What Have I Been Up To? Work wise

As I had said before in an earlier post, a lot of programs have been ending for me recently. Girls' Brigade, Friendly Club, SN@G, had all previously ended. This past Friday, concluded my last time at Urban Saints as well. It has been sad to have all these programs ending for me because I've loved being a part of them. They have kept me incredibly busy this year and I have learned so much from each one.

To be a YAV means you learn to adapt and take shape in many different forms. We are told at orientation “You’re a YAV, be flexible,” and you have many opportunities to practice that line. I’ve had a chance to be a designer, communicator, cleaner, disciplinarian, listener, teacher, pupil, and many more through my time with all these programs. 

Now, I have had to come up with other things to keep me busy. Since SN@G has been over my Sunday nights are free, so I thought it would be a good chance to have some night services at Garnerville. 

I brought the idea up with Peter, he consented, and now we're in the process of planning for them. I wanted them to be more informal than a regular Sunday church service and also be more intimate. I remembered a book of devotionals my mom had sent me and so we are now doing a series of services based on four devotionals we've selected:

Healing & Reconciliation
Openness to Change
Communication & Community
Generosity 

The book is titled Ostriches, Dung Beetles, and Other Spiritual Masters A Book of Wisdom from the Wild  by Janice McLaughlin. If you want to read more about it, click here. 

I've found it really helpful throughout the year, so hopefully members of Garnerville will enjoy our for evening services as well.

In addition to the evening services, I am currently redesigning brochures for the Northern Ireland YAV program and helping Doug to create a blog which is quite fun. In the process I am learning more about blogs as well! 

I am still working with the Newspaper club at Knocknagoney Primary school. We have published two issues so far and hopefully many more before the school year ends in June. It was a slow process at first because most of those involved were also involved with the school musical, so not all would be there every Tuesday to work. 

Now that everyone is there things are going much faster. I have learned that being a teacher was perhaps not my calling from this experience and I have learned to have patience. However, when the kids smile and are excited to see me every week, it makes me really happy and reminds me that it's all worth it.

I will be redesigning some of the publications I had previously designed too. Since I used my own design program, it is not compatible with anyone else's computer. So we're in the process of finding a PC I can work on and redo some of the posters and brochures on Microsoft Publisher so they can be reused in years to come. 

And I also just designed the poster for this year's J-Team (Jesus Team, Garnerville's version of Vacation Bible School.) 

I'll be more involved helping plan that with Caroline in the next couple of weeks. So I am keeping busy despite having a lot of programs ending, so no worries.