Week one in the books - completely oriented? maybe, maybe not.

Week one is done, week two is at hand. Here's a little about the life here at HDC. Their are seven outreach groups in training each consisting of five to six people. In the mornings, we take turns preparing breakfast and my first turn was Saturday, but there isn't much to talk about with that - because cold breakfast was on the schedule (I made coffee and that was about it). We generally have a session in the morning followed by lunch. After lunch and about a half hour of free time (I generally throw the Frisbee or baseball) we have some sort of team activity and then either a session or work duties (cleaning and maintenance of the 100 year old house in which we live). Dinner follows and then an evening session followed by about an hour of free time before bedtime. Intermixed in the days are three short quiet times. We are asked to do our devotions, pray, or journal two of the three times and to do something quiet the other time. There is a brief day, now onto more important things.

I have really enjoyed living with a group of guys dorm style again, it is a very encouraging and binding experience. As mentioned in the last post, our house is in a bad part off town. Just three nights ago we heard what we counted as six gunshots and I heard someone in the community died last year in a shooting. But as was stated by a leader at the beginning, unless you are a drug user, drug dealers, prostitute, prostitute user, or in a gang (none of which apply to me) you will be fine. Though I could be mistaking with the guys I live with as a gang, but that will come later - see interested fact at the bottom.

Several areas I have been challenged are:

• ATL - Ask the Lord time - this is a style of prayer that involves much waiting and is very abstract. I struggle with this because I tend to think much more concrete - which is good and I have had that affirmed. But even though I prefer and find a concrete approach to prayer and worship very effective for me and feel I can worship the Lord best that way, this has really challenged my ability to sit and listen to the Lord. It is tough enough to sit and not do anything for fifteen minutes or a half and hour - but sit and listen to a voice you know you won't hear audibly - that seems nearly impossible for me. Even though I won't take ATL up as a new daily prayer method for myself, I definitely see the value of it and will strive to worship the Lord in this manner as well.
• Living with fifty different personalities - I know I am still a kid in many ways, but college and the "real world" has changed my thinking a lot the past several years and made me thing through why I believe what I do. I really enjoy many of the people I live with, but many are just out of high school and sometimes I can get irritated with them, mostly in not thinking before speaking. I just have to remember how I was as a kid, at that age, and still am sometimes - then, it's easy to work with the younger ones and many times I can be a good example and leader for them.
• Another note on the fact that many of the participants are just out of high school - many times I feel like the staff treats us as if we are all that way. A basic example of this is that when we walk around or head downtown, we have to have a certain number of people in a group and at least one guy (there is always at least one guy in a group I am with - obviously!) for safety reasons. Though this rule is good, a reason for it was, "We are responsible to return you safely back to your parents." Though I have recently moved most of my things back home and lived there briefly, I still have a full sense of independence and SELF-responsibility. I am okay with this for the most part, but it is different and takes a lot of getting used too.
• Food - though the food prepared isn't bad, we keep running out of everything every meal it seems - at breakfast this morning, we had cold cereal, but ran out of milk before half the people got through. This frustrates me as a significant portion of the funds I raised went to HDC and some of that towards their budget for our food. I just don't see how we can run out time after time, especially milk for cold cereal! But that's just me talking, pray that I can have more patience since this is the largest group they have ever had at one training - and that is a blessing.
  
• Lights out - this is the last thing my room has issues with. We have gotten very good at following that rule by now, but the guys in my room all really enjoy talking at night and it seems that we all get good rest (thus far at least) and don't mind others talking at night - but I am learning to understand and accept this policy - it just takes some getting used too.

I am began working on my "SP" (spiritual pilgrimage) which is a fancy word for "testimony" in my estimation. I don't present until November 13, but I realized how much I could miss if I didn't start thinking about it until then. I think I will learn a lot about my life when I think about what has impacted me spiritually - if you have any ideas, let me know for sure, but I think I have a lot of it covered thus far.

I have really enjoyed getting to know my STEP team and how our personalities will work together, but I will write about that later. I have put pieces of this together when I had a chance (yea, it's short but still took three time periods because we keep busy otherwise). I will list some prayer requests below and then a final interesting fact about myself this week.

• I sold my Jeep!! Pray the title transfer will be smooth.
• Pray that I continue to find quiet time with God, and when I do (it's in the schedule), I won't be distracted by other things - even other prayer requests. I need to value my devotion time.
• Pray that I have patience with other as I know others have and have had patience with me growing up.

Interesting fact: pictures will follow later, but as of Monday, September 17 at night, I'm bald.