Start Small

I've been feeling in a "funk" lately.  I realize that "funk" is a very ambiguous word, but for lack of a better one I'm sticking with it.  I've been unmotivated and lazy, and depressed about how unmotivated and lazy I am.  Even on my days off, when I'm allowed to relax and be unproductive, I end the day thinking about what a waste it was.  

Spring break was last week, and I went on a mission trip with La Roche College students to do reconstruction work in New Orleans, LA.  I'm sure I was in my funk for at least a month before the trip, but last week was fantastic!  I love going on trips and spending extended time with people, getting to know about their lives, investing and serving and living.  I like using power tools and learning new skills, and helping other people do the same.  Even though the bathroom situation was inconvenient (there was only one, and we had to switch between males and females every half hour!), I like brushing my teeth and blowdrying my hair next to someone else.  I like mission trips simply for the fun of it.  

But this trip helped me to rediscover something that I've been missing for a while.  One of the results, or perhaps one of the causes of my funk was that I was feeling very down about my ministries, both with the youth group and at La Roche.  I haven't felt good at my job; I've felt unsuccessful and burned out.  Last week I felt good again -- I was engaging students, helping them make connections, asking good questions, challenging people and not letting them settle for easy answers...  I rediscovered my passion for college students last week.  I got some wonderful encouragement from some of the other adults on the trip, too, which was like icing on the cake.

We've been home for almost a week now, though, and today I could start to feel the funk creeping back in.  How do I keep it at bay?

We had some students over for dinner tonight, and after dinner we dyed Easter eggs.  After they left, the kitchen was covered with dirty dishes, newspaper, and traces of egg dye.  I am not a terribly neat person -- my usual reaction would be to leave the mess for the morning, when it would get left until later, which would get left until the next day, until the next day becomes an impossible mess.  But for some reason tonight, instead of leaving it all for "later," I just started cleaning.  I loaded the dishwasher, threw away the trash, put the leftovers in the refrigerator, washed the dishes, folded up the newspaper, took the extra leaf out of the table, wiped off the counters...  And I feel good!  

I'm starting to realize how much the different areas of my life affect each other.  I've been talking about this for years -- the CCO idea of zero dualisms, that our faith impacts all areas of our lives.  But it goes both ways.  God speaks into the ways I drive and eat, and how messy my room is affects my spiritual wellbeing (albeit indirectly).  For now, I'm pledging to do the small things - cleaning my dishes instead of piling them next to the sink, putting dirty clothes in the hamper instead of leaving them where I dropped them, leaving five minutes early for a meeting so that I'm not stressed by heavy traffic, wearing sunglasses, and having fresh flowers in the house.  And little by little I think I'll rediscover the things I've been missing for so long.

Spring Break 2008

One of the really great things about working in campus ministry is that I still get to celebrate things like Spring Break and a 2-week Christmas break. Last week I went down to Bay St. Louis, MS with a group of 30 from La Roche College. It was an AWESOME week. I have to be honest, I was a little apprehensive about the trip at the start. I only knew 3 of the 18 students who were coming. Along with that, we had four men from my coworker TR's church, the College Activity director from La Roche, and three nuns coming with us. I was really just praying that we would all get along!!! As it turns out, that was the least of my worries. The kids got along with each other really well, and they all bonded with the "old guys." And we would have been NOWHERE without Sister Elena, Sister Rose, and Sister Judy.

Surprisingly, our biggest problem was that we didn't have enough work to do! We spent a lot of time cleaning, one particularly long afternoon picking up trash from along the roadside, and even had a nap or two in the middle of the day. The kids were complaining that they didn't feel like they were working hard enough! They really just wanted to help people. Thankfully, though, by the end of the week, we had some more projects, and I think all of the kids felt fulfilled and that the trip was worthwhile.

Though the trip was through a religious organization (a partnership between our CCO fellowship group and the La Roche Campus Ministry dept.), I don't believe all the kids were religious. I hope that last week we were able to "live Jesus" for them. But I think the most exciting thing was that we were able to really live out community with each other -- community that is not divided by denominations or rituals, community that is able to learn and accept and love.

There are oodles of pictures on Facebook, if you care to take a look. We had great worship, hard workers, and a LOT of laughter! God really blessed us on this spring break trip. Thanks for all your prayers!

Rebuilding Phoenix 2 - photos!

Here are a few photos of my mission trip to Louisiana. Enjoy!



The front door of the home we worked on.





















My assignment for the week: laying tile! Before...
















Our finished task!!! Isn't it a lovely room?















Our group, with the contractor we worked with and the woman's house we worked on (Noella is in the middle of the group).















And finally... the infamous RAT DOG!!! Isn't it just the ugliest little thing you've ever seen?

Rebuilding Phoenix

Last week I had the opportunity to travel to Phoenix, Louisiana for a mission trip with my church. The church I work for is an Evangelical Covenant Church -- a small Swedish denomination with Lutheran similarities. (I don't know much about the church background, actually. For more information, you can check out the Wikipedia article or the Covenant Church website.) Anyway, we went with the Covenant mission organization called Covenant World Relief, and yes, you read right, we were in Phoenix, Louisiana.

Phoenix is a TINY town located 25 miles south of New Orleans, right next to the Mississippi River. As you can see from the map (the pink arrow), it's not located in a very 'safe' spot, particularly when hurricanes are near. CWR, along with a few other mission organizations, has committed to rebuilding this tiny town, which two and a half years later still carries evidence of the destruction Hurricane Katrina caused. Because of its location in between the Mississippi and the gulf/marsh, Phoenix is bordered with two 17 foot levys about 500 yards apart, and so when the wind/rain/floodwaters came, the levys essentially created a giant bowl filled with 17-20 feet of water. And because the water had nowhere else to go, it just sat there until they finally broke one of the levys to drain the water. In a community of only 300 people and 160 homes, only 25 houses were able to be salvaged after the hurricane. Slowly, houses are being rebuilt and the community is being restored.

My team of seven was working on a woman named Noella's home, putting in trim boards, laying tile, painting, and wiring light fixtures. (For your information, I am now an expert tile layer -- available for hire!) The community of Phoenix that existed before the hurricane is still very much alive, even though physically it is still very broken. While we were working, there was a continuous stream of family, friends, and neighbors poking their heads in to see how the house was progressing, asking questions, and taking notes on the building details. One of our favorites was a couple named Donald and Annabelle. Their home was one of the few that was able to be salvaged, and they are slowly rebuilding it themselves, while working and still living in a FEMA trailer on the other side of the Mississippi. But they come back to Phoenix as often as they can, to work on their house and catch up on the community. Though they have no connections to Noella, they expressed so much gratitude for us being down there and helping to rebuild Phoenix. They opened their home to us, fed us dinner (mmm, gumbo!), and insisted that from now on we were to consider them friends. Let me tell you, that is the body of Christ in action!

I have so many more stories I could tell you, and even more pictures I could show you. It's amazing to me the amount of destruction and devastation we saw in our travels -- it's been two and a half years since the hurricane! But thankfully, people are still volunteering to come down and work, and little by little, the area is coming back together.

The first week of March, I have another opportunity to do hurricane relief work. I will be traveling to Bay St. Louis, Mississippi (the red arrow) with a La Roche College spring break team. I'm sure I'll have more stories and pictures to share with you then, as well. Please pray for our team, as we finalize preparations.

Blessings to you all!
PS. If you want to check out the project we were working with, visit www.rebuildingphoenix.com