These two months since I last blogged—Christmas, New Year’s, the first month of second tri—moved quickly. I enjoyed being home and came back refreshed by the presence of family and old friends. Thankfully, I feel much more comfortable in Atlanta and in Polar Rock now, much more familiar and doable.
For the sake of brevity and catching up, here’s a list of happenings, in chronological order, that have occurred since I’ve been back to Mission Year. Feel free to skim.
January 2:
Mission Year reconvenes. We begin reading The Ragamuffin Gospel by Brennan Manning for curriculum.
January 3:
My housemates and I return to work at our service sites, mine being Covenant House Georgia.
January 5:
We have our first Citywide of the new trimester.
January 8:
The Mission Year teams visit the Martin Luther King, Jr. Historic Site together in preparation for MLK Day.
January 12:
We have the first Training of second tri.
January 15:
Our neighbor Albert brings house shoes for my team. What a wonderful gift.
January 16:
Atlanta celebrates Dr. King’s would’ve-been 83rd birthday with a march down Auburn Ave., worship services, commemorative concerts, and much more.
January 20-22:
The Mission Year teams attend a retreat called Volunteers Exploring Vocation, held by the Fund for Theological Education (FTE). We meet other volunteers serving in Atlanta and surrounding states. Here we learn, among many other things, that Mission Year is indeed much stricter and more involved than many other volunteer programs.
January 26:
We have our second Citywide, this time at Caz’s house. I help lead worship for this one with Ra, English Ave.’s alum-intern, playing the guitar. This week we also begin reading Jesus and the Disinherited by Howard Thurman for curriculum.
January 29:
My team decides to hold a community talent show for our second tri fundraiser. So far the plan is to come up with talents to perform ourselves and invite service site friends and neighbors to bring their talents as well.
That brings us to about now. So far the week has been normal. We’re looking forward to receiving our prize for reaching our fundraising goal for last tri ($6,000 average raised among the three Atlanta teams)—a movie at the theatre! This is definitely a treat when you’re living on $70 spending money per month. Unfortunately, I don’t have any idea what’s in the theater since we don’t have a television to keep us informed on previews. A small sacrifice, I think.
Now that you’re updated on my Mission Year happenings, we can return to our regular blog programming…in a few days or so. Hopefully.
