Mandatory Fun Week

This week has been mandatory fun week, but I've been a little ill so I've missed out on some of the fun. That's ok cause I got some much needed rest. I've now bounced back and ready to enjoy game night tonight, Pannera Bread in the morning, and Melting Pot tomorrow afternoon. Besides all the fun happening this week I've had a lot of good conversations. I've learned that we are all human and have made mistakes when it comes to relating to people. Things have hit chaos, and we've had to have deal breaking conversations. I am so grateful for the people that are apart of this community, I'm glad that we all care about one another to have the hard conversations that we have had over this past week. I've learned from these people that love is possible in every way. Thank you God for allowing me to live and work with these people.

check out our Real World Cocoa video on youtube

http://youtube.com/watch?v=gSm26gm6Gcs 

end of week 3

It's Friday night and things are quiet around the house cause a lot of people went away this weekend or went to Olive Garden for dinner. A quiet house is fine with me, it gives me time to think and get somethings done that I need to get done and sent out to people. We got a new intern today and she's from the UK...I could listen to her speak all day. I bought a book yesterday on Ansel Adams along with a new journal, but I got the wrong journal cause it doesn't have lines. I actually think I'm ok with that or the reason I'm ok with it might be the fact that I don't want to waste the gas to go and return it...either way I'm glad I've got it to use once I've finished my current journal. lalala.....I know boring, right. Well people are back, so I'm going to go and wait for my dinner to get done cooking and wait for my laundry to get done. Until next time. Peace, Love and Hope

good day

Things are going great these past few days. My dad came to visit yesterday, well he came to bring me my chargers (one for my mac and the other for my phone). I accidentally left them at my parents' house this past weekend. Speaking of the weekend, this past one was amazing. I spent it at the beach, at home, at church (3 to be exact), it was Father's Day, and it ended with Family Guy watching at a McDonald's in Orlando. Oh if you're ever in Orlando you should check out Status at Discovery Christian Church on Sunday nights. They have a 6:30 and an 8:30 service, but be warned it will totally amaze you, well I enjoyed it. Moving on to what is super exciting about this week, we're slowly moving away from monotonous work and I'm itching to start working on projects. It's crazy for me to think that we're almost done with week three and then I only have about 5 weeks left since I have to return to Columbia to get ready for the Fall semester. At this moment, I'm scared that I'm not going to make a big enough impact in the short while that I'm here. That's mostly fear feeding that thought, but I'm being honest cause we're all about honesty here. Surprisingly we haven't reached the point of chaos in our community...it needs to happen so we can have a true community. Wow, that was a tangent, but I guess it was an important one. Well I'm off to bed early tonight. Love ya'll.

Sorry I haven't updated in a while, I've been kinda busy. I'll update ya'll soon don't worry. :-)

opposite days

One word to describe today and yesterday: bipolar. I had a rough day yesterday until I had a conversation around 10:00 last night, then it turned out to be an interesting evening. I got to learn some of the people in an entirely different way

 just because of a book someone was reading. :-) That's for anyone who was involved in the discussion last night and is reading this entry right now. Today was entirely different than any day that we've had so far this summer. Instead of working at the intern house and the bungalow, we got to drive 30-45 minutes away and worked at a cafe that had wireless since we need the internet to do anything we do here at TWLOHA (to write love on her arm). Around 3:00 we headed over to the Brevard Art Museum to check out the PostSecret exhibit. The exhibit was amazing and I connected with a few of the postcards that people had sent in to share their secrets with the creator of PostSecret. Now you may wonder why we would take part of our work day to go see an exhibit that doesn't have anything to do with what we do in our organization (i don't like using that word cause TWLOHA is so much more). Well PostSecret actually plays into what we do here in a very special way; we have paired up with PostSecret to promote helping save 1-800-SUICIDE. It's crazy how much is going on here and it's amazing all that is going on here in Cocoa. After going through the exhibit we noticed a little park of sorts near the museum and we chilled there for a short bit before heading over to this burrito stand near the beach. They had the largest burritos that I have ever seen. The night just ended an hour ago after open mic night at a local restaurant where some of us had a drink to wind down a little while we watched one of our fellow interns play his music. All in all day today was a great and busy day. That's all the time I have for now, stay tuned for my next update. 

cold stone

I really didn't know what to title this entry cause it's a little late, well not really late, I'm just exhausted. We had a great day of community and honest conversation today here in Cocoa with all the interns. All I can say is it's crazy how much you can not know about someone for an entire week and your first "judgements" change very quickly after very honest conversation. Today, if you can't gather from my rambling, we shared our stories and it was emotionally draining...but it was a good draining. I'm even more excited to learn about the people around me and it's so comfortable to know that we are NOT alone and LOVE is possible even with people from entirely different backgrounds. We all have something in common and that is a need for love, hope, understanding, community, trust, and honesty. It's insane how much we've talked about honest conversation, intentionality in what we do, and community; it's exciting and hard at the same time. I could go on and on about how much community means to TWLOHA, but that might get a little old and repetitive. More to come about how we are building a community here in Cocoa in the near future. One final note is this, although I'm enjoying getting a fresh start in some aspects of my life...I'm really missing the familiarity of Columbia and I am missing the community the Shack has offered me. I love ya'll!!! :-)

OH tonight I walked into a cold stone with my bedroom slippers and it was awesome, that's probably why the title of this post is cold stone or it could have deeper meaning (I just can't analyze at this hour). Now onto homework for the morning. Peace. Love. Hope.

Back in Ocala

Yes I'm back in Ocala. I'm spending the night at my parents' house and spending tomorrow with them. I also get to meet my brother's girlfriend's family tomorrow night. :-) Well I'm off to bed early cause I'm tired and there aren't 14 (or more) people keeping me awake plus I get to sleep in my full size bed and not share a room with 5 other people. Tonight is going to be a good night for sleep. :-)

Adjusting is VERY Difficult

Just throwing this out there and then I'm getting some sleep cause that's what I want to do. I'm finding it supper hard to adjust to living in a house with 15 people and having to spend every waking moment with people (whether that's work or living in the house). I have found a place to break away, but at the same time I really want to invest in relationships (non romantic) with these people and help in the creation of a community that they want us to be apart of. I would hate to throw away this opportunity just because I don't feel that I'm apart of something larger than any of us that are working with TWLOHA. Maybe it was just a rough day today and that's everything is just trying to come out. We have been thrown a lot in these past 3 days and it's a bit overwhelming. Please just keep praying. :-)

Day One and Two

Work has been good so far. We do a lot of work online here at the house cause that's how TWLOHA can reach as many people as possible. Yesterday we did work with the street team and today we worked on answering Myspace messages. Some may see these as boring task, but it's quite enjoyable when you have the right group of people working together and cracking jokes and such. We also took a personality test today called Strengths Finder 2.0. The book comes with a code that you use to go online to take a series of questions that help point out what your top 5 strengths you have or have the potential to have if you invest in the given strength; it was very insightful. My top five strengths were that I'm restorative, deliberative, a developer, responsible, and empathetic. I'm really excited to start working on my strengths instead of working on my weaknesses. It's going to be an amazing summer with amazing people. I'm excited to break off into smaller teams to work on projects that are going to make an impact on people that I may never ever meet or even speak to. I also find it awesome that of all the 12 interns we all have similar strengths, but none of us have the same exact top 5 strengths. It will be interesting to see how we mess all of our strengths together to work towards common goals. This is going to be a crazy, exciting, and interesting ride this summer and I can't wait to get started.

Oh I've got a few books that I'm hoping to read this summer, the one I'm working on right now is Messy Spirituality. I have a problem with buying books during the school year to read, but I don't have time to read them...so I'm planning to read them this summer while interning in Cocoa. I've also found a great place to get away from everyone so that I can get some peace and quiet just to sit and read and think. A quiet place is hard to find when you live with 15 people. More to come in a few days. I'm only updating every other day. :-)

Well now that I don't have headache, I decided that I should update ya'll on my first two days down in Cocoa. After arriving at the house it was madness cause there's so many people. I think after spending time with people, I think I've finally learned everyone's name. First thing we did yesterday was build the rest of our furniture, and that was and adventure to say the least, but we have a well put together living room. Around 5:00 we (Jamie, Byron and his family, and all the interns) went down to the river to watch the shuttle launch. It was awesome. After a speech made by Byron, we ended up going out to dinner and it was marvelous (I even ate fried pickles). Then we went to the mall to check out the new TWLOHA shirt at Hot Topic and we stopped bye the pet store where I saw puppies and really wanted one. Today was spent relaxing. A few of us went to church this morning and afterwards we went to lunch with Jamie's family. I took a nap when we got back to house because I had a really bad headache from hitting my head on the sink the first day I was here. Any way I'm slowly adjusting to a life in Cocoa and we start work tomorrow at 9:00. If you would like to pray for me I guess you could pray that God will help me find my niche within this large group of people. Love to all.