March Madness (to a whole new level)

Maybe you remember last year when we "stepped on the gas" and held a week-long outreach event in the South Bronx. Well, this year we're doing the same thing.

Times four.

That's right. When the light turns yellow, sometimes you just gotta step on the gas!

So this year we're partnering with InterVarsity's NYCUP (New York City Urban Project) and their Spring Break Plunge teams of college students who are coming to NYC for their spring breaks throughout the month of March. Four different teams. Four different sites. Four different outreaches.

Yes I, too, am tired just reading about it. ;)

How can you help?? Well, thank you for asking! It might sound cliche, but please pray for us! So, so many prayer requests--

• for good weather. We will be more visible if we can be outside. We can't be outside if it's not good weather. We have indoor contingency plans for Weeks 1,2, and 4; but Week 3 we're returning to Padre Plaza. Please please pray for warmth and sun!
• for favor with the "powers that be"-- whether that's in a park (Week 1), the play-yard of a housing project (Week 2) or in a charter school that serves primarily children in the foster care system (Week 4), we need favor with those who run these places.
• for unity. The devil would love to distract us from the work we're doing. And a great way to do that would be for there to be disunity on our team. Pray that we all continue to work as a united team!
• for energy and strength. I remember how tired I was last year at the end of one of these weeks. The upside is we know we are not going to be doing this by any strength of our own! Pray for me also as I'll be running our current program even while this is going on in March. There's a lot of exciting stuff going on in our current program too. Pray that I'll be able to give it the attention it needs without burning myself out.
• for the right volunteers. God knows who's coming for our volunteer teams, but we have no idea! Pray for college students with willing, flexible, adaptable, teachable hearts who are ready to serve and love on these kids! Pray that they will have just the right skillset to make these outreaches go well.
• for the details. There are so, so many details and logistics. Pray that we will think of them-- preferably ahead of time!
• for encouragement and joy. Pray that we won't be so busy and distracted that we miss Jesus in our midst. Pray that we experience him and get to know him better each day throughout March.
• for salvation. There are so many kids in the South Bronx (where we'll be Weeks 1,3,4) and in East Harlem (where we'll be Week 2). Many (most??) of them have never heard of Jesus. Pray boldly with us that children would hear about and believe in Jesus this upcoming month.

I'm sure there are more things to pray for, just as I'm sure there are more details to think through that haven't even crossed my mind yet! The good news is, Jesus knows all those prayer requests and all those details already and has them under control. We're banking on that!

Thank you for praying!!

Plagiarized Post

I literally could not have said this better myself. And I don't really have much to say about it other than....

Amen.

Throwaway Scripture?

"Exceedingly, abundantly above all we can ask or imagine," Gretchen said to me today. "So do we believe it-- really believe it applies to us-- or is it just some throwaway Scripture?"

You probably remember that I have a love-hate relationship with Valentine's Day (If you don't remember, I think this previous post sums up my views pretty well). And to be honest, it gets harder each year. I think you can only tell yourself "maybe this will be my last Valentine's Day as a single" so many times before you start to wonder if you'll experience it any other way. It can be easy to be cynical and hard to keep hoping and trusting.

Don't get me wrong-- I'm not caving in; I'm still actively fighting those feelings of cynicism. I still love Valentine's Day. From a distance, true; but I still love it (or, at the very least, still want to love it). And I am still fighting to believe that God is a loving Father who delights to give me good gifts and is planning something exceedingly, abundantly above all I can ask or imagine.

It's a Scripture I can't afford to throw away; so I'm going to cling to it with all I've got.

City Sledding!

I didn't know it was possible either. I mean really, who sleds in New York City? Answer: this girl. And other answer: you need to try it too!

We got almost a foot of snow in the city last night. Youth group got canceled, which really bummed me out. We've been trying to get it started for months now but have only had a handful of kids show up for any given event. Last night we were expecting twelve kids-- more than twice our record high! We held out canceling as long as we could, but soon it was clear that it just wouldn't be smart to ask people to go out in that weather.

But wait! If we have to cancel on account of snow, let's do something else with the snow, right??! Our options, as we saw them, were snow football and sledding. There was definitely more interest in sledding. And really, only two slight hurdles to overcome: 1. Where does one go sledding in NYC? and 2. What does one use for a sled in NYC?

The first hurdle was actually pretty easy. Thank you, Google. Pilgrim Hill in Central Park-- done and done! Next hurdle.... sleds. I was sure that one of the ghetto five and dime stores in East Harlem would sell magic saucers, so I headed out in the snow and trudged from one store to another....

Excuse me, do you sell sleds?
:: blank stare ::
Um, do you sell anything for riding down hills in the snow?
"Sorry, I no know wha you mean."
Magic saucers? Sleds? Anything for playing in the snow?
"Sorry, I no think so."

We got a little farther at the next store. There they offered me a snow shovel. At least they understood I needed something related to snow. But I just didn't have a good feeling about having kids riding down a hill on a snow shovel. I wandered around the store and started to get an idea. I texted my youth group co-leader: "How ghetto is okay?" Thankfully he was up for it and had a stash of cardboard. So I grabbed some super high quality $1.49 shower curtain liners and one vinyl laundry bag and headed downtown, where we began to put our awesome crafting skills to work. An hour later we had three epic sled-type creations. One was toboggan-style, and the other two were smaller, flying saucer versions.

We met the rest of the group at the park and headed over to the sledding hill. Some of the boys had found legit sleds (not to say ours weren't "legit"; but stores recognized and declared theirs to be such.... I'm not sure they would have given ours that same designation) and two of them had brought buggy boards.

Things I learned today:
1. a lot of people go sledding in NYC
2. a lot of the people who go sledding in NYC find out where to go sledding in NYC by asking Google
3. this means that sledding in NYC means you will run into people as you sled down a hill
4. the best homemade sled is made by putting cardboard into a vinyl laundry bag (it was actually even more popular than some of the "legit" sleds)
5. sledding is still one of the most fun things ever-- even if it's not the biggest, steepest, best hill and you don't have a real, legitimate sled.

Bottom line: you should reclaim your childhood. Don't make excuses. "I live in a city" and "I don't own a sled" are not valid reasons not to get outside and enjoy the snow.

Trust me on this one.

And you can thank me later.

Confessions of a Workaholic

I don't know if people even read this blog anymore-- it's been so long since my last post. But the post has been building in my soul, and blogging it is the only way to get it out. So here goes...

Apparently others have known this about me for a while, but I'm just learning that I'm a workaholic. I don't know yet if I'm a workaholic in the negative or the positive sense of the word, but the truth is still there: I don't know how to stop working. I call it many other things-- diligent, thorough, dedicated-- but now I'm calling it something else-- exhausting.

Things are going really well at my job. Since October I've been full-time with the mentoring program, and I feel as though I'm finally living out my calling. I get to work with at-risk kids for my full-time job, and I get paid to do it! Ah, but herein lies the problem as well-- I love my job, so it's hard for me to stop doing it. I have a team of people that I work with now, and my staff has taken it on their shoulders to care for my mental and physical health.

"When's the last time you took a day off?" they'll ask me.
Well, I took Tuesday morning off....
"No, you weren't in the office; but didn't you have a meeting?"
Oh, right..... I went to Portland last week....
"But you were on email with us the whole time..."
Busted.

I had coffee with one of my co-workers last week, and when he addressed this same issue, I 'fessed up: Josh-- I told him-- I don't even know how to take a day off. I don't know what to do to relax. To me, the idea of taking a break from working on something means working on something else. It's not that I don't want to relax; it's that I don't know how to.... and it's getting exhausting.

And thus began a team-wide effort to help me learn how to relax.

And so, with their guidance (and some strict rules put in place) I took today off. My phone is off; I'm not checking my email. I'm going to a yoga class at my gym in a couple hours. I'm finally blogging (as you know, I haven't taken time to do that in ages). I'm sitting on the couch with a cup of coffee and my Bible and journal. I have a magazine to read later. I'm not even going to glance at my email because I know there will be something there that will get my mind going and I'll feel the need to address immediately. I know it means tomorrow will be a full day and maybe I'll regret that I didn't look at email today. But for today, I'm taking one baby-step toward learning what it means to relax.

My name is Anne Davies, and apparently I'm a workaholic. But I really don't want to be....