Week of all Weeks

I’m having one of those weeks.  It started on Sunday morning, and I’ve been running ever since.  Sunday morning I went to church.  As soon as that was done, I headed home for a few minutes and then on over to Gina’s house to prepare for our Creative Arts Ministry peformance for next Sunday.

We’ve known for over a month now that we were going to have this performance, but of course it turns out that Gina is just as much of a procastinator as I am.  *sigh*  I guess there’s something to being said about being able to work well under pressure.  So Sunday afternoon, I went to Gina’s and we painted and rehearsed/came up with pretty much the whole performance.  I have to say that while I am nervous about the performance on Sunday, I do think that if done right, it will be pretty powerful.  I’m excited to see if it will unfold the way that we would like it to.  I’ll keep you updated if it does.  In fact, Gina may record the performance, and if it is good enough I may consider posting a video for you.  We’ll just have to see.

So after spending the afternoon at Gina’s, I headed back home for a few more minutes and then left once again for my Sunday night bible study.  In addition to studying the bible, we are also going through one of the Tough Questions books.  The book we are discussing is Why Does God Allow Suffering and Evil?  The discussions so far have been great and very helpful when it comes to possibly being able to answer these questions should somebody who is a non-Christian ask anything along these lines.  They are very tough questions to say the least.

Last night I went to a one night training class to teach ESL (English as a Second Language).  I’m going to now be able to tutor refugees as they are placed in the country and teach them how to speak English and any other life skills that they will need to pick up on here in our country.  I’m pretty excited about getting started with the tutoring, and I hope that I will still have the chance to work with Mirielle.  I feel bad because up until tonight I haven’t taken the time to really stop over at the transition house for a few weeks now.  I felt like I was at a stand still, but now I’ll have a curriculum to work with.  In the process of going to an orientation last week and then the training class last night, I was informed that Elsa had found some woman that can also speak French to possibly match up with Mirielle for tutoring as well.  In a way it’s my own fault for not having been making my presense known quite as much over the past few weeks, but at the same time I’m kind of frustrated with the fact that Elsa didn’t even bother to ask Andrea what she thought about it.  She just assumed that nobody was working with Mirielle yet.  Needless to say, I found out last night in the training class that while yes it’s always nice to be able to speak the same language of the student you are teaching, it’s not technically beneficial when it comes to the lessons each week.  The lessons last approximately two hours, and during those two hours, only English is to be spoken.  So in actuality, the gal that speaks French doesn’t really have any more of an advantage with the actual tutoring than I do.

After the training class last night, I went ahead and sent Andrea an email to give her a sense of what I was thinking about the situation.  At one point, when Andrea had found out about the gal that Elsa was thinking about bringing in, she mentioned that maybe it would hurt for Mirielle to have two tutors each week.  While yes I can see that she will need all the help that she can get, I don’t think it will be beneficial for her to rush through more than one lesson per week unless she shows positive signs of picking up on the lessons quickly.  With that said, I told Andrea that I thought IF there was going to be two tutors for Mirielle, that I would like to be the one that goes and teaches the lesson maybe at the beginning of the week.  The gal that Elsa recruited can go see her later in the week to follow up and make sure that Mirielle is practicing her English as well as make sure that she understood everything from the lesson.  If there’s anything that she missed and she needs more details, then they can speak in French all they want.

Andrea went ahead and forwarded my proposal to Elsa, so we’ll have to see what happens.  I’ll be keeping my fingers crossed.  Worse case scenario is that I end up just being friends with Mirielle and spending time with her whenever we have the time to hang out.

As I mentioned earlier, tonight I was able to stop by the house for a couple of hours to just hang out and visit with everyone.  I missed seeing everyone, and I need to make sure not to neglect my friendships with everyone over there.  The relationships that are formed with the refugees are based off of trust.  When they see that somebody is a constant in their lives, they know that that is somebody that they can trust and turn to when they need something.  I want each of the refugees to know that they can trust me, and by my selfishness over the past few weeks, I haven’t been really showing them that.  Luckily they were very happy to see me when I came by tonight, and I’m going to make it a point to go by the house at least once a week.

So now… on with my weekly agenda.  Tomorrow night I have my weekly Wednesday night bible study at Christy’s.  i haven’t had the chance to read what were supposed to this week.  I’ll probably make time to read tomorrow on my lunch.  I’ve actually been debating whether or not I’m even going to go tomorrow night due to the business of the rest of the week, but I know that when it comes down to it, I’m going to regret missing.  Now that I think about it, I don’t think that we are going to meet next week, so if I don’t go tomorrow night then it’ll be two weeks until the next time we meet.

Thursday night Gina and I are going to Debbie’s to rehearse our performance with the band.  We’ll need all the practice we can get.  LOL

Friday is Halloween and I’ll be going to the refugee house to help hand out candy and show them what Halloween is about.  I’m looking forward to it.  We actually don’t get trick or treaters here in our complex, so this will be the first year that I’ll get to hand out candy in the past 5 years.

Saturday is more rehearsing as needed.  And Sunday is church and the big creative arts performance.  I really truly pray that the message we are trying to convay will be obvious and that I won’t look like too much of a doofus.  LOL  Lke I said, if done just right, I think what we are doing is going to be pretty powerful.  If you’ve read this far and you feel so inclined, please feel free to pray for me.  =)

Sunday night is bible study again, and then the week starts all over again.  *sigh*  Before I know it, we are going to be on our way to Nebraska, God willing.  I’m quite worried about whether or not we are going to be able to pull this trip off.  Jacob is determined to drive out to Nebraska, but I’m not too certain that our car will be ready for this arduous journey not to mention if we will be able to have the finances to make

it out there and back.  That’s what is scaring me the most.  I’ll really be praying for that more than anything over the next few weeks.

I think I finally got my point across to my family today about all of the political emails that are being sent.  My dad sent me yet another email about why everyone should vote for McCain.  In response to his email, I sent a reply back to him along with a few other people that were included in his email and told them that I have already voted as of last week.  I mentioned that at this point sending me emails and ads to gain my vote in whoever’s favor is basically moot.  My vote is in and it obviously can’t be changed now.  Hopefully that will stop the political emails from hitting my inbox now.  Boy am I thankful for mail in ballots.  LOL

Whelp, I’ve seems to ramble on enough to have written quite the lengthy entry.  I really should try writing more regularly.  This is always what happens when I only write once a week or less.  *sigh*

I’m off to bed.

Laters,
JamieLynn =)