"Be Joyful in Hope, Patient in Affliction, Faithful in Prayer." ~ Romans 12:12

Looking back on it, this week could be considered a rough week.  Only one of the days seemed rough at the time, but it felt like there were fewer wins overall this week than usual.

Tuesday, I stepped in as the Program Coordinator for about an hour.  I  also had one student in particular who was absolutely driving me crazy.  He argued with everything I said to him, and some things I didn't say to him.  Normally, when it's that constant, I would give the kids a warning, but he didn't even realize he was doing it!  And when I pointed out that he was arguing with me, his reaction was, "No, I'm not."  ARGH!!  He's not normally like that.  I'm chalking it up to him having a particularly chatty day and not carrying it around with me forever, but on that day, I was feeling like his special project.

Wednesday was better.  I was not as hesitant to give warnings and it turns out, they (meaning any and all the kids) only needed one.  Ok, so that was the problem (maybe).  I'll just have to remember that next time!  Sad that I had to give out warnings, but glad that it stopped at one.  Count as win.

On Thursday, I had one of our kids confided in me, through tears, that he basically blames himself for his mother's miscarriage when he was a baby, because if she wasn't carrying him, she wouldn't have fallen.  She never blamed him or told him it was his fault, and I told him that if she knew that he thought that, I bet she would be really sad.  I also shared with him about a loss in my family when I was very young that I often felt blamed for, and then he needed to learn a lot sooner than I did that it wasn't his fault, it couldn't have been, because he was a baby.  Then we had a group hug and he smiled again.  So that one I count as a win.

Thursday was also the day that the kid who drove me crazy on Tuesday apologized to me!  What?!

Friday was a busy day.  After leaving my morning job, I led a volunteer training for someone we may partner with to provide more volunteers during the homework/tutoring times.  He seemed really excited about it, and hopefully it will all work out very well!  We'll be getting volunteers from CalPoly, so that will really expand our volunteer base.

Friday was also the day of our first High School Girls Bible Study (we're working on a name).  At least it was supposed to be.  But despite the seeming excitement from each of the girls every time I reminded them earlier in the week, no one showed up.  They all had valid excuses (school events, family issues), but it was disappointing because I was probably a little too excited about it.  So maybe it's a good thing that it's getting postponed, so I don't overwhelm them.  And it did give me a chance to fall asleep early... after dogsitting.  Yeah, I'm that cool.  In my defense, it had been a looooooong couple of weeks.  Anyway, not getting discouraged.  Still trying for a meeting again next week (I think this will all work out better when we can have it on Tuesday nights and all of our girls can be there).  This thing WILL happen!



Gotta keep telling myself this...

Next week should be better.  These kids always surprise me.  And I start getting paid (at quarter time... which actually means I'll be cutting the hours I'm helping out back for while)!  This will almost double my current income (yes, quarter time at a nonprofit where I'm fundraising my own salary will almost double my income from a City government where I'm working half-time).  Sign of the times...

There's always a silver lining though, right?  That's why there's a saying.

"And Now These Three Remain: Faith, Hope and Love. But the Greatest of These is Love." ~ 1 Corinthians 13:13

First week back this school year with a whole ton of new volunteers (from the Claremont Colleges)!  And they're pretty incredible.  The kids seemed to latch onto them almost immediately, and these volunteers, being college students, seemed to remember how to do whatever the kids were working on.  Perfect!

This was also the first week of taking the 4-6th graders up to the computer lab again.  This week they were working on drawing a picture of themselves in Paint, copying it and pasting it into a Word document, and then writing a story about their week, as a form of "autobiography". 

There was ONE day this week where we only had one student show up for the optional homework time.  So I got to help our one student while a pow-wow happened in the background.  It's a good example of what we're doing as an organization: helping with schoolwork, yes, but also creating community and sharing with each other about church, God, life, etc.

 

 

 

Courtesy of Dave Evans.

Now admittedly, the discussion corner didn't last the entire time, and towards the end of our homework help session, we were both getting the tired-crazies... the last math problem was drawing a box of the dimensions that she had already done the complex equations to find.  It took 15 minutes.  But the homework got done!

"Expect to Have Hope Rekindled. Expect Your Prayers to be Answered in Wondrous Ways. The Dry Seasons in Life Do Not Last. The Spring Rains Will Come Again." ~ Sarah Ban Breathnach

So all the kids are back!  And they're awesome.  We have kids from Kindergarten through 12th grade.  Among our K-3rd graders, we have one student who is not related to anyone else in the program.  It's a real family affair.

We now have kids taking us up on our optional homework hour every day that we offer it.

Our only struggle in the program as a whole is working around the number of volunteers (pretty low for the past month).  But we've had 4 volunteer trainings in the last 2 weeks, so that number is coming up as we speak!  And last night, one of the founding partners of Pomona Hope and I visited the Pomona/Pitzer College InterVarsity meeting to drum up more volunteers.  If any of you are reading this, I hope you come!  And if our brief intro last night didn't do it, maybe friendly rivalry will: I'm pretty sure we have more Harvey Mudd students volunteering than anyone else.

We have had one other issue: the concern that one of our students has been exposed to a cult.  After taking her out to coffee and seeing what she thought about the cult, and about the idea of hanging out more regularly to study the bible, and checking in with Emily, our Program Director, and Jeff, the Youth Coordinator (since it's technically his territory), I'm starting a high school girls bible study.  The hope is that it will provide the group setting that all the girls need to confide in each other and get whatever support they need, and provide a stronger biblical background to help them make wise decisions.

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