerber!
I'm not a mom, and for the time being, I really don't want to be. Being called "Mom", to me, is still an insult synonymous to a senile who constantly nags. (Not that this describes my own mother at all, in case she happens to read this part! And if she does take offense in this, I live 1666 miles away from her and won't see her for a few months. And I think she's the only person who actually reads this blog, so I've gotta give her credit for that!) So I will try to stop thinking from a parenting perspective and instead know that to kids, I'm just a taller friend. Then again, I'm that to most of my adult friends too.
So why do I have to remind myself that I'm not a mom?
Maybe it's because kids are over all the time. And I'm not even talking about the retreat guests. Earlier this week, I had challenged Lyvvie to Risk, promising that if she could beat me, I would try to play Movie Star Planet. (Apparently it's a hit tween game right now; I choose to just make fun of it whenever she mentions it!) She came over yesterday to finish the game we've been working on all week, which of course I won. However, I did tell her we could play Risk as many times as she wanted with the same stakes, so we had a rematch. Just as our game had ended, there were suddenly three kids in my kitchen who all wanted to take my computer to play Movie Star Planet! After a just-for-fun, crazy fight that would put pro wrestling to shame, we ended up starting a game of four-person Risk, but gave up after a few rounds and started to make homemade soft pretzels instead. I just finished all the cleaning from that!
Perhaps it's because I actually am the parent... of a hermit crab. I adopted a hermit crab from the nursery a week ago. His name is Ferb. (Believe it or not, I actually wasn't the one that named him!) But I don't think this is the case because I'm not that good of a parent to Ferb. I feed him my leftovers every now and then, set his crabitat next to a heater, and other than that I occasionally bug him just to make sure he's still alive. In fact, he rarely comes out of his shell when I pick him up, but he seems to always come out when Kirk is holding him. (Of course, Ferb also pinched him, so I'm not sure who he likes better.) I know I'll also be bad at hiring a sitter, because I let Owen hold the hermit crab, and he dropped Ferb! I'm hoping that I one day become a better human parent than a crab parent. Then again, children aren't so picky about their heat and humidity level. They also don't dig a hole and stay there for days... well, at least not until they become teenagers!
 |
| Here's Ferb, refusing to come out even for his first photo. |
It could be because of my volunteer activities. I work at camp, which of course involves children, but what do I do outside of camp? Let's see... Truth in Training: children. Jefferson House: children. Toastmasters: old people! Two out of three times my extracurriculars directly involve working with children. Last week we hosted a children's workers' retreat. Although I am a children's worker in several aspects, I rarely thought about the seminars in that context and instead thought "ooh, this would be good for when I have kids someday". Even the day-to-day things I "volunteer" for are something only me or a mother would do. While working on this post, I took a break to do some laundry. Someone else's clothes were in the dryer, and while taking them out, I noticed that a pair of pants had a hole in it. Next thing I know, I'm sewing that hole up, all the while thinking "These aren't my pants. Why am I doing this?" Last summer, several people referred to me as the secondary camp mom. Yes, it makes total sense that Paula would be the primary camp mom, but being only a year or two older than most of the staff (and younger than several others), this name just made me feel old!
Or maybe I've come to face reality that I can no longer be thought of as a kid in any aspect, so I do the next best thing and hang out with them as much as possible. I sit in the unofficial teen section at church. In fact, I don't even know anyone my age there. Sometimes I just feel like acting my shoe size instead of my age, and the other eleven-year-olds don't seem to mind! I always laughed at the fact that my sister eats baby food. However, after grocery shopping this afternoon, I came home with ten containers of Gerber!
 |
| If it's any consolation, the only reason I bought these was because they were on clearance. And you know what else? I just ate the banana yogurt, and it was the best yogurt I've had in a long time. |
I'm not a mom, and for the time being, I really don't want to be. Being called "Mom", to me, is still an insult synonymous to a senile who constantly nags. (Not that this describes my own mother at all, in case she happens to read this part! And if she does take offense in this, I live 1666 miles away from her and won't see her for a few months. And I think she's the only person who actually reads this blog, so I've gotta give her credit for that!) So I will try to stop thinking from a parenting perspective and instead know that to kids, I'm just a taller friend. Then again, I'm that to most of my adult friends too.
Monday, January 7, 2013
Retreat!
Mention the word "retreat", and the typical American will imagine a relaxing getaway weekend in a serene setting. However, scream the same word at someone in the midst of battle, and you'll see them running away as fast as they can go. When I hear that word, I'm more likely to think the way the soldier would. Retreats are not exactly relaxing when you work at a retreat-related ministry. It can be stressful, tiresome, and sometimes even dramatic. These past few weeks have been a change of pace.
It seems like most people don't like to take retreats in the middle of winter. That's fine with me, because that's conveniently when I'd like to take a retreat of my own. After all, it's the end of a series of busy weekends with comparable workweeks, the time of year where it's a hassle to so much as go outside due to the cold, and, oh yeah, it's Christmas! I was able to spend two weeks in Oregon with my family for Christmas, which was indeed a holly jolly time.
I returned to Camp Rivercrest Thursday afternoon, but due to jet lag and the fact that I got up WAY too early to catch my flight, I wasn't able to work. That's okay, because I put in more than a full day on Friday. After playing catch-up with the media, I hosted for most of the evening for the summer staff reunion!
I only hosted that evening (which was really relaxed because there were only a few people there and we just sat around and talked and played a couple games), so I was able to enjoy the rest of the weekend while I could pretend like I didn't even work there. It was nice to see some of the people that I haven't seen in quite some time. We went sledding, played broom ball on the frozen pool, made graham cracker creations, and had a gift exchange (I contributed some nasty flavored kale chips and ended up with a sock monkey. I'd say that was a good exchange!)
The night ended with worship. Because people were trickling out throughout the day, only a couple people ended up spending the night Saturday. So Sunday, I went to church alone (great sermon- it was about setting goals, but not in the typical New Year's Resolution fashion), and afterwords stopped at Food 4 Less. I hadn't gone grocery shopping since before I left for Oregon, so it was time to get some food! You should have seen what I was eating on Thursday and Friday!
I'm a sucker for manager's specials, which are super discounted items either because they didn't sell well or because they will expire soon. Almost all of my shopping consisted of either that or otherwise inexpensive items because I buy with coupons or in bulk. One of my bedroom lights burnt out, so I was also shopping for a new light bulb, which I realized I had never done before. Light bulbs are expensive! I was about to get the cheapest incandescent one (I prefer florescent but, hey, at least I don't pay the electric bill), but then I saw a hidden rack of manager's specials. Lo and behold, there were a ton of florescent light bulbs! After quickly skimming the box, I learned that the brand was called Green Bulb because it was environmentally friendly. This particular light was called the Pink Bulb, which made sense to me because it's pink packaging was covered with breast cancer ribbons and testimonies. However, when I got home I replaced the light bulb, I realized that it was also called a Pink Bulb because it actually gives off a bright pink light! I don't know if I'll ever get used to my bedroom's new hue.
Since I had plenty of food and had no intention to work on Monday, I decided to dedicate this day to baking and other homemaking-type stuff. I try to designate one of my days off each week as a stay-at-home day, which means I don't have to drive anywhere. This turned out to work really well today, because I didn't have access to my car for most of the day.
I stayed up until past midnight last night looking at things to make and tricks on cleaning, but I figured I could sleep in as late as I wanted, so this was okay. When it was still dark outside, I heard a knock on my door. For all I knew, this was 3 in the morning, yet I had all this go through my mind over the course of about three seconds:
"Is someone sick? No, this isn't summer. I'm not the health professional, and I'm off duty. I must have imagined that. It could be Eli because he sometimes seems to do laundry at all hours of the day although I never remember him doing laundry at three in the morning. He doesn't even go through my bedroom door to get to the laundry room anymore, he just goes through the bathroom door. And even when he did have to go through my bedroom, he never knocked when he knew I was asleep, he just sneaked in. Well, except that one time he tried sneaking in but ended up breaking that mirror. He still has six years of bad luck left with that one. I hope it's not an emergency. What kind of emergency could it be that they have to tell me this early? I don't even know if Emily is home yet. But even if she was home, what would have happened that she has to talk to me at three in the morning? Did something happen involving her tonight, and what would it be that she needs to talk to me about it? There's something wrong. Well, maybe. If it's important enough, whoever is outside the door will try again. But I'm probably just imagining all of this."
Once that mental rant was over, Eli called my name, and I invited him in. (However, it took me three tries to find which way I needed to get out of my bed. I can think of almost every imaginable scenario for someone knocking on my door, but I can't even remember which direction my bed is facing!) Apparently his truck wouldn't start and he was asking to borrow my car to get to work. So it was actually more like 6:30 am, and it was probably the one reasonable scenario that I didn't think of.
As much as he apologized for waking me up, I actually didn't mind the early start to my day. I tried making wool dryer balls (two of the three turned out well), and I had some time to put away the last few things left on the floor from my Oregon unpacking. In the afternoon, I made a couple loaves of challah bread (using the bread pans I got for Christmas!) and a few tortillas. (After working on the challah so long, making tortillas sounded easier than making pita bread, but I think they'll still go great with the falafel I learned to make a few days ago.) Other than that, it was pretty much just a relaxing day. In my own way, I guess it was kind of a personal homemaking retreat. And by the end of the day, everyone got some delicious homemade bread as a result!
I returned to Camp Rivercrest Thursday afternoon, but due to jet lag and the fact that I got up WAY too early to catch my flight, I wasn't able to work. That's okay, because I put in more than a full day on Friday. After playing catch-up with the media, I hosted for most of the evening for the summer staff reunion!
 |
| The evening consisted mainly of Killer Bunnies and Quelf. |
 |
| No one beat our record from last year of getting six people on one tube. However, we did end up getting everyone down the hill connected together, both as a blob and as a train. |
 |
| I was the goalie for most of the game. I started counting the bruises I got from this, but gave up after looking at just my left knee. But it was worth it because our team won- the ball only slipped by me twice! |
 |
| I was on a building team with Mikayla, Sarah, and Alyssa. (Yes, I ended up on the kids' team!) |
 |
| We built a high fructose replica of Camp Rivercrest, which we called Candycrest. It included a shredded coconut sledding hill, ice cube pool, jelly bean forests, a volleyball and basketball court with candy cane hoops, graham cracker versions of the chapel and dining hall, and even Alyssa's house painted red with Twizzlers! |
 |
| Jeremiah ended up with my gift (which he promptly decided to re-gift), but Brooke ended up with something even worse: dried salmon and seaweed from Japan! |
I'm a sucker for manager's specials, which are super discounted items either because they didn't sell well or because they will expire soon. Almost all of my shopping consisted of either that or otherwise inexpensive items because I buy with coupons or in bulk. One of my bedroom lights burnt out, so I was also shopping for a new light bulb, which I realized I had never done before. Light bulbs are expensive! I was about to get the cheapest incandescent one (I prefer florescent but, hey, at least I don't pay the electric bill), but then I saw a hidden rack of manager's specials. Lo and behold, there were a ton of florescent light bulbs! After quickly skimming the box, I learned that the brand was called Green Bulb because it was environmentally friendly. This particular light was called the Pink Bulb, which made sense to me because it's pink packaging was covered with breast cancer ribbons and testimonies. However, when I got home I replaced the light bulb, I realized that it was also called a Pink Bulb because it actually gives off a bright pink light! I don't know if I'll ever get used to my bedroom's new hue.
Since I had plenty of food and had no intention to work on Monday, I decided to dedicate this day to baking and other homemaking-type stuff. I try to designate one of my days off each week as a stay-at-home day, which means I don't have to drive anywhere. This turned out to work really well today, because I didn't have access to my car for most of the day.
I stayed up until past midnight last night looking at things to make and tricks on cleaning, but I figured I could sleep in as late as I wanted, so this was okay. When it was still dark outside, I heard a knock on my door. For all I knew, this was 3 in the morning, yet I had all this go through my mind over the course of about three seconds:
"Is someone sick? No, this isn't summer. I'm not the health professional, and I'm off duty. I must have imagined that. It could be Eli because he sometimes seems to do laundry at all hours of the day although I never remember him doing laundry at three in the morning. He doesn't even go through my bedroom door to get to the laundry room anymore, he just goes through the bathroom door. And even when he did have to go through my bedroom, he never knocked when he knew I was asleep, he just sneaked in. Well, except that one time he tried sneaking in but ended up breaking that mirror. He still has six years of bad luck left with that one. I hope it's not an emergency. What kind of emergency could it be that they have to tell me this early? I don't even know if Emily is home yet. But even if she was home, what would have happened that she has to talk to me at three in the morning? Did something happen involving her tonight, and what would it be that she needs to talk to me about it? There's something wrong. Well, maybe. If it's important enough, whoever is outside the door will try again. But I'm probably just imagining all of this."
Once that mental rant was over, Eli called my name, and I invited him in. (However, it took me three tries to find which way I needed to get out of my bed. I can think of almost every imaginable scenario for someone knocking on my door, but I can't even remember which direction my bed is facing!) Apparently his truck wouldn't start and he was asking to borrow my car to get to work. So it was actually more like 6:30 am, and it was probably the one reasonable scenario that I didn't think of.
As much as he apologized for waking me up, I actually didn't mind the early start to my day. I tried making wool dryer balls (two of the three turned out well), and I had some time to put away the last few things left on the floor from my Oregon unpacking. In the afternoon, I made a couple loaves of challah bread (using the bread pans I got for Christmas!) and a few tortillas. (After working on the challah so long, making tortillas sounded easier than making pita bread, but I think they'll still go great with the falafel I learned to make a few days ago.) Other than that, it was pretty much just a relaxing day. In my own way, I guess it was kind of a personal homemaking retreat. And by the end of the day, everyone got some delicious homemade bread as a result!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)