Transition (Everything I can’t seem to say out loud)

I’ve been back at school for three weeks. I’ve been back from West Virginia for one month. I’ve been back in America for almost four. Time keeps moving forward whether I like it or not.

Here’s an update: senior year is good. It’s actually really great. I’m living with my best friends in one of my favorite cities. I have three jobs that I love. I’m in fantastic classes with insanely talented professors. I go out to the bars and to dinner and eat cheese curds and custard and everything is so good and so Wisconsin. I’m getting new opportunities at every turn. I have great mentors who are teaching me so much. I’m excelling at being a leader and feel myself developing professional skills everyday. I’ve missed Marquette so much, that this all just feels so right.

This year is also hard.

I’ve found myself unable to articulate to anyone how much of a hard time I’m having readjusting. I try and tell my friends that “I’m having a really hard time” and they nod and say they understand. But then I’m still sitting there wondering if they are actually hearing me. I’m not sure if its culture shock thats playing out months later or just stress from being so busy.

I’ve forgotten what its like to live this life. Living in Italy seems so far away, and West Virginia feels like someone else’s life.

Not to mention I feel this all consuming anxiety for what comes after for me post grad. Its the kind of anxiety that completely eclipses everything. It stops me right in my tracks and takes my breath away.

As time goes on I keep looking for excuses why transitioning back would be this hard. I don’t sleep. I stay up all night with gears in my head turning. I don’t really eat. Partially because I haven’t gone grocery shopping in three weeks but partially because I honestly am so busy and burnt out I forget to.

During my first week of classes and work I confessed to my friend ‘I feel like I’m drowning’ because thats the only way I can describe it. I spent every waking moment in my office and was still never reaching the end of my to do list. I was already beginning to get behind on class reading. I honestly can’t tell you how I survived that first week. This might give you an idea of my current season:my goal for the past few weeks has been “Keep it all together.”

I guess at the end of the day, the name of the game is transition. I’m transitioning back into life in Milwaukee, at Marquette, in class and at work. In the back of my mind I’m already playing with what my transition after graduation will be. No one ever said that transition was easy. Actually I feel like most everyone could agree with me when I say that transition sucks.

All the while I take back the mantra that I held this summer, “growth and comfort can’t coexist.” I cross my fingers and say that these are growing pains and that treading water isn’t so hard after all.

So here’s to honest and vulnerable blog posts and spilling my guts out on the internet for processings’ sake. Here’s to a transformational senior year. Here’s to all my college lasts and my real world firsts coming right around the bend. I’m looking forward to growing into a woman who can handle real world pressure and deadlines without having to cry in her office at the end of the day. Not saying that I’ll be her tomorrow, but that I’m on the road there.

Life in Logan (redux)

I’ve been blogging this summer and I don’t think I’ve ever touched much on what Logan is really like. I’ve been so focused on my own experiences I’ve hardly taken the time to set the stage where this is all happening.

Let me give it a shot:

The first word that comes to mind when I think of Logan is beautiful. It truly is. The town itself is nestled into the only flat space for miles with mountains completely surrounding it. The residential areas or  “hollows” (pronounced hollers) are tucked away up into the mountains. Let me try to paint a picture:

A few nights ago we drove through a storm and I watched lightening flash behind the mountains and illuminate their profiles. When it rains here you can sit on the steps to our church and literally watch the sheet of rain sweep over the town. The most magical part is after the storms and rain when the warm earth heats up the cool air and steam rises from the mountains. It makes it look like we’re surrounded by low hanging clouds. The view from our rooftop is breath taking. The sunsets here are to die for. I could go on and on.

The next word that comes to mind is small. Logan is a town with a population smaller than my high school. I can count the number of non-fast food restaurants on one hand. I go to Walmart and see my Kids Club kids. I walk down the street to the only coffee shop and see the same faces sitting on the street. I can see the whole town from my bedroom window. When I go to church on Sunday there are legitimately 5 other people in the congregation besides the staff. When I say Logan is small, I mean Logan is small.

Logan is also troubled. It’s in an area that was once vibrant and thriving, but has suffered the consequences when its life blood, the coal industry, declined. It’s health care system is lacking immensely and many of the people here are sick, malnourished or obese. I learned yesterday that the Walmart in Logan sells the most Little Debbie products out of any Walmart in the world.

Logan is plagued with prescription drug addiction. Between the cancerous effects of coal mining, black lung disease and the injuries that can happen in the mines, prescription drugs are very dangerous and very real here. I was told by a community member that the average person in Logan has 20 prescriptions. You don’t have to live in Logan to know what comes along with drug addition. It destroys lives.

Many people here are poor and there is a very low availability of quality housing. Just a block from where I’ve been living I’ve seen houses with out doors, caving in on themselves or literally falling apart. I’ve seen living conditions I never imagined to still exist in America. Poverty is real, and poverty is right in our backyard here.

I could go on about the issues that Logan faces but thats not the whole truth here. Logan is hopeful. 

Its not the loud hope that has flashing lights, smoke machines and its own social media campaign. Its not the overwhelming hope that shines its light for miles and miles. Its not even the hope that you can see here at first glance. Its the quiet hope that is working at its own pace, in the hearts of people here.

Ok, switching gears now.

We are in the middle of what I’ve deemed “reverse prep week” where we’ve been taking down the site and doing some work projects. My favorite part of this week has been the extra time we’ve had to speak with community members and say our goodbyes.

Today we went out to lunch with one of our community partners. We went to the new Mexican place in Logan, which is the talk of the town.

This community member runs a men’s house and women’s house for recovering drug addicts in the area. He asked us over our lunch what we, as outsiders, thought about Logan. We all first said it was beautiful and small, because Logan is beautiful and small and that’s the easy answer. But after being prompted we gave more honest answers.

One of my coworkers responded that he felt like Logan was “stuck.” That really clicked with me. I had spent a lot of time trying to put my finger on what exactly Logan’s problem and that hit the nail on the head. There’s so much potential here and so many issues to solved. It seems from my experience that the community is overwhelmed by the enormity of what needs to be done. My coworker noted that in comparison to neighboring counties who are experiencing momentum and moving forward, Logan is staying stagnant.

Wheb we asked our community member about his dreams for Logan, his eyes lit up as he spoke up about his dreams for a community center. A place for AA and NA to meet, a space with corn hole and darts and ping pong. A space for youth groups to meet. A space where he can show his residents at the men’s and women’s home that you don’t need to be high to have fun.

As we sat there, I could tell the whole staff thinking the same thing at the same time. Our housing site sits empty 9 months out of the year and has more space then we know what to do with. We then recommended that our community friend connect with the missionaries at our housing site. A community center is a completely reasonable, attainable goal which we already have the space for. Wow. This is something that could actually happen. 

Our housing site, New Covenant Fellowship.

As we sat there and talked and dreamed about the future of Logan, I couldn’t help but think: This is it. This is where real ministry happens. It happens when we get to connect people, when we can encourage and support dreams of community members. Ministry happens after the YouthWorks summer is over and after the sites are packed up. Ministry happens in a Mexican restaurant in a small town in southern West Virginia of all places.

Ministry will continue to happen in Logan long after we’re gone. And that hope, that quiet hope, is putting down roots here- I’ve seen it first hand. Because despite drug addiction, despite poverty, despite disease, God moves and woks and provides. He’ll work in the hearts of people here and feed the spark that’s slowly burning here.

Logan seems simple and small, but its a complicated place. It was beautiful and I experienced immense hospitality and love here. But sometimes it felt foreign, and it felt hard to love. There were days when I wish I could have gone out in public with out been immediately identified as an outsider because of the way I dressed or because of my accent. There were days when a community member would comment on how poorly I drove because I’m a woman. There were days when cultural differences tested me and frustrated me. But just because it was sometimes hard to love, doesn’t mean that I didn’t love it with my whole heart.

I look forward to the day I can come back to Logan. The place I was lucky enough to love for the past three months. One day, when I come back  I’ll see the ways that hope has worked and changed people here. I want to see the new community center, I want to see momentum, because its all starting here.

So thank you Logan, for challenging me, stretching me, giving me some of the best views of my life and teaching me more then I ever expected. Can’t believe I’m leaving you in 4 days.

Be prepared

Yesterday morning the last group of participants packed up their things, loaded up in their vans, hugged us goodbye and drove off. For the last time.

That’s right. The last time.

We began the summer with our last day of programming set as August 7th.  We only had 20ish people registered, but in the last week we began to have people drop out last minute until our final participant count as 7 people. To give some context on how big of deal this is: our normal YW week has us welcoming 80+ people.

I think we realized and the remaining 7 realized that they would not be getting the same the experience in Logan by themselves as they would get at another, more full site. Not to mention the extra work and stress it would be on the staff to keep the site open that extra week. With all that in mind, the 7 people moved sites and on Tuesday it had been officially decided that we were going to finish out that week as our last.

When we first got the news, I was upset. I didn’t get the time to put myself in the mental space of having everything be “the last.” By the time I knew it was the last week,I was already in the middle of it. The night we got the the news, we discussed in staff meeting what this meant for us: that we had to rally in the next few days to begin to close down the site, but also take time to savor the last few moments of programming. It was overwhelming, this last minute change of plans and while I knew I had the support of my staff I felt completely unprepared for what was coming next.

Not only unprepared for programming to end, to be leaving Logan in one week, but unprepared for what is coming next for me. With the end of programming here and only 11 days from being home I’m realizing how overwhelmed I am. Currently my plans are to go home for less than a week, move into my apartment and then hit the ground running with work and school. I feel unprepared to go back to my life in Milwaukee, to take a new internship and to start making decisions about what life will look like for me post grad.

All this makes me think of a participant we had the week before last. He was 18 years old, but wise beyond his years. He was a youth that truly took what we were doing seriously and served with a humble and loving heart. On a night where the staff was struggling, a night were our daily staff meeting ended in tears and frustrations, a few of us were convened in the kitchen silently preparing for the next morning’s breakfast feeling empty and discouraged.

This youth came in to the kitchen and said that he had some things he wanted to tell us. He confidently unfolded a piece of paper and read off to us a testimony of what this week had meant to him. Of all the things he learned, how his time in Logan changed his life and how God is working in his life.

“I’m a boy scout” the youth said as he concluded his thoughts, “and our motto is ‘Be prepared’. But what I’m learning is that we can never be prepared for what Jesus will do in our lives.”

At this point of course I’m crying. First of all to receive this encouragement on a difficult and draining day was a literal God send. The staff pours themselves out everyday in hopes that all of the sleepless nights and tears and hard work is paying off.

Many time its hard to see that all of this is worth it, because not every youth that comes to Logan shares with us the way that this youth did. We hope that they are leaving with their hearts touched, that they are leaving changed but many times we can’t be sure.

And there in the middle of the kitchen, with tears on my face, a heavy heart and raw biscuit dough on my hands, my work paid off. A youth was standing in front of us sharing his heart and his story and how this week, this place has changed his life.

That is the ultimate encouragement and the reason why I do what I do. There were many other jobs I could have taken this summer with better pay, less hours and that would look way better on my resume. But here, working 100 hours a week, I get the honor and privilege of walking alongside youth as they pursue Christ.

So here I am, with 11 days until I’m home savoring the last moments before I go back to my real life, and I feel unprepared. It’s scary, it gives me anxiety and I spend a lot of time wondering where life is going to take me next. This season of my life has been so draining. In the past year moving from Lynn to Milwaukee to Chicago to Rome to West Virginia has made me cringe away from thinking about what comes next. My last year of college signals that the real world is rapidly coming for me, and I feel more lost and unprepared as ever.

However, I’m choosing to embrace the uncertainty because I can make all the plans I want, but at the end of the day I can’t know what plans are in store for me. I can’t know where God will call be next. I’m being held by God and in the promise that God will provide for me.  The best part is that God doesn’t even ask us to have it all figured out, we don’t carry our worries alone, we can give up that burden.

There’s freedom in that. There’s freedom in knowing that when the last week of programming is cancelled, or how graduation looms over me that I’m not alone. I’m learning that there’s freedom in being unprepared.

“For freedom Christ has set us free; stand firm therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery” Galatians 5:1

“Then Jesus said to his disciples: “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat; or about your body, what you will wear. For life is more than food, and the body more than clothes.  Consider the ravens: They do not sow or reap, they have no storeroom or barn; yet God feeds them. And how much more valuable you are than birds! Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to your life?  Since you cannot do this very little thing, why do you worry about the rest?” Luke 12:22-26

Sunset in Logan

A Letter to 20

Dear 20,

No one gives 20 enough credit. You’re over being considered a “legal adult” and you are just far away enough from 21 to not have a milestone enough of its own. At 20 the biggest milestone is realizing that you are old enough to start counting your life in decades.

But I always knew that 20 would be a special year for me. 20, you were more then a just an age, you represented a whole new phase of life. Signaling me leaving my teenage years behind and suddenly becoming a “twenty something.”

20, you were a year of constant changes. I didn’t spend more than 4 months living in one place this year. I learned the hard way that growing up and starting your own life means being home less, seeing family less and saying “I miss you more”.

I turned 20 right in the middle of some of hardest and most wonderful months of my life. I was sea side for the summer, stuck living with strangers that became family. I woke up up everyday to pour all of myself into children and youth. By the end of my first full month of being 20 I went home drained emotionally and physically but so excited about life and feeling completely transformed.

20, you were the year that I moved into my first apartment. I learned to live more independently then I ever had in my life. I learned to grocery shop for one and to pay my electric bill. You were the year that I said yes to balancing school and two jobs and an internship. You were the year that everything seemed to be falling into place and Marquette/Milwaukee felt like my more like home then Glen Ellyn for the first time.

20 was a year of adventure. At 20 I took life by the horns and jumped in the deep end. You were the year that I moved by myself to the other side of the world. You were the year where I did things and saw things that I could only dream of. At 20 I rode a camel in Morocco and saw the Sistine Chapel in Roma. I swam in the Mediterranean Sea and climbed a volcano. I cried at Sauchausen concentration camp and spent hours in awe at the Louvre.  I got my first tattoo (!!!) and checked 11 countries off my list.

20 was choosing another summer with YouthWorks over a better paying job with less hours. 20 was following my heart and God’s call to a little forgotten town in the mountains. Its here in Logan, where I closed out my 20th year, that I learned about God’s faithfulness and steadfastness, how to hold on when you feel like everything is falling apart and NOTHING is going as expected.

I truly believe that 20 was the year that I grew up and became an adult. 20 was learning my worth, learning how to love myself. Learning that I’m capable and competent. 20 was learning that I’m the one in charge of my own happiness. 20 was learning to stop thinking of all the reasons why I shouldn’t, and to start thinking “what if?”

20 was late nights and early mornings. 20 was trains, planes and automobiles. 20 was being surrounded by loved ones, but also spending a lot of time alone.  20 was making mistakes (then making the same mistakes again), it was heartbreak and learning the hard way. 20 was learning that being an adult is hard and that the future doesn’t wait for anyone.

Thank you 20, thank you for teaching me that growth and comfort rarely (if ever) coexist. You were more than just 365 days of my life. Through you, I have more of a sense of the person I want to be, the things I want to do, the mark I want to leave on this world.  So thank you for being the most insane, challenging, beautiful, unexpected, adventurous year of my life.

(And I’m only just beginning.)

All my love,

Emily

Break us more

This week during a staff meeting I looked down at my legs. I was probably spacing out when I should have been listening. But while my eyes were wandering around the room, I looked down and was taken a back.

My legs had bruises all over. Bug bites, and long angry marks from where I’ve scratched without noticing. There were scrapes on my knees and on my feet from where I’ve fallen up and down the many staircases on our site. I continued my inspection on my arms where I see scars from burn marks from the mornings where I bake biscuits for 80 people and scratches from who knows what.

I think that I’ve been moving too fast to notice that every stumble, bump and bite doesn’t just happen in the moment- it leaves it mark on me.

That’s how this summer feels sometimes. In many ways it’s harder then I remember it being when I was working in Lynn. Some days it feels like all I do is fall and make mistakes and pour out emotional, spiritually, and mentally over and over again. Some days I just feel like I’m constantly breaking.

Don’t get the wrong idea though; I still believe I have the best job in the world. We had a fantastic fourth week of programming. In particular I had a great group helping my at Kids Club. The youth I had at Kids Club fully invested themselves into the community children and fell in love with them right away. They were supportive and encouraging to me as well. Not to mention the insanely beautiful worship we had this week. Seriously so great.

At our last night of programming, we had our traditional foot washing ceremony to close out the week. As the foot washing was beginning to wrap up I had one of the youth working at Kids Club this week come up and ask to pray for me.

He prayed over me, my ministry at Kids Club and said really wonderful, truthful things about the way God was working in Logan. At one point in the prayer he talked about how the world can be a hurting, broken place. And he boldly asked, “Lord, please break us more.”

That line right there is what got me: Break us more.

I spend a lot of time thinking about how broken I feel. How my heart breaks from my kids at Kids Club, and for poverty and injustice that I see in Logan. How my spirit breaks from conflict and self-doubt. How physically run down and drained I feel.

Not only do I feel broken, but I know that I am a broken person. I know that I sin and I doubt God and get angry at Him, I know that many times I don’t make the right choices. I am a broken person and because of sin we are broken people.

However, in the midst of all this brokenness, this youth asked to be broken more. Wow. The more I think about it the more I see the truth in it. From brokenness is where growth happens; from brokenness is where change comes from. From brokenness do we get the chance to rebuild. I won’t down play it: brokenness hurts. The bruises and burns and scrapes we get from life break us, but we rest in the hope of Jesus.

We rest in the truth of a love so deep and so crazy that it heals our brokenness. We rest in faith that God will continue to deliver us from our heartbreak. We rest in the anticipation of being used to help make the world a little less broken. We rest in the knowledge that God chooses broken people, and meets us where we are. Right in the middle of our hurt.

My prayer is that God does continue to break me. I pray that I have the boldness to ask to be broken more; like that youth did, even when I feel like I’ve already given everything. The brokenness hurts, it does, but as I look down at my bruises and scars: I see ways that God is  already using me in my brokenness here in Logan.

So I’m thankful for the youth that prayed for me, that he put in perspective for me what I’ve doing here and what plans God has for me and for Logan. That’s the best part of this job anyway- being taught things in the way you least expect it.

E

“The Lord is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit” Psalm 34:18

When you don’t know the words. (Kids Club Week 1)

Kids Club started this week! After almost a month of starting the job I finally got to be in the role I was hired for. I spent the first week helping out at the Kids Club of the neighboring site and supporting the Kids Club Coordinator there- which was amazing but it left me super anxious to meet my own kids.

So after all the posters were made, all the paperwork done, all the calls made, one month of waiting and one mental breakdown later I welcomed 11 kids to the first day of Kids Club. 16 community kids came the second day and it went so so well! I had an an overall great crew who were enthusiastic about the opportunity to pour into the children of Logan. I’m looking to build up the numbers this summer but I think I have a great start so far.

While its hard to choose a favorite moment, the highlight of the week came during the final moments of Kids Club on Thursday. We had wrapped up everything for the week and I was looking for a volunteer to close in prayer. I was pleasantly surprised to see that one of kids who came alone, Cameron, shot his hand up to pray for us.

He came up confidently to the front of the room to join me, bowed his head and folded his hands. He opened his mouth to begin speaking and then suddenly stopped and frowned. He looked up at me and said “I don’t know how to pray. I don’t know any of the prayer words.”

Without missing a beat, one of the adult leaders I had in my crew swept in and said, “Well lets pray together then!” and then quietly to Cameron “You can repeat after me.”

The adult leader wrapped one arm around Cameron and leaned in and began a simple prayer, which he delivered line by line so Cameron could repeat it aloud for the group.

I’m finding more and more that  life is like that. That we are called to be people who come alongside each other because more often then not, we are going to forget the words. God is like that too. These past weeks have been beautiful but they have also been difficult. The lesson that I keep on learning is that when the floor falls out from underneath you, God’s there to hold you. God is there when the curve ball comes out of left field. He teaches you how to catch it. God is sitting beside you when you are in front of a group of people and you forget the words.

I stood by and watched this happen and it made me think of all the times when someone in my life has sat beside me when I didn’t have words. It reminded me of all the times when I’ve felt lost that someone in my life has come beside me and believed in me, supported me, encouraged me and spoke truth to me. My hope is that I can recognize times when I can do that for my team, for people I will meet this summer and my own loved ones.

I need to remember that is not hard, its not complicated. To simply be present in someone’s life and to sit beside them is all it takes. There’s no need for grand gestures, there’s no complex strategy for how to love someone. This moment shows that love is simple like that.

To get to witness this moment between an adult leader and a youth was a great reminder during a week where I felt helpless and sad myself. My team is in the midst of a stressful staff change that has taken a toll on us emotionally and spiritually. This is exactly what I needed to recenter myself. Seeing Kids Club come together and the willingness of youth and adults to love the children of Logan reminds me why I love this job.

So instead of looking at all the challenges of this summer, I’m going to choose to focus on these moments where I get to see God move so clearly-  because in a YouthWorks summer these moments are always in abundance.

Staff Care: One Year Later

One of the the many reasons why I love YouthWorks is how genuinely I feel cared for not only as an employee, but I feel cared for as a person. I have never heard of or experienced another working environment that is anything like YouthWorks. Obviously this is a job first, so I’m trained to give as good of a performance as possible. But there’s this whole other aspect of personal growth and development that is emphasized here.

To give you an idea, “Staff Care” is broken down into four parts: 1) Actively participating in a Ministry Focused/Spiritual Environment, 2) Receiving Rest, 3) Being known by your supervisor and, 4) Owning your role/experience.  Because this job demands you to pour out so much of yourself, there was a big emphasis during our training week to come up with a “Staff Care Plan” that details how we process life, what we struggle with and what we need help with.

My site director asked each of us to write up a staff care plan and come up with some goals that we can go over during our next one on one meeting. I procrastinated on completing mine, thinking that I would just recycle the one I wrote up for last summer.

I was not expecting to be so shocked when I opened up the document that I hadn’t touched since June 2014.  20 year old Emily read over what 19 year old Emily had written and could not believe that so much could change in one year.

Last summer I was nervous and anxious and insecure and not confident in myself at all. I was the youngest on my team and I acted like it. This reflected back on by job performance and brought my stress levels way up. Not to say that I don’t struggle with those issues now, but I’ve been recently learning that, ‘Hey I actually am capable of doing things.’ Thinking back now on how my prep weeks have gone I’m doing things and acting in ways that I couldn’t dream about a year ago: I’m speaking up more, I’m more confident in my decisions, I can accept critique without being personally offended. Without even realizing it, somewhere along the way last year I started inching my way towards becoming more of the person I want to be.

Maybe it was the whole experience that was my summer in Lynn, maybe it was my semester abroad, maybe I just grew up in the past 12 months. Honestly, I think I can attribute my growth to all three. I can’t pinpoint any exact moments of change in myself over the past year, but looking back now I can barely recognize myself.

This is a great thing, a wonderful thing. And it  makes me so excited because I want my whole life to be like this. I want to continue to have experiences that will challenge me and push me, but ultimately make me better. I think thats the best I can ask for.

So here’s to the next 12 months. Who knows who I’ll be by then?

Prep Week: The good, the bad and the ugly.

Here’s a look inside life in Logan at the moment:

The Ugly
After days of coughing and feeling generally awful I caved to my team begging me to go to the doctor. Surprise surprise its bronchitis which is exactly what you want when you are working 16+ hours a day. Needless to say medication has made it better but its hard to keep up with work while trying to get myself back together. I’ve been feeling weak and so so sick.

The Bad
Stress levels are high on site. We are looking to finish up everything by tomorrow so we can welcome the other staff team that will be helping us for our first week of programming. With so much still to do its been easy for us to get short with each other and lose patience. If there’s one thing I’ve learned from this job is that conflict is what makes a team stronger. Not to mention that my team is just full of such good people that I’m more then willing to go through the growing pains with them.

The Good
Even though its hard for us to see, we are accomplishing so much! We’ve been cleaning and practicing and singing and painting and building relationships day in and day out and I can see it paying off. I’m falling more and more with Logan every single day, which leads me to…

The Even Better
I probably scared my team out of their minds today. Max (Sports Camp Coordinator) and I went to a local youth group tonight to recruit for our summer children’s programming. I left feeling ON FIRE. I usually hate that “Chrisitanese” term but I literally can’t think of another way to describe it. I met the the most amazing kids that I completely fell in love with. I was not only encouraged by the children, but I felt completely in my element. It was like alarms went off in my head “THIS IS WHY YOU’RE HERE”.

The drive home had me screaming and jumping up and down in my seat with how excited I was for Kids Club. The sunset was setting as we drove the winding mountain roads back home and I just felt so perfectly happy and excited for the future.  I burst into the kitchen when I came home and yelled and screamed even more and generally spazed out (Trevor may have filmed this). I just had a moment where I felt so lucky to be getting paid for this job and for the privilege it is to get to do what I do. All I can say is that, everything just feels so right. Its reassuring to see that despite all the stress that I’m exactly where I’m supposed to be. It was a good reminder of all the reasons why I fell in love with YouthWorks in the first place.

Wow. Feeling too blessed to be stressed.

Whitney and I with our pride and joy. 4 days until participants!!

Send me mail?

Here’s my mailing address in case you feel in the mood to send me some letters (or baked goods 🙂 )!

Emily Gorz
368 Kanada St
Logan, WV, 25601

Anyway, today was a good day,  a hard day and a productive day. We are in a really good spot to be expecting participants a week from tomorrow. We’re so close!

Life in Logan

Five days in and Logan is already starting to feel like home. The team and I are already so busy preparing for participants to arrive on site in only 10 days! Living in a town with a population smaller than my high school is sure a change of pace, but I have to say that I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else but here.

View from my new home!

A total highlight of my summer has been Mountain Mama, our 1992 Dodge pick up truck that we’ve been driving all around the mountains and in the hollers. I know I’ve always said that I’m a city girl, but something about a pick up truck makes me think that I’m a country girl at heart. Needless to say I’m already in love with that truck.

Mountain Mama, featuring my teammate Bobby

It isn’t all cruising around in the truck though. We spend most of our days working (7:30 am to 11 p.m.), sometimes not even leaving site. We are in the midst of two prep weeks before our participants come. Prep week looks something like this:

Doing about 1 million things at once.

Or this:

Practicing worship that we will lead every night!

Or sometimes like this: I started cleaning the room I will use for Kids Club today. This included battling way too many spiders and nearly suffocating myself with bleach fumes, but hey I survived. I’ve got big dreams for this space and I’m counting down the days until I can be filling it with kids. (Speaking of which, I registered my first kid today!!) The community has been so welcoming and gracious to us. Especially our housing partners, Deb and Dan. They are missionaries living in Logan who have taken us under their wing. Tomorrow night we are headed over to their place for dinner in fact! So to recap: pretty much everything is awesome even though we’re busy and stressed. That’s the whole beauty of a YouthWorks summer!