Halfway There

So today marks the exact halfway point in our summer here in Nashville. That has made all of us very sad as we think through what that means today. Week three was a hard one on the majority of our staff. Part of it was just because it is the third consecutive week and therefore just hard to get as excited for it, the other just had to do with all the situations that came up throughout our week.

My week started off a lot differently than the other two. My first two weeks had me excited from the first night meeting my groups. This week, however, my group was super quiet that first night and apprehensive about my ministry site. This was a hard adjustment for me and made it very hard to get excited about going to site with them on tuesday. Tuesday was a LONG day on site and I had to push them every second of the day. As the week went on though, they started to fall in love with the kids on site which made my heart happy! This was good for them and good for the kids.

My kids on site have gotten so used to having love and affection every week and I discovered this week that my last day on site in 4 weeks will be one of the hardest of my life. I'm scared that the love and affection they receive from me and my students will be the only they see all year and that just breaks my heart. One of my prayers at the start of this summer was that God would just strengthen me to fall in love with the site, its kids, and its adults. And man has that prayer been answered. I love the program that my site does: Free Child Care with lunch included for ages 6-14, this just makes the parents lives so much easier. I also have completely fallen in love with my kids. They are so much fun to be around and so much fun to talk to. I desire so much for each of them to grow up knowing Christ and His plan for their lives, because without that I'm scared of what may happen to them. The adults here are also a ton of fun, great conversations have been had and they love the kids at this site as much as I do. My prayer for the rest of the summer is that I get time to have INTENTIONAL conversations with the Easley Staff about Christ!

As I mentioned earlier this week was so incredibly difficult for so many us, which meant a TON of encouragement was needed. This happened in one big way the last night before worship. We stood in a circle, embracing one another as everyone took turns saying something encouraging to someone else on staff. This was great and made me fall even deeper in love with my 25 best friends. Encouragement is something we are going to require the next 4 weeks as we only get more and more tired with each passing day, so for those of you not here, feel free to send me nice messages, they will make my day!

So I mentioned that it started off pretty frustrating for me with my group. By the end of the week, I fell in absolute LOVE with the kids and adults in my track group. They were a lot of fun to be around and truly showed me to give time before jumping to judgements about people so quickly. I have a lot more stories and things the Lord taught me this week and will be posting some of those tomorrow.