look in your heart and you’ll find

I am writing to you from a cold and rainy Messiah. This weekend is homecoming and the weather isn’t looking to get any better. It is really upsetting that such a big weekend at our campus is going to clouded over by gross weather. Homecoming is big at any school any year, but this year is Messiah’s Centennial homecoming making this weekend even bigger. There are so many events planned, it is crazy.With all  of the reunions, dinners, arts performances, athletic events, etc. etc. planned the list is almost never ending and the campus is sure to be buzzing all weekend long.

I am planning on helping out with Lil’ Falcon Zone again tomorrow which is a carnival that the Alumni Association holds for children (especially Alumnus’s kids) that come to visit Messiah for the weekend. I helped out with this event last year too and it was a bunch of fun. It is always fun working with kids and I’m sure a number of the kids at the carnival are visiting Messiah and seeing it as an exciting “vacation” of sorts making it even more exciting for them. Thank goodness that they have moved the event to inside instead of in Starry parking lot because of the weather. Even though I’m sure it would still be fun no matter where it was help, it will definitely be a much more enjoyable experience now that it will be held inside Hitcock away from the rain and cold.

I’m excited to see what all the weekend holds. Being home last weekend for IUP’s homecoming was filled with excitement for the most part, I just hope that Messiah’s is even better (and my now fixed car will not brake down again when I go to bring it back to campus).

Today is the first day of classes at Messiah College and I have successfully made it through two classes including square dance and Bible. It is so hard to believe that summer is already over and that all of campus is back and ready for fall semester. I’ve been here for only two days but it all just seems so normal and as if I have been here forever already. It is great to come back and meet up with friends again, go to chapel as one big community again, and just get reacquainted with the atmosphere of Messiah. So while I dreaded coming back and having to start class and be away from the comforts of home, now that I am here there are no problems. I am glad to be back and get back to my life at Messiah (despite still missing summer).

This summer was absolutely amazing! Looking back at everything that happened this summer I really just want to live it all again (don’t we all wish that at times haha). This summer was largely defined by work and friends. At home I work at a daycare and I absolutely love it! I also spent a lot of time helping out with children’s ministries at my church this summer. I taught the 2 and 3 year old Sunday School class and spent a majority of Sundays helping out with children’s worship during the two services as well. I miss my all of my little kids so much now that I am gone. Being with them is definitely affirming what I am being called to do, work with children. Everyone always says how you should love your job and I truly do. It is funny to me at times, that I am actually working and getting paid for what I am doing since I do love it soooooo much.

Since my friends and I are getting older it is getting harder and harder to get our entire friend group (there are 12 of us) together. There were so many of my friends traveling the world or taking summer classes at their campuses this summer that there were really only a few of us left. Those of us who did stay behind in Indiana had a great time together though. We saw so many movies, had a number of bonfires, went out to eat or get coffee numerous times, and we also went to a Jason Mraz concert (August 11th, Jump the Line passes leading to front center standing spots, the best day ever!) Altogether it was just a great summer! I miss everyone terribly now that summer is over. It was so hard to say bye to everyone especially being the last to leave, but being back at Messiah is always good too.

This has been a very eventful week. Not only has there been the business of classes and the end of the semester occuring, but there were a number of special events which have gone on as well.

Last Saturday was United Voices of Praise’s Concert of Praise. Some of my family as well as my best friend from high school and her friend from school all came for the concert. It was great to visit with them. It was especially nice to go out to eat and then have everyone from home meet everyone from school. Saturday was also such a gorgeous day in general. It became so hot in the church that we decided to just wear our t-shirts for the entirety of the concert instead of robes the first half and t-shirts the second. It was different, but it was definitely nice to not have to die of heat in our robes.

I also went to see Gavin Degraw with three friends this week. The concert was amazing! It is surprising the Gavin Degraw would come to Harrisburg and do a performance at the Whitaker Center, but I am definitely glad that he did. Up until this year I had only ever been to one concert, and in the past seven months I have been to three. It makes me laugh to think that all of the sudden I have taken up concert going basically out of no where. Even though Jason Mraz’s concert was by far my favorite, all three of them have been amazing. The four of us even had fun just hanging out before and after this past concert as well.

Yesterday was one of the busiest days as well as relaxing though in the past week. Yesterday was Service Day at Messiah (the day where there are no classes and all offices are closed in order for students, faculty, and employees to go out and do some sort of service project during the day). I participated in Special Olympics. I did the same thing last year and both years have proven themselves to be amazing experiences. Special Olympics is the biggest service project that Messiah participates in because it is one campus and a number of people are needed either to be a buddy to a participant or to run an event. The past two years, I have worked at the high jump and have moved the bar to up and down as well as reset it after it fell down. Now at first this job might not seem very important or completely as a great act of service and rightly so.  Granted it needs to be done and without it the process would just take even longer than it already does, but there is also so much to it. Just standing there and watching the participants as they jump over the bar is life changing. They are always so incredibly proud of themselves and you can tell how much fun they are having. It is amazing to see how much life and enthusiasm these kids have. Even the littlest thing that you can do in order to help someone and make their day a little brighter, can truly make your life a little brighter as well.

Last night United Voices of Praise went and performed at an African-American History month service at a church in Carlisle. I love going to American-American/ Baptist churches with gospel choir. The amount of spiritual excitement and energy present in the church is just so much more there than you would find at any other church. Their rich traditions are show throughout the entire service and I just love it. Last night was no exception. During the prayers, songs, dances, readings, etc. there were always a number of Hallelujahs and Praise the Lords being sung from the congregation. There was one family in particular that really caught my attention. While the congregation was filled with a number of older men and women, there was one family with five children ranging in age from around 2 to 15. All five of the children seemed to be completely filled with the spirit and loving the worship energy of the evening. One moment particularly touched me though. As in any service, there was an offering taken at last night’s service as well. Following the tradition of the church each member of the congregation came up one at a time and gave their offering. Standing up front singing the offertory, I saw the youngest girl of the family (around 2 years old) holding her sister’s hand coming up to give her offering. As she walked up to the front she stared wide eyed at the choir and the band taking it all in. I noticed however that in her hand she held a dollar bill. It was one of the cutest/touching things I had ever seen. This little girl of no more than two years old was coming up with her family and giving an offering to God which many Christians don’t typically think of until they get their first paycheck or even long after that. It was truly amazing to see that adorable little girl walk up to the front of the sanctuary with her offering and place her dollar in the basket.

I’ve been in J-term one week and I’m loving it. For those of you who don’t know, J-term at Messiah is where all of the students take just one class everyday for three hours a day during the month of January. If you have read any of my past posts, it becomes pretty clear in some of them how much I love working with little kids. My class for J-term, Creative Expressions, allows me plenty of time to do just that. Our class is all about using creativity in the classroom and encouraging kids to use their creativity in all aspects of learning. For someone who doesn’t typically consider herself to be creative, I am actually loving the class as well as the time I spend trying to be creative. During our 15 days of classes, 8 of those days are being spent in the Early Learning Center on campus. I’ve spent the past two days in the classroom and I am loving it. The kids are so cute and are really a joy to work with. It will be hard to spend almost 8 straight days with them and then not get to truly work with them again.

All of my friends seem to be really jealous of my class as well. Not only do I spend my class time with little kids, but when we are in the actual classroom and having lecture we also spend at least part of that time creating some sort of art project. I’ve brought gak, window clings, paintings, and dyed paper back to the room after class. After their three hours of lecture and the hours worth of reading they still have left to do, they find it amusing that part of my lecture time included making some sort of art project. Now don’t get me wrong I still have a fair amount of reading and writing to do along with a few projects, so its not like I’m not doing any work, but I’m also definitely not complaining either.

Since my last post so much has happened it is hard to summarize it into one entry. I have finished finals, said good-bye to all of friends studying abroad for this spring semester, left Messiah after the end of fall semester and went home for break. Being home was amazing. It is so nice to take a break especially when there is no school work involved. In high school even though the couple weeks off at Christmas were always greatly enjoyed, there was always those couple papers, projects, or assignments lingering over your head that you had to worry about. Being in college the semester is over and there are no worries (at least school work related ones). My time at home consisted of a lot of visiting as any break usually does. I visited with all of my friends from home (numerous times complete with secret Santa, movies, sleepovers, Patty’s Pancakes, eat ‘n park runs, Commonplace coffee dates, and etc. etc.) I visited my extended family for Christmas and the couple of days after that. I did a lot of visiting with my immediate family as well. Not only did I live under the same roof with them again, but Christmas Eve my brother and I were surprised with an amazing gift, a trip to California to go to the Rose Bowl, so I spent almost an entire week with them on the other side of the country. While we were there, we did the typical Hollywood tourist stuff and went to Legoland for my brother. The Rose Bowl was amazing however. Being that my favorite team is USC and my family’s favorite is Penn State (my second favorite, if they were playing anyone other than USC I would have been rooting for them too), it was perfect for the entire family and provided a nice little rivalry between all of us. The day of the game we got up and left the hotel at 4 am, went and got in line for the Rose Bowl Parade at 5 am, the parade started at 8 am, and then we walked over to the stadium after the parade ended around 10 am. Before the start of the actual game we stopped to see the players from both teams get off of their buses and did a little souvenir shopping. Then we finally went to the seats to watch the game. Being a USC fan in the middle of Pennsylvania is very out of the ordinary so it was nice to be surrounded by USC fans and get to experience some of the USC spirit first hand and having them dominate in the game was amazing as well.

Now I am back at Messiah to begin J-Term and a new semester. My roommate from last semester, Emily, is gone to study abroad in England, but Danielle, who was studying in Greece last semester, has come back and taken her place. It is completely different, but I am so excited that she has come back to Messiah. J-term classes started this morning and even though my class looks like a fair amount of work especially reading, it should be a fun time. I get to spend over half of the days in the Early Learning Center with the kids which will be super exciting and a good time I’m sure. Even though part of me does wish it was still break and I wasn’t back to school work again, the other part of me is glad to be back.

Today was my last visit to a suburban school for my teaching profession class and it was my best visit yet. I was in third grade classroom which was literally the most chill classroom I have ever seen. The teacher was amazing. She said she a first year teacher, but there is no way I would have guessed that from her teaching. From the moment I walked into the room I felt surrounded by the completely chill, relaxed, and comfortable atmosphere the classroom had. All of the students quietly did thier own work while she worked with the different reading groups. In the middle of working with one of the groups one of her students threw up all over the front of the classroom. Despite this distraction and the expected commotion of the students, the class was still extremely chill. It was amazing. She had the sick student escorted to the nurses office, sprayed the room with vanilla cookie air freshener (which made the room even more chill because of the amazing smell), directed the kids to the carpet in the back of the room and soon all of the students continued on with thier work. As the morning continued this completly chill atmosphere remained. The students even had to take a math test before I left and there was absolutely no tension in the room. I found myself becoming jealous of these students and wished that she had been my third grade teacher. Considering my completely chill attitude towards life, I can only expect/ wish my classroom has a similar atmosphere when I actually become a teacher. I’m really hoping that I can make that come true.

As I said in the last post I went home this weekend for IUP homecomming, so I figured I should update about how that went. I actually had a really good time. It is always nice to go back home and meet up with friends I havn’t seen in a while and to see my family as well.

Friday night, I went to Ransomed which is the college ministries group at Graystone church in town. Ransomed usually consists of worship, some sort of talk, another worship session, and then just chilling late into the night. Friday’s worship was really good and the talk even though unconventional to say the least was good as well. Afterwards it was nice to just relax and catch up with people. After leaving ransomed a little after midnight, I went to visit my friend Tyler who works the nightshift at the front desk at a new hotel in town. Even though it was late, it was nice to catchup with him as well and sort of funny to see him being all professional.

Saturday was the day of IUP homecomming festivities. The day started off watching the parade downtown with my mom, brother and a few family friends. After that I met up with a couple friends from high school. We then got lunch, visited a friend at work and went to hang out in the dorm before the football game. This year’s football game was against IUP’s greatest rival, Slippery Rock. So just as years past, the game was full of excitement and suspense. IUP went on to win the game after tying it up with 25 seconds left and sending it into double overtime. The game also led to more catching up with people and hanging out afterwards. The day ended with midnight mission, which is where our church walks up and down the main street and frat row handing out free hotdogs to all of the “slightly inhabilitated” college kids. Even though this year seemed much tamer than last, it was still a really good time.

Yesterday actually turned into another full day of festivities. I went to my home church which is always nice to return to. It was especially nice yesterday because I got to see some of the kids that I worked with this summer. Seeing them again especially the littlest one in the group really made me smile. After church I went to see one of my highschool friends production of Violet Sharp, a story of the Charles Lindbergh baby kidnapping. After the show I met up with one last friend for coffee before heading back to Messiah.

It was a long but definitely enjoyable weekend. Even though its hard to be at class again, it’s nice to know that I only have 2 more days until Fall break and the Jason Mraz concert.

Today was my first visit to an elementary school for Teaching Profession. I went with two other girls to Northside Elementary in Mechanicsburg. It was so weird actually going into the school for purposes other than re-visiting or picking up my brother. We arrived there at the beginning of their school day and met with the reading specialist who gave us an overview and a tour of the school since the principal was out. Afterwards we got to observe in whatever classroom we would like. My ideal age group to teach would be pre-k or kindergarten, but Mechanicsburg has just started full day kindergarten and created the Kindergarten Academy, a school set aside for all of the kindergarten classes in the district, so I went into a first grade room instead. It was so great to be back with young kids. My little kids from church and Grand Beginnings, the daycare I worked at this summer, are what I really miss most when I’m at Messiah. Being emmersed in college life leaves very little room for interacting with little kids even though opportunities do exist. Despite missing my little kiddos from home I had a great time with the first graders this morning. When I got there they were just beginning to work in centers so instead of just observing I was actually able to work with the kids and help them with their reading and writing assignments. Little kids are so funny. The things that they said and how excited they were that I was there just made me smile. It was just a great way to start my day even if it did mean getting up a little earlier and missing my kiddos back home a little bit more than usual.