We are reading this book as part of our community on spiritual diciplines (Celebration of Discipline: The Path to Spiritual Growth by Richard J. Foster).

The first bit was about inward disciplines. Meditation, Prayer, Fasting and Study. I started these a few months ago. I took on the dicipline of Meditation. When I say meditation the secular world sends our minds to the OM and the Eastern culture and practice of emptying your mind to reach salvation. The meditation that I took on was of a very different style. The particular practice I took on is practiced by stilling yourself and then putting your palms down and reciting all of the things you want to pray about... could be words or situations or feelings, you push them all out. Then you put your palms up and wait... and wait... and listen. Now we all know those are not things I am particularly good at, which is why I decided to take on the discipline itself. I enjoyed the centering process. It really relaxed me and made me feel so in touch with God. This year was about listening to what God had to say to me and what His plan is and this discipline is teaching me how to listen when I didn't know how to myself. Untill now God's only way of communicating with me has been to basically smack me in the face with whatever His plan has been for me... I'm not God, but I'm sure He is very happy that I have decided to start listening.

The second part of this book is about the outward disciplines which we started this week. Simplicity, Solitude, Submission and Service. Simplicity is a practice I took on at the very begining of this year as I made the commitment to my YAV year and to simple living. So taking on that discipline was not really anything new. Service is also something I am currently doing... duh. So that left solitude and submission. Solitude is something I struggle with... and since this year is about pushing myself... well there we go! Solitude is not about being alone as the name suggests. The book compares solitude and silence and says one cannot occur without the other. I'm not good at either of those. In fact I would go as far as to say those two things are some of my worst fears. I struggle with them. The quiet moments before bed scare me to the point of needing noise to fall asleep. I don't know why and I'm sure as I explore this new discipline more will come to light. But these two things are also oppertunities to sit with God. Jesus repeatedly withdrew into silence and solitude. A place he even relied on in times of trouble. I won't list them... the book did that and if you want more info send me an email... but I feel God calling me to this. Solitude isn't about being alone, it is about being quiet and centered. And that word continues to come up. The actual practice of solitude has no guidelines... it is an awareness. There are action steps I can take towards becoming more disciplined, but those are not clear to me yet. I am contimplating taking one day a week to be silent... the reality of that may be difficult given my busy schedule, but I would like to try. One of the things I am going to be super aware of is the act of self-justification. We as humans feel the need to explain our words and our actions with more words. We think that we need to explain ourselves to the people around us. We care entirely too much about how other people view us and understand us. I care too much what people think. God should be our justification. Part of the solitude is to stop explaining myself and let the space that I would have taken up using words to let God fill me and the people around me. God is my justification for being, for breathing.I am anticipating this to be a very difficult practice for me... it hits on some of my core fears and insecurities, but I have an amazing support system here in my community and at home and in the people I love. This year is about growth right??

I had inteded this blog to be about something entirely different, but I guess I haven't journaled today so I had other things going on in my brain!

Don't forget to check out the pictures... there is a link at the top of my blog.

Also I am at 70% of my fundraising and if you are feeling the giving spirit please help me: 
http://gamc.pcusa.org/ministries/yav/support-yavs/
Peace and Blessings,
Kelsey

The Name of the Game is Frustration.

I know it has been a while since I have blogged, but taking time out to blog is not always an easy task. I have been journaling every night so that I can get the brief overview in here. This is a bit of a rant I realize, but I am loving my placement and everything about my life... just thought I'd express some of the frustrations I'm having in the spirit of full disclosure.

First let me say that if I were a 3 year old... I would nap. There are some that just pass right out when it is time for nap and then there are the ones who take an hour of patting their backs to get them to sleep. The ones who ask to go to the bathroom 20 million times, play with their blankets, don't stay on their mat and of course the one kid in the corner who talks to himself for the entire 2 hours of nap time. All I want to do is nap!! Just not fair! :)

I know I'm not supposed to play favorites, but one of my favorite little ones was moved up form the 3 yr olds to the 4 yr olds. I still get called into his new classroom, because he throws fits and refuses to behave until I get called in. I understand his frustration though. He is a new kid again. I feel that way too. Things aren't as they usually are, we cant find things, there are new people in charge and new people to be friends with. The new kids have to stick together.

House of Teens was tagged at the begenning of the month. Tagged is the lovely slang word used for graffiti. Some gang spray painted our building. Shocking for me, apparently not for the kids. The boys have also taken up a bit of an attitude here of late. Having not ever been a teenage boy I don't know if this is common or not. I'm struggeling with how to reach them. Telling them not to do something makes them want to do it more. So how do I get them to behave?? The biggest issues are with language and appropriate conversations. They have literally no respect for women. I found all of this out during a weekend trip to John Knox Rach with 12 of our teens. They got to hike and canoe and fish and swim and do a service project and a ropes course. It was awesome to watch them experience the hill country for the first time and also to build more relationships with them, but you also get to see true colors and the boys have some respect to work on. The girls are hysterical and fun loving, but we cant expect the boys to change if the girls continue to allow the boys to speak to them and treat them with disrespect.

After the lovely weekend trip I was sick as a dog!! I am not good at being sick... I'm very pitiful. Rest I have found is difficult for me. Staying in bed was very frustrating and frustration does not lend itself to healing. I am still struggeling with the idea that I need to take more time for myself to rest. I am a "yes" person and saying no is again, frustrating.

On the community front, we had a huge blow up that I thought was going to permanent damage to our group... Turns out that once everyone lays everything out there a real healing bond is formed. I know that the struggles I find within intentional community are the areas in which I am growing most. Strange how that works. I started off wishing that it would be easier to live with strangers and now I am starting to enjoy the challenge.

In my fight against frustration I realized that I needed something tangable. I needed something to show me real progress and without naming that I had already begun working in the back yard. Cleaning it up. Planting a garden. Finding a fire pit. Trimming branches. Mowing and weed eating. Geting all of my frustration out in a physical manner. I also have begun to build a labrynth. I cleared an area, leveled it the best I could, used some of the branches I cut down to make the perimeter and the off to Home Depot for sand and rocks. I didn't get enough sand the first time and so a second trip was necessary, but of course since the name of the game is frustration the first Home Depot was closed and so I had to find another one!! 15 sand bags later and I still didn't have enough!! GRRRRRRRRR!! I will try again this upcoming Friday. I want to get the back yard all nice and set up for Kathryn's (one of my housemates) birthday which is on Halloween!!

Now that my frustrated rant is over... I have started the spiritual disicipline of meditation. God tells you amazing things when you sit back and listen!

I'm still trying to find a dark room to use for some fun photography and a bit of me time.

And on a side note... I may never get tired of good home cooked Tex-Mex.

Peace and Blessings
Kelsey

Dwell Orientation and Week One of Work!

Sorry it has been awhile! As you are about to read, we have been very busy!

Matthew 18:21-35 hit me hard yesterday at a bible study so from that I got this blogs start:

GIVE ME A CHANCE

After an eventful first day in SA, we got to sleep in a little bit and then went to the church to meet a former YAV who is still going to Divine Redeemer (DR) and she gave us a tour of the church. Then she took us to a place across the street from the church that is called Time Dollar. Time Dollar is an agency that believes everyone's time is equal, you can go in and trade and hour of your work for an hour of someone elses. For example.... if a person knows how to fix ACs they can trade an hour of AC work for an hour of someone elses work. It is really a very unique and amazing agency! AND they helped us get a new AC unit for our living room! In the back of Time Dollar is a garden that is a community garden and they also offer gardening classes! Andrew runs the garden and the programming there and also runs House of Teens which is where I'm working. He gave us a tour and some seeds and some literature on gardening and is going to come to our house and help us garden!! It is a goal to grow at lease one edible vegetable this year! Whish us luck! After our tour we went out to eat with our pastor, Rob, and some other staff people from DR. They took us to this awesome hole in the wall and ordered a bunch of different foods for us to try and experience.

Thursday we had a walking scavenger hunt around the Westside. We found out some interesting local drama at our first stop. They have changed the name of a very important street! Which explains why it took us so long to find the high school!! We had to find out what the mascot of Lanier was. Next stop was a a program form Catholic Charities called the Guadalupe Cammunity Center. We spoke the supervisor and she told us all sorts of things about the Westside and their programming. As a side note Catholic Charities has huge programming in this city! Two of my housemates work them. One is at the Refugee and the other at Guadalupe Home. (http://www.ccaosa.org/services.html) Our next stop was a historical marker about some crazy battle that didn't make any since at all! Then we went to the Natatorium and the receptionist told us all aobut cool things on the Westside! As we walked to our next stop we passed some of the first public housing community buildings. Rent there is still based on 30% of the tenants' monthly-adjusted income. We went to the Guadalupe Cultural Arts Center and learned about the rich history it has and all of the amazing things they do arts wise for this part of the city! Art is very important here for expression. Poverty leads to beautiful art might I add! Our next stop was Our Lady of Guadalupe Church. It was so beautiful! There was a shop next door selling holy water and rosaries and such and we went in and tried to talk to the cute little Hipanic lady, but between her no English and our hodge podge of Spanish all we managed to say was "We are missionaries and we are exploring the Westside." Next stop was a local high school hang out and local place called The Galleria... it was a tiny hole in the wall with quite possibly the best buger ever! My housemates had never even heard of a frito pie or Big Red!! So they tried them and lets just say not everyone is a fan! Then we got to go home!! After about 5 mins of enjoying AC again our site leader picked us up and we went to a local coffee shop and talked about goals/expectations for the year. That evening we met the D.O.O.R. board memebers and had dinner at La Casa which is what their office is called.  Then we quickly rushed to church for choir practice!

Friday the assistant director of DOOR took us on a city tour and we saw one of the missions and had lunch at an amazing place on the northside called Chris Madrids. That night was First Friday which is an artisan festival and we decided to ride the bus to get there. This was our first experience with the San Antonio bus! Lets just say it was interesting and leave it at that. We met a nice, but sort of creepy guy who decided to litrally take us there even though it was out of his way. We met up with my old roommate from college who lives here and we saw lots of cool art and lots of good people watching!! Fortunately Ginny (my old roomie) gave us a ride back in her car!

Saturday people from the DWELL committe at DR took us to the Riverwalk and we went on a boat tour and then had authentic German food, because at some point SA was very German. That night we had dinner with the DWELL support committe and we got to meet some very cute babies! Two sets of twins!!

Sunday was our first day of church at DR. It is a bilingual service so I was very nervous. Turns out the pastor Rob is incredible!! God flows through him in such a powerful way! The mix of Spanish and English was a really cool way to do a church service! Sunday night we went to play sand volleyball with the DR Young Adult group and the young adult group from First Pres. SA.

Monday: Labor DAY!! as in I slept a lot.

Tuesday was my frist day of work! Inman Center was full of cute kids and I got to play and learn how they do things! It is a requirement that I eat breakfast and lunch with the kids... I am not complaining about that one at all!! I was at Inman from 8 am - 2 pm then it was off to House of Teens. Tuesday turned out not to be the best day to start for me because those are they days that DR has teen night untill 9 pm! I got to H.O.T. at 3 pm and hung out with the middle and high school kiddos and we played a game to get to know me! Then we had teen night. By the end of the day I was just exhausted!

Wednesday was Inman Center and HOT again and the quote of the day from an adorable 3 year old... "Excuse me miss. What are those holes in your arms?" I was confused at first, but then she pointed and I realized she was talking about my freckles!!!! hahahahaha such cute kiddos!! I also had an eye opening experience into what kind of backgrounds these kids have. We were riding tricycles and one boy decided to play police man and "pulled me over" and the proceded to "arrest" me and take me to "jail." He put my hands behind my back and made clicking noised like handcuffs. I feel like most 3 year olds wouldn't be this detailed about that. Also when I was released from "jail" I was informed that I was now on probation. This was a hard pill to swallow for me. This little innocent boy has obviously witnessed this process.

Thursday was another day!! The teachers at Inman have decided they are going to teach me how to speak proper Tex-Mex instead of the Spanish I already speak!! In the evening we made our way to the Mennonite Church to have a potluck with all of the other Volunteer Organizations which include: Catholic Worker Corp, Jesuit Volunteers, and Mennonite Volunteer Services and us DWELL/YAV. It was awesome to meet other people our age!! And just like every gathering here... good food!

Friday was our first community day... none of us work so that we can meet with our site leader and do bible studies or trips or in this day's case our Covenant... 4 hours later with a lot of compromising we came to our final covenant and headed home! Oh... we have decided to do coffee shop tours for our comminity days, so each week we will be going to different places. After the very long and frustrating covenant meeting I needed to blow off steam so I went and chopped at a tree!! Our backyard needs some good TLC and that just so happens to be a great way for me to blow off stress! That evening one of our DWELL committe people picked us up and took us to Women's Lectio! Women's Lectio is a women's group that meets once a month and had dinner and then does a Lectio Divino. A prayer practice... you should look it up if you aren't familiar. It is a very powerful process. I'd like to take a second and just mention how amazing the women of DR are! They welcome us with such open arms and hearts. They let us into their lives and take us on like we are just one of their daughters. I now have 20 more moms!!!!

Saturday we had a household Nuts and Bolts meeting. Planned our next weeks food and budget and then headed to the store! We decided to drive this time because we were getting toilet paper and we didn't think it was possible to carry all of the groceries PLUS toilet paper. We then all had alone time to nap/read/talk to people. For dinner we went and tried Bill Millers because everyone here says they have amazing sweet tea! After that we decided to get on the bus and head to the Riverwalk. Mostly because in the Westside of SA white people like us are strange and so we get stared at and called at quite a lot. I didn't realize how much it was wearing on me until someone mentioned that we were always being watched. So we headed to the Riverwalk where all of the tourists are so that we could fit in and blend. After some authentic margaritias we went dancing and then managed to make it home on the bus again!! Successful outing!!

Today was church and Rob certainly hit the nail on the head this morning!! I swear God is speaking to me through him! We had a welcome potluck after service and had some mole and lots of different rices and dishes! Then I headed to the backyard again to continue my little project!! The neighbor saw what I was doing and offered to help! Which was good because we had a dead tree and all I had was a hand saw... he had a machete! Things went much quicker with him helping. I'm going to write him a thank you card or figure out some way to say thank you!

We decided to bake a cake tonight... and it is ready. So I am signing off!! I will try to be a little better about posting more often!!

Peace and Blessings

Orientation/First Days!

I leave the state of Texas for ONE week and experience an earthquake AND a hurricane!!

That is really a bit dramatic... we had lots of rain and wind and I didn't even feel the earth move, but those were the two main questions people have been asking so there ya go!!

Orientation in one word: INTENSE!

I was so nervous when I left for the airport and when I finally arrived I found that... drumroll please... everyone else was too! I can't tell you how amazing it was to all of the sudden be around a whole bunch of likeminded people. Here I was trying to explain to all of my friends and family why I was suddenly turning my life upside down to follow where I felt God was calling and it turns out everyone else was too. I found amazing support and people who I know will be life long friends in the very short week.

For those of you who weren't at orientation with me: we got up and had breakfast and then had different speakers/activities untill lunch and then we ate and went back into sessions and had a small break untill dinner and then we usually had a short session and some worship. The food at Stony Point was awesome! Very fresh because they have big gardens... at the end of the week everyone was kind of ready for a hamburger (which I just realized I'd really like one right about now).

The SA group was fortunate enough that our flights from NY to SA were not cancelled and prayers go out for those volunteers who still haven't left for their site!

Our house is the epitome of hodge podge!! I love it. Apparently the woman who owned it before was quite an interesting person... hence the old fashion pencil sharpener on the wall outside of our bathroom... (pic to come later I'm sure) I have the smallest room in the house and you know what? It is perfect! I'm pretty sure it used to be a closet, but that is okay because I am a big fan what my mom calls "nesting." My bed was orriginally a loft style, but I decided to put my matress on the floor because it is just too darn hot up near the celing!! I've decided this is my own version of a princess bed! I now need things to hang from the slats above me, like mobiles or chimes or pictures or cool things... HINT HINT...

Kelsey Penn
2305 W. Saunders,
Sant Antonio, TX 78207

Last night was the first time I'd had my guitar in a week so Kathryn picked out some worship songs and we sat in the kitchen and had what we will now refer to as "Kitchen Time with Kathryn and Kelsey"... our other housemates listened and commented graciously! :D

I went to the Inman Center today and got some paper work done. This is the site that is childcare... and everyone that is an adult there is so awesome! I haven't met the little people yet. We had lunch at a super cool coffee shop and then Kathryn and I walked home from there and got to explore a bit. The neighborhood is not scary just so everyone knows! We had the task of getting to the grocery store and buying food... the walk isn't too bad and we made a seriously planned out list of meals and such... we also did a bit of cuponing and we came in under our budget!! I got to practice my Spanish with this nice little lady who needed help with some produce bags.... I kept up untill she started speaking to fast and then I just smiled and nodded.  It was an experience to walk to and from the grocery store...

The grocery experience made me really think. What is it like to have to walk to the store all the time? And what if you are the only one in your house? How do you carry everything? We all know it is better to buy ahead rather than go to the store every day, but what if you literally have to? You end up spending more time and money! What if you are a single mom that has to work two jobs AND walk to the grocery store? Do you take the kids or leave them? Do you have time, do you have money, do you have ENERGY?? And to think that is just the tip of my thoughts... what an eye opener for me. That is just the grocery store! I feel like I have NO idea what it is like to struggle and there is some guilt in that. World, I'm sorry I haven't been as aware and even more sorry that I have taken for granted just how good I have it!

Rant over!

Then we went to "Teen Night" at Devine Redeemer (DR) because a lot of the community comes out... they eat and play basketball and just chill. We have a busy schedule tomorrow, just like every day I suppose! So another night passes!

I am so blessed to have AC and a comfy bed!

Peace

Fundraising!!

I wrote over 200 letters!!! Now I am in the process of sending thank you cards! I feel so blessed by all of the support I have received and not just gifts of money, but all of the prayers and emotional support as well!!

I leave Monday early morning for orientation!! Getting nervous/excited! Those two are hard to tell the difference between :)

More to come!

Peace
Kelsey

And so my fight with technology begins!