nice serve

It's Saturday night. And I'm sitting at home. Alone. And I love it! We FINALLY have internet again at my house, my roommates, the dog, and the roomie's boyfriend are all out of town, and I love the solitude. Alone time is good. I'm just devouring the fact that I can sit and watch Arrested Development while I make dinner and then check my email and AIM and MySpace and read friends' blogs and design blogs and check the weather. It shouldn't be anything huge, but I really miss having the internet whenever I want it. And I miss having my own space where I'm not constantly forced to talk with people. I love the girls I live with. And the dog. And the roomie's boyfriend. But it's just really nice to be ALONE sometimes.

A late night last night coupled with an early morning today creates one tired girl [me]. I got up early for a service project day with the church I've been going to every week since my second week here. I said I'd go. So I got up and went. And I was SO tired. But I can't tell you how refreshing it was to do some physical labor. We painted and weeded and raked and all at a house in a not-so-wealthy part of town. I went by myself and met up with several hundred people at the church where we split up into teams to serve all around the Orlando area. And some people read to kids and some painted inside and some painted outside and some did landscaping and there were probably other projects, too. My group met up with several other people from another church in town. My favorite part—besides meeting some more cool people and the physical labor part and the selfless serving part—was that it was a government sponsored thing. So it wasn't a ChristianyThing. It was just straight up we're-going-to-help-you-with-this. The project I helped with is just on a list of needs the community has and the city/state/whoever paid for all the supplies and it's just a matter of having this waiting list and having groups say "we'll help." So I thought the collaboration among not only several churches, but with the community, was very cool. And I sure hope Mr. Holmes likes his new front door, flower beds, painted house, roof-edges, window trim, and shed. I think he even got new house numbers.

Service has been a theme lately. It shows up every once in a while and last week it happened to show up at both Summit and Status. On the same day. (sidenote: I love that I was involved with so much service growing up and then in college, because it makes me very comfortable with saying YES to things like this morning's project) and last week at Status we talked about service, more along the lines of helping others within our own communities. Within our own friend-groups. Within our own church community. And we all walk around thinking yeah I could help other people out and yet somehow we never bother to let them know specifically how they can help us. So if everyone does this nobody then needs help. And we're all too fine to need anything. But we're not. That's the point. So if I'm making any sense here... follow me on this one: we all wrote down physical/tangible/real needs that we have that other people could help us with if we'd only ask. Talents and passions put to use. So I wrote down the fact that the back of my car won't open (the latch is broken I guess?) and I'm moving in a couple weeks. It'd be nice to get into the back of my blazer. AND THEN. After we took these post it notes and put them all along the walls of the church, we went back later and TOOK ONE that someone else had left, with the intention of helping them with that need. I picked up one that said "job" and the listed their email address. I haven't heard back from this person yet, but I'm excited to help someone else find a job! And I was very excited when a guy called me this week to say "I'm prety handy with that kind of stuff" about my car. I hope we can get together and he's able to fix it for me!

So tangible ways of helping others. Love it [and long afternoon naps coupled with reading and an evening in].

(coming soon: pics of the project this morning)