Life at the Spa: My Living Arrangements

Allow me to affectionately introduce to you the couple with whom I am living this summer: Mr. and Mrs. Shalom are a happily married couple who love people.

Mr. Shalom is a hard working business owner whose favorite hobby is a game of golf by himself. He has the most incredible pastoral heart. I pretty much enjoy anything he has to say because he talks about topics, from books to women’s fast pitch softball, with an attitude I can only describe as somehow affectionate. When he walks in the door, he kisses his wife and gives me a handshake or a hug if I’m around. He still enjoys allowing his 95 year old mother to give him milk and cookies. He is not only a prime example of masculine sensitivity, but he is business savvy and theologically astute. And... I just like him. Last night, he treated me to Starbucks and won my heart.

Mrs. Shalom is quickly becoming a mother figure to me. We spend most nights staying up and talking about all sorts of things from my testimony, to the Israelite Tabernacle, to different churches' methodologies. Every morning when I come downstairs, she makes a delicious green smoothie for me. She has welcomed me into her home from the first day and the gift of hospitality is not lost on her or her husband. One time, when I offered to do the dishes, she told me if I wanted to do them I would have to fight her for it. I’ve been a little scared of her ever since!

Now, for all my girlfriends..
You already know about Elizabeth; let me introduce you to my three new girlfriends..

I live with two beautiful blondes; Alex and Abby. One is approximately 2’3’’ and the other might be 3 feet tall. They flirt, call me by different nicknames, give me gifts, and run towards me when I come home. They are the two cutest little girls and they are the daughters of the couple who live in the basement.

Grammy is my other new girlfriend. She, as I mentioned before, is Mr. Shalom’s elderly mother. We stay up in the evenings talking and she has told me on multiple occasions that I have great teeth. The other day, I took her to her hair appointment. After it was finished, I went to escort her back to my car but it had started to rain. While waiting for it to pass, we stood under the awning of the shopping center. She claimed her hair would go flat if even a few drops of rain got on her, so I ran to get the umbrella from me car. When I came back, she grasped my arm and asked “Where are your muscles?” Playing along, I flexed. She cried out in pain exclaiming, “Ow, ow, ow! Oh you do have muscles.” I burst out laughing and she told me she loved to hear me laugh. On the way home, she impressed me with reciting the preamble and the alphabet backwards.

I really enjoy my living arrangements. I feel very accepted. The couple downstairs cooks me dinner most nights and invited me to sit with them at church. Last night, the husband took a piece of meat and transformed it into a tasty and juicy bite of heaven. Everything I eat is healthy and delicious. I look forward to being with Grammy and having our evening chat. And, Mr. and Mrs. Shalom insistently offer the use all their things. They even loaned me their GPS until I learn my way around. I feel a part of a big, but tight knit family and it has seriously been an unanticipated blessing. I do not feel as though my words can actually give justice to how amazing my living arrangements are. I tried to paint as clear of a word picture as I could, but you’d have to come see for yourself.

Stay tuned for my update on how my internship is going...

Day One

Monday was my first day on the job. Being me, I left early enough to allow myself ample time to find the church and get acclimated to the environment. I printed out directions from MapQuest, but I got a little turned around. Every other road here is peach this or Peachtree that. I wonʼt even begin to point out all the variations of Martin Luther King Jr roadways there are. I do not blame myself for getting lost. The people I am staying with loaned me a GPS and it was a serious lifesaver today. Conveniently, I still arrived twenty minutes early (remember, I allowed time in my schedule for getting lost..)

I didn’t know what to expect, but I wasn’t prepared for what I walked into. The room was full of young adults. I was really intimidated and I had no idea who any of them were. Someone in charge announced that the meeting was going to start at 10:00 AM and to hang out until then. I discovered, when I started to mingle, that they were all interns. NorthPoint has several locations and today was orientation for all the campuses. There were 14 or 15 others.

I met the three interns that I would be working with; Meredith, Emily, and Alex:

Meredith has a twin brother and sister who are in same grade as her. All three of them go to Samford University.

Emily is from Pennsylvania and is staying with her sister who lives near NorthPoint. She goes to Eastern university and lives outside of Scranton.

Alex is a genetics major at Clemson and is debating about whether or not he should pursue law school. He is the only one of us who actually grew up going to NorthPoint. He is a very energetic person and has nice teeth.

Above the summer interns on the pecking order is the full-time interns; Mallory and Jared. We will work directly with them this summer. Mallory is also energetic. She and Alex dominated the conversation because they talk really fast and enthusiastically. Jared is a long time intern. His father works at NorthPoint and writes books with Andy. We were called into the meeting which was held in a pretty big auditorium called “The Attic.” We had to go around and introduce ourselves and say something quirky and it took a long time because we were all joking around. I had to admit that my schoolʼs mascot is “the Arch.” Not something cool like an Archer, but a stone structure. That got quite a laugh. After everyone was introduced, they gave us a brief history of NorthPoint. Then we were dismissed us for lunch. We went to Qdoba and they paid for it! I am going to like this job!

I figured out pretty quickly, that I was one of the older interns and so I chose to not admit my age. At lunch, I was cornered with a barrage of questions until I had to affirm that I was the closest to dirt in age out of everyone in the group.

Back on campus after lunch, it was time to get acquainted with the campus. To do that, the staff sent us on a scavenger hunt. We had to go all over campus finding coffee, coffee, soda, and post it notes. We had to get signatures from people and find out how to become a member. We even had to take group pictures. Alex was very useful during this time. He knew where a lot of the places were already. We only had an hour to do that.

Then we got together with the NorthPoint campus team for a team meeting. The Staff introduced themselves and their romantic background. Then they asked us why we wanted this internship. We went over the job description and found out which full time intern we will be working with. I am working with KT (i.e. Kevin Turner). Kevin is in charge of guy small groups. We take spread sheets and identify who is where and find the best locations to have small groups. We are also going to be in charge of recruiting new small group leaders. I get to do interviews for
new leaders and follow up interviews to take care of the old leaders. Another cool thing that I will be doing is holding our own bible study on Wednesday nights. The interns get to brainstorm and come up with a plan and then they will open it up to the youth group. We will also each lead a service project for each of the different grades.

At the end, they gave me a gift. It had books for me to read, a CD, and two t-shirts. One of the t-shirts is really soft!

Last, we reviewed their program. It is called “InsideOut.” We talked through every aspect of the service chronologically discussing what went well, and what could be improved. Though I had no idea how the service went, it was really interesting to hear them all discuss it.

I am in a state of shock -a white noise type of thing. I know there is an image, but it isnʼt in focus because it so bright. Itʼll take me awhile to adjust. I keep getting the “whoa!” feeling. This program is nine weeks and it is packed with optional opportunities like the mission trip, summer camp, bible study, and service project. Iʼm just trying to wrap my mind around it. They set the expectation level so high. Iʼm 24 and way more experienced than the other interns in I was overwhelmed with what they are expecting. It is cool to think this is what they want from a 19 year old.

They have certainly the bar high!

I’ll describe the place I am staying in my next post, but to give you a little taste, I’ll let you know that I met “grammy” today, and she thinks I have great teeth!… to be continued...

(P.S. Actually, this post was written by Elizabeth, my girlfriend. I related this story to her Monday night, and she, being awesome, volunteered to do my blog update since I was very very tired. I went through and edited it quickly, and all the information is correct. We made a bet that she couldn't make it sound like me. Could you tell that it wasn't me writing? Please let us know!)

Auschwitz

So I have a myriad of stories to tell you from the last month in Iraq, so I'll release them as I have time to type them up.

The last month before we left, we had to make room for our incoming replacements, so we had to vacate our three-man CHUs (Containerized Housing Units, which were boxcars with a door and linoleum flooring) in favor of wooden C-huts approximately three times as big that we managed to fit 30 guys into. If you do real quick math, that means we fit 10 times as many guys in a space 3 times as big. The room as 40' X 30' equaling 1200 square feet divided by 30 guys, meaning 40 square feet per guy... the equivalent to having 8' x 5' of my own personal space. And I had to fit a bed in there.

Also, we had two trailer bathrooms with 8 stalls a piece for 500+ guys to share. That means a big stinky overused undertoiletpapered mess you sometimes had to wait to use to relieve yourself.

So we affectionately called it Auschwitz. And every morning as I'd wake up and hit my face on the exceedingly short bunk above me, and take a big whiff of the smell of men's body oder that had a suspicious dill fragrance, I'd think about how grateful I was to be going home soon.

Well, a problem with living in such close quarters is that people have a tendency to get sick. Especially when you introduce a large group of people from another country. Well, when our replacement unit from Mississippi showed up, our guys started going down with a horrible illness. The warmed into a fever, nausea, massive full body cramps. We had 8 guys in one C-hut that were sick. Soon, it jumped into the my C-hut and two of the guys in my hut got sick.

Our medics took one of the sicker specimens down to the Troop Medical Clinic for evaluation, and they diagnosed him with "the Flu."

Some how that turned into "THE FLU."

And soon, everyone was talking about how Bravo Company had "Swine Flu."

So, an order came out from my First Sergeant that I had to round up everyone in the company who had THE FLU and take them to the TMC for evaluation.

So anyone who had a cough, sneeze, or diarrhea within the last month went into my notebook and down to the TMC.

All but three of the guys in my company were cleared as not having THE FLU.

But later that night, the Camp head Medical Officer decided that it would be better to be safe than sorry, so we were ordered to take anyone who had gone to the TMC for evaluation to be mass exodused (can you use that as a verb?) to a different C-hut for quarantine.

Nearly fifty guys attempted to fit into a C-hut with the max capacity for thirty before they figured out that we didn't have enough room for them all and had to split one of the healthy C-huts into a "sick half and unsick half" to fit the rest.

Unfortunately, because I had gone down to the TMC with all of these soldiers, and conscientiously had gotten FLU tested, I too was quarantined. And as we made our exodus to the other C-hut, I warned the guys that if they tried to force us all to take off our jewelry and force us into the showers together, that we should run away. (I'm not making light of Auschwitz, I'm merely trying to point out in a really silly frustrating situation, that it's actually not that bad.)

But it wasn't so bad. They started bringing us food. And they quarantined one of those to toilet trailers. So 50 of us were sharing one, and the other 450 guys were sharing the other. That was honestly quite pleasant for a night.

The next day, they figured out that the vast majority of us were not actually sick. And only the 8 Soldiers who were genuinely sick were kept there.

So that's my Auschwitz story.

I'm an American!

Well, Friends. I'm an American again. And I really like it.

Some of the things that we have:

1) Beautiful climate. Whether you like sunny, rainy, desert, trees, wind, hot, city or farmland, America's got it.

2) Freedom. I can talk about what I want wherever I want. I can believe what I want, and talk about what I believe. I can protect myself from bad people, and I'm allowed to publish my opinions about any of those things without harassment.

3) I can go running down the street with my iPod in and my shirt off.

Please, please, enjoy your freedom today. There are a lot of people who have given up a lot of things to give it to you. So don't sit in your house and forget today. Do something just because you're free to do it.

For six dollars, he'll light your ears on fire.

This entire deployment, I've cut my own hair. My dad always cut my hair growing up, and it just seemed like what we do in our family. It saves money, and the only person I can be mad at in the end is myself. I do a better job than them anyway. I just take my razor into the bathroom and go to town.

Well, I sent my razor home, and it came time for me to get a hair cut, so I ventured out into the wild yonder, and found a little Turkish barber shop on post. What a wild experience. Maybe they do this at all Barber shops. I guess I can't really say, because I never go, but here's what happened.

First I sat down, and in barber speak mixed with TurkEnglish, I got the point across that I want it short on the sides and a two on the top. That's what I always do. And it works out pretty well in the sweltering heat here. Well, he buzzes a neat line with his trimmer all the way around my head. Then he pulled out an old-school horror-flick razor to take it all the way down to the skin. Well... that sure was neat, and an exercise in faith.

Then he cuts the rest like normal, gradually buzzing from nothing to next to nothing to the two on the top. He does a nice job, and when he's don,e he coats me with lemon-smelling aftershave... actually, I smell exactly like Pledge-- the stuff you dust wood furniture with. He then grabs the my jaw and the back of my head, and before I know what's going on, he yanks and cracks my neck. I thought I was murdered right there, and wondered why he didn't just use the razor blade. He goes to grab my head and jaw on the other side to even me out, and I say... uhh... no thanks.

Next he dunks a cotton swab into alcohol and lights in on fire. Then he flicks in on my ears to remove the peach fuzz... I'm not sure what that's all about. Was the peach fuzz really that unattractive? I mean... I've seen some gues with some craaaaaazy ear hair, but I was never self-conscious about mine... until now.

I get done, and ask him how much it costs. Six dollars, sir. Well, I guess it's not so bad to pay six dollars for a story.

A couple of exciting Administrative notes:

1) You can no longer send me letters or packages, because I may be out of here before I can receive them. Yay!

2) I have internet here in transient housing, so if you have Skype, friend me! Mom, Dad, Kari that means you!

3) I've decided that God's direction for the next period in time is for me to head back to Moody to finish my degree. I am so excited, I can hardly stand it. (CCF friends, I will still be around and come back to visit often. You're still my tentative plan for the future.)

I miss you all

HisStory

Happy 4th of July everyone. Today brings back some good memories of good days, doesn't it? I remember the send off I got one year ago today from my friends at my Church. I really miss you guys.

My friends here and I got to talking the other day, on the 30th of June about how cool it was to be here on that day. For those of you that don't pay much attention to the news, the 30th of June was the day that all of the U.S. Forces pulled out of Iraqi cities. We are now only on our bases outside of their cities. We no longer are responsible for responding to disasters within the metropolitan areas of Iraq. The Iraqis are ruling themselves.

This day was greeted with many mixed feelings. It is a huge step forward in the rebuilding process of this country, and most Iraqis greeted it with enthusiasm, joy, and some relief. Many Iraqis are a little bit nervous about not having Coalition supervision protecting them. Whatever the case, the government declared the 30th day of June, National Sovereignty Day, and there was wide spread celebration. It was cool to be here on a day that marks their Independence Day.