I've adopted a bit of a motto these days: fundraising is not fun and it does not raise your spirits. I thought the play on words was really catchy! Fundraising is very tedious, it can get you excited at the slightest smidgen of a possibility that someone will help you out, then leaves you in a whimpering mess on the floor when the smidgen is thrown to the floor and stepped on. Okay, so that's terribly dramatic, but it's kind of accurate! However, we know that God has a very cool plan behind how hard this is. I can't wait for the day when I get to write that story in my blog! That's pretty unrelated to the next set of events, but I just wanted to throw that out there.
Last weekend (over a week ago, not a few days ago) Matt and I finalized our September newsletter and got an address list together of people that we know and love from the church we attend in Abilene. Since our church will not be able to help support us on an ongoing basis, we are going to seek the ongoing support of our individual brothers and sisters there. Our list consists of about sixty-five families. Friday night I got off work and went to Wal-Mart. I'm not a fan of Wal-Mart, the produce is generally bad, the selection of different things I like is limited, and it's just a general place of chaos and commotion. I much prefer going to HEB, but I had to get a printer cartridge. Let's keep in mind that the ONLY reason I went to Wal-Mart is because I needed a printer cartridge. I made this my "big shop" of the month as we like to call it, and got a lot of food and toiletries. I got two cartons of ice cream like normal, because I can't ever decide. I also got a twelve pack of 8 oz. coca-cola, because I was going to cook a frozen pizza that night and you can't have pizza without coke. When I left Wal-Mart, it was raining pretty good. I ran out to my car and started loading it as fast as I could. The carton of cokes opened up and they fell into the trunk and onto the ground. I ran after the little can that was rolling away down the asphalt, and managed to save it before getting hit by a truck going down the aisle. One of the cans fell rather smashingly on my loaf of bread, which was sad. I conquered the mess though and got it all in the trunk. I hopped in the car and started to drive home in the rain. About three minutes from Wal-Mart I realized that I forgot the one thing that took me there...printer cartridges. Needless to say I was pretty sad, but I had the ice cream in the trunk and I hate frothy, melted ice cream! I was also a bit on the annoyed side, so I decided that I would go home, eat pizza, watch a movie, and then go to Wal-Mart after that. I must also make it clear that I pretty much refuse to go to Wal-Mart from about 8am-9pm, so that's why I couldn't just go the next morning. The chaos is even greater during normal hours. I did just that, ate the pizza and watched "Phoebe in Wonderland", it was amazingly strange. I loved it! After that, I went back up to Wal-Mart and got the ink cartridges, labels, and envelopes. Saturday morning I woke up, ready to print and stuff envelopes. I got the laptop hooked up to the printer. I guess I should mention that it was an empty printer...and there was no paper in sight. I looked in all the usual places, and found no paper. Really?!? After all the drama I did not have any paper? I decided I would just do the labels in the meantime, and print the letters later that afternoon. Apparently I live in the twilight zone, because our Avery labels would not match up with the Avery template in our computer, and I printed about three different sheets of labels before giving up on them being really messed up. Plan B or C(I've lost count by this point), just print the addresses on the envelopes. This worked like a charm, and I printed the return address on at the same time I printed the receivers' addresses on. Later that afternoon I went and got some paper, and the letters turned out really well. I got them all stuffed on Sunday and Monday, and had them in the mail on Tuesday. Talk about drama, I hope the invitations are not so crazy!
On yet another unrelated note, Matt and I used Skype for the first time last night. There is a family that has moved to Wollongong, Australia to do the same thing as us in Ipswich. They have been there about nine months. It's very interesting, their situation is just like mine and Matt's, but switched between the spouses. She was an Australian who married a U.S. citizen, and Matt is the Aussie who married me. We had the most AMAZING conversation with them for an hour! We got to ask them about visas and citizenship, culture shock, grocery shopping, friendships they're building, what they're doing with their time, how their team is working together, the list goes on and on. They asked us what books we're reading, how our team is doing, what our timeline is, etc. They got to affirm that pretty much everything Gary is teaching us about culture shock is accurate, which is both exciting and humbling. I think we'd all like to think deep down inside that we're above it, that we will be able to adjust better than people have in the past for some reason (maybe that's just my pride talking). They made it clear that no, we will not get around it! The woman also affirmed our assumptions that the person who will probably have the hardest time adjusting will be Matt, since he lived there when he was young. For the rest of us things will be new and exciting, but for him things will just be different than he knew as a child. The changes will be harder for him to take. We also got to listen to them share their frustrations, worries, and joys in a safe atmosphere. Since we're training on what they're going through, they can say things honestly without leading us to worry that they want to come back or regret what they're doing. They're just trying to get by in a world that has been turned upside down! I felt so refreshed and encouraged when we were done talking with them, I can't emphasize how amazing it was. I hope they were blessed by our conversation as well.
Last weekend (over a week ago, not a few days ago) Matt and I finalized our September newsletter and got an address list together of people that we know and love from the church we attend in Abilene. Since our church will not be able to help support us on an ongoing basis, we are going to seek the ongoing support of our individual brothers and sisters there. Our list consists of about sixty-five families. Friday night I got off work and went to Wal-Mart. I'm not a fan of Wal-Mart, the produce is generally bad, the selection of different things I like is limited, and it's just a general place of chaos and commotion. I much prefer going to HEB, but I had to get a printer cartridge. Let's keep in mind that the ONLY reason I went to Wal-Mart is because I needed a printer cartridge. I made this my "big shop" of the month as we like to call it, and got a lot of food and toiletries. I got two cartons of ice cream like normal, because I can't ever decide. I also got a twelve pack of 8 oz. coca-cola, because I was going to cook a frozen pizza that night and you can't have pizza without coke. When I left Wal-Mart, it was raining pretty good. I ran out to my car and started loading it as fast as I could. The carton of cokes opened up and they fell into the trunk and onto the ground. I ran after the little can that was rolling away down the asphalt, and managed to save it before getting hit by a truck going down the aisle. One of the cans fell rather smashingly on my loaf of bread, which was sad. I conquered the mess though and got it all in the trunk. I hopped in the car and started to drive home in the rain. About three minutes from Wal-Mart I realized that I forgot the one thing that took me there...printer cartridges. Needless to say I was pretty sad, but I had the ice cream in the trunk and I hate frothy, melted ice cream! I was also a bit on the annoyed side, so I decided that I would go home, eat pizza, watch a movie, and then go to Wal-Mart after that. I must also make it clear that I pretty much refuse to go to Wal-Mart from about 8am-9pm, so that's why I couldn't just go the next morning. The chaos is even greater during normal hours. I did just that, ate the pizza and watched "Phoebe in Wonderland", it was amazingly strange. I loved it! After that, I went back up to Wal-Mart and got the ink cartridges, labels, and envelopes. Saturday morning I woke up, ready to print and stuff envelopes. I got the laptop hooked up to the printer. I guess I should mention that it was an empty printer...and there was no paper in sight. I looked in all the usual places, and found no paper. Really?!? After all the drama I did not have any paper? I decided I would just do the labels in the meantime, and print the letters later that afternoon. Apparently I live in the twilight zone, because our Avery labels would not match up with the Avery template in our computer, and I printed about three different sheets of labels before giving up on them being really messed up. Plan B or C(I've lost count by this point), just print the addresses on the envelopes. This worked like a charm, and I printed the return address on at the same time I printed the receivers' addresses on. Later that afternoon I went and got some paper, and the letters turned out really well. I got them all stuffed on Sunday and Monday, and had them in the mail on Tuesday. Talk about drama, I hope the invitations are not so crazy!
On yet another unrelated note, Matt and I used Skype for the first time last night. There is a family that has moved to Wollongong, Australia to do the same thing as us in Ipswich. They have been there about nine months. It's very interesting, their situation is just like mine and Matt's, but switched between the spouses. She was an Australian who married a U.S. citizen, and Matt is the Aussie who married me. We had the most AMAZING conversation with them for an hour! We got to ask them about visas and citizenship, culture shock, grocery shopping, friendships they're building, what they're doing with their time, how their team is working together, the list goes on and on. They asked us what books we're reading, how our team is doing, what our timeline is, etc. They got to affirm that pretty much everything Gary is teaching us about culture shock is accurate, which is both exciting and humbling. I think we'd all like to think deep down inside that we're above it, that we will be able to adjust better than people have in the past for some reason (maybe that's just my pride talking). They made it clear that no, we will not get around it! The woman also affirmed our assumptions that the person who will probably have the hardest time adjusting will be Matt, since he lived there when he was young. For the rest of us things will be new and exciting, but for him things will just be different than he knew as a child. The changes will be harder for him to take. We also got to listen to them share their frustrations, worries, and joys in a safe atmosphere. Since we're training on what they're going through, they can say things honestly without leading us to worry that they want to come back or regret what they're doing. They're just trying to get by in a world that has been turned upside down! I felt so refreshed and encouraged when we were done talking with them, I can't emphasize how amazing it was. I hope they were blessed by our conversation as well.
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