This brightens my day.

Dear Miss Jan, I love you very much you are nice to me and you love me to.

I’ve had a couple bad days recently, but love letters like this totally refresh me!

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Published!

Today I had my first article published!

My denomination’s international magazine published an article I submitted over a year ago about my experience at youth camp! Check it out here, pg. 24-25.

RelevantMagazine.Com published an article I wrote called Life is Bigger Than This Moment but the COG Evangel is my first print article! Exciting!

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Water day – I’m so proud!

Our Water Day on Friday made the UrbanPromise blog!

Check out the fun here!

The kids really enjoyed dousing me with buckets of water. They were even tricky about it! 🙂 “Hey, Miss Jenn, we want to show you something….come on!” And then….woosh!

We had four stations of water games:

1. Water relay – Two jars in the middle of the basketball court, the kids had to run and squeeze a sponge full of water. The first team to have their jar to overflow with water wins the game. (I don’t think the game ever happened, though. The kids were happy to have a water fight.)

2. Slip ‘N Slide – This resulted in a scary nose bleed and a few sore heads, but it became better organized and thus, more safe.

3. Sprinkler – Again, the kids didn’t want to run through the sprinkler, but use it to fill up buckets of water (which you see in the photos).

4. Waterballoons – We did the classic Metro game of throwing waterballoons into a strainer with nails, ensuring a great pop and water spill. Then a water balloon fight usually happened.

It was a lot of hard work, but also A LOT of fun. It was nice to have a break from routine.

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Camp Faith – week 3

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Family Breakfast.

On Friday mornings we have our Camp Faith family breakfast for the staff. Food is the key to a person’s heart, I’m learning.

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Sacred.

Things have been going really well at camp these last few weeks. I’m already in love with the kids and the teenagers are definitely growing on me. 🙂

I’ve had tremendous conversations and have been learning more about what life is like in Camden. However, I’m hesitant to share these conversations and experiences because they feel….sacred. I don’t want to peddle these precious moments out on the internet for the whole world to take a momentarily glance at and throw away.

Something I’ve already learned about the people of Camden is that they don’t open up to just anyone and when they do it’s a big deal. I don’t want to break that trust just for the fleeting delight of increased stats or comments.

I’m not saying I’m going to stop blogging, but I’m just going to be more cautious about the stories I share online. If you’re part of my prayer email list, I’ll definitely share specifics, but otherwise….I’m protecting what’s sacred.

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Stuff White People Like.

Again, via twitter, through my friend HBB I found:

Stuff White People Like – #62 Knowing What’s Best For Poor People

“White people spend a lot of time of worrying about poor people. It takes up a pretty significant portion of their day.

They feel guilty and sad that poor people shop at Wal*Mart instead of Whole Foods, that they vote Republican instead of Democratic, that they go to Community College/get a job instead of studying art at a University.”

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In the ghetto.

My friend Jason sent me this via twitter a couple of days ago and it’s hilarious:

In The Ghetto
On a cold and gray Chicago mornin’
Another little baby child is born
In the ghetto
(In the ghetto)
And his mama cries
because if there’s one thing that she don’t need
it’s another little hungry mouth to feed
In the ghetto
(In the ghetto)

Cartman just rules. He is eternally funny.

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Notes to self v2 – They want what you got.

For the last year, in the Notes application in my iPhone I have a list of notes I’ve made to myself from things I’ve agreed with, things I wanted to think about more later or things I found out right heretical.

———————————————-
From 181 days ago:

People become Christians because they see what you have and how you’re different and want it too.

———————————————-

This was a note from a Sunday morning sermon at church. For years I used to believe this, but I don’t any longer.

You know how people become Christians?

Because the Holy Spirit leads people to Jesus.

I’m not the Holy Spirit. I’m not Jesus or God. I can’t “save” anyone. I should try to live my life as much like Jesus as possible, but I can’t agree with that statement anymore. When I believed this, I felt like I had to be super HAPPY all the time and be super NICE to everyone all the time to show people how “different” I was. I would never admit when I was depressed or doubting because I didn’t want to make anyone “stumble.” Try to live my life like that was leading me down the road of becoming a hypocrite because it’s impossible to be perfect.

I definitely think how people act can turn them off of Christianity, I mean, I know plenty of Christians who make me not want to be a Christian because of their hypocrisy. But, you know what? That doesn’t bother me because the HOLY SPIRIT led me to Jesus and not those people.

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Love letters and shells.

My new kids are really the sweetest group of kids I’ve ever worked with. I’ve only known them a couple of weeks and they are already lavishing me with affection.

Zahriah went to the beach yesterday and brought me back this shell. How thoughtful!

Hector and Kelia spent last night drawing me pictures and then gave them to me as soon as they arrived at camp this morning.

I feel like it’s Christmas or my birthday! I love spontaneous expressions of love.

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