metodov raboty

It's dead week, and I am so immersed in the paper writing process that I've found it necessary to express myself through the same medium in ways less serious or academic--thus my return to this blog.

One of the things that always hits me when I'm neck deep in writing several papers is the simple joy that comes from expressing thoughts in words. I know, I know, papers are typically over material considered dense and boring--stuff that most people would potentially avoid reading by setting up dental appointments or visits to awkward relatives--but seriously, I enjoy mastering ideas enough to plot them down on paper in a way other people can begin to grasp the exact same ideas that I've recently restructured.

Gorbachev (you know, the former Soviet leader?) was a fan of this process too. He considered ideas, and the ability to communicate them, to be especially potent. He referred to his words as metodov raboty, or "instruments of accomplishment" (Breslauer, 2002). I think it's especially intriguing how his ideas, and the way he communicated them, truly did change the world completely in ways not matched by many men.

So, I suppose working to master the art of "communication", and striving hard to express my ideas in these papers, might not be a completely futile exercise. I'm not saying that I'm going to be the next Gorbachev, but perhaps these papers are good for more than drowning in. Yeah, I realize I just ended a sentence in a preposition--but this is my blog, so I can do that--and it feels good to be able to say what I want without fearing red ink all over it.

I'm listening to Kanye's new album as I work. It's a must buy.

Till next time.

Painting, Spa, and Beach Time - Day 3, Tuesday at Rosemary

On Tuesday, everyone gathered bright and early at Town Hall for breakfast and a thing called Morning Watch. In Morning Watch, our worship leader for the week--Mitchell McGhee--shared one of the "truths" for the day, and then led everyone in a short time of worship (That is essentially what every Morning Watch looks like). The first truth was introduced today, so Mitchell talked about how "God is Good". This truth might be something we accept at face value, but when we stop and think about it's implications and try to apply it to our realities, it can be hard even for us--imagine what it must be like for parents who used to live "normal" lives but now spend all their time battling to keep their kid alive.

Annnd, surprise, I actually have this Morning Watch on video. I hope it gives you a good feel for what these look like. Often, Morning Watch will be done on the beach overlooking the water, but this week we did it in Town Hall.

After Morning Watch, the parents leave their children with the volunteers and make their way over to what we call "Common Grounds". Common Grounds is probably one of the coolest things we do. It gives the parents a chance to actually talk about what they're going through--and to talk about it with people who are in similar situations. It is amazingly therapeutic, and is probably one of the greatest boons to healing and finding the ability to persevere through a world of childhood cancer.

While the parents are at Common Grounds, the kids enter into an environment we call "Flip Flop", where they are broken up into teams by age and gender, and are watched and played with by the volunteers. For Flip Flop today, we had the opportunity to take the kids to the studio of Justin Gaffrey. He gave the kids all painting supplies and helped them create their own pieces of work. It was an incredible experience for the kids, and we're really thankful to Justin. His works sell for tens of thousands of dollars, so for him to open up his space and time for us is simply amazing.

Here's two of his works:

And here's some pictures of the kids at the studio:

After Flip Flop, everyone gathered back together for lunch in Town Hall. At 1:30, we did a "lady's spa" for all the retreat moms. This was a time when they were able to get pedicures, manicures, and foot massages from the female volunteers, and basically just get loved on.

Here's a picture:

After that, the families were free for the rest of the night until the volunteers picked up their kids and gave the parents the chance to have the night off. Lighthouse pays for the parents to have a free dinner on Tuesday nights so that the parents can have a "date night" and the chance to have some alone time together. We hang out with the kids, eat pizza, watch a movie, and have an ice cream party. The kids have a blast, and the parents have a chance to reconnect. The stress of having a kid with cancer is huge, so giving the parents the night to bond is HUGE.

Well, after that is "night cap" for the volunteers, and that concludes the day! Tuesdays are always long, but they are really important days.

Day 2 in Rosemary

On Monday, the families we will be serving arrive between 2:00 and 4:00 pm. We call them the "retreat families", and each is distinct--coming with different backgrounds, standing in different places in their life journeys.

We checked the families in, and the volunteer family partners met them and took them to their houses. We gave them a while to settle in before meeting back together in Town Hall. The families each filled out a Lighthouse "mad libs" and the Host read their answers, poked fun at them, and introduced them to the rest of the crowd.

After the introductions and the teaching of the Lighthouse Song, everyone made their way across the street to Summer Kitchen, who very generously closed their restaurant for the night and fed everyone from Lighthouse. Here's a picture with me in it from outside the restaurant:

(I'm the one in the middle wearing a gray, sleeveless Lighthouse shirt)

After dinner, the volunteers headed over to Wiggle (the staff house) and assembled in the living room area for Night Cap. Night Cap is the nightly environment where we cover announcements for the next day, share some experiences from the day, focus in on the devotional thought we will be sharing with the families the next day, and worship together in song. It's one of my favorite parts of the retreat. At the end of a long day, it's good to come together before God and really be refreshed. It helps remind me of the purpose of everything. After that concludes the days activities.

Day 1 in Rosemary

Working on staff during a retreat is an amazing experience. It is also--as you might expect--an extremely hectic and busy one. My job isn't just getting to serve the families and partner with them like so many of our volunteers get to do, but I also have to work with the wonderful people from the office to make sure that the events and structure of the retreats are in place, and that everything in the big picture that I'm responsible for is flowing as it should. After three weeks of straight retreats, our fourth retreat in Rosemary felt like a bit of a blur.

That being said, I'm going to provide you now with the daily notes that I never had a chance to post online day-to-day as they were happening. Let's start off easy--Day 1 in Rosemary:

Sunday is when all of the volunteers arrive and check in to find the retreat set up and awaiting them as if we had a permanent location in that exact point on the beach. For all they know, we have lived in Rosemary Beach, FL for months. On this particular day, however, I was fortunate to get most of the day off. The only bit of work I did on this day was to finish off the VBS Dublin video #2 you can find posted below.

In Rosemary, we are fortunate enough to have use of their Town Hall (pictured below).

Since we had this magnificent facility to use, we were able to eat all of the meals indoors, which was quite a nice change from the typical mode of things. We spent Saturday unloading everything here and at a few of the houses, and by Sunday when the volunteers started rolling in, everyone was ready to roll.

Lighthouse was also given the chance to speak at the church service they have on Sunday mornings at town hall. It's always a good chance to help spread the word in the community and bond with them in a unique way.

As far as my day off, it was very much needed. I had a chance to go down to the beach and read... it's amazing how little beach time staff can get at these retreats if the retreat happens in a community that isn't directly on the sand. Anywho, that was Sunday!

FUMC Dublin Video 4

As promised, here is the last video I put together for a church's Vacation Bible School and our partnership with them. I thought it turned out pretty well.

Seaside Retreat 2010

(Click here to view)

The album is now posted on the Facebook page with pictures from our

Seaside Retreat.

Seacrest & Videos

Well, last week finished strong (even though I failed to post Thursday through Saturday). Seacrest was an incredible community. Residents in the community would often swing by one of our events to check out what we were doing--offering to pull their grills out and cook for the entire crowd or even just handing us checks.

The retreat families were incredible, and I think they had a very refreshing and enjoyable week. Check out the Lighthouse fan page later today to see some pictures from the week.

In the meantime, here are four videos I've put together for a church that is partnering with us for their Vacation Bible School. We'll shoot one more for this church over the next couple days to give them 5 total--one for each day. I'll upload it as soon as it's finished. We have had some amazing kids come through here--I think you'll get a taste for that in the videos. Video 1 is pretty straight forward... the rest vary up a little more.

I hope the videos gave you a good taste for what we're doing here. Thanks for following the blog. I appreciate all the prayer and support!

New Fan Page

Today I went to the staff meeting at 7:30 am, helped get the retreat underway, filled water balloons for the "Game Day", and have spent much of the rest of the day tackling our social marketing media. To this point, our online presence has been scattered, and so I've been consolidating different facebook pages, twitter accounts, etc. and weaving it all together into a usable, navigable collection of tools.

Anyway, here's the new Facebook Page. Check it out and click "like". You can check the page to get updates, pics, and video from our weekly retreats.

Tonight, I'm going to wrap up 3 videos from last week, and tomorrow Powell and I will tackle 2 new marketing videos for a new partnership church. It's a challenging task to try and encapsulate the experience here in 2 minute videos, but it's also great to get to share with others a taste of what I get to see and do every single day.

A Lighthouse Thank You

As part of my job on summer staff, I am taking and editing video for Lighthouse to use in marketing and communicating with its donors. Here's a message I captured from Powell that we sent to our supporters today.

Seacrest Beach - Day #1

Volunteers started to arrive Saturday and we spent the weekend gearing up for this retreat. Today, the families just arrived as we kick off day one of Retreat #4 at Lighthouse.

Soon we will have the first family dinner and all of the families will be introduced. It's a cool sight to see all the kids pouring out of a mini vans with huge smiles. Although if I drove as far as many of them did to get here stuck in a mini van, I would be pretty happy to.

So what will a typical day this week look like? I'll go ahead and post a basic daily schedule to give you a feel for it.

~

A Typical Lighthouse Day:

8:00 am: Breakfast

Volunteers prepare a great breakfast with parent and kid friendly foods. Volunteers make sure all retreat children and parents are served and waited on before they begin eating.

9:00 am: Morning Watch

A Christian-based devotional to help find hope in God. The faith and belief statement of Lighthouse: “God is good; God is in control; God cares; and God wants you to know Him!” is shared through a conversational message.

9:30 am: Common Grounds

Common Grounds offers retreat parents the opportunity to share their stories with other parents who are facing similar challenges. Strong friendships are developed and many times they form support networks that last well beyond the retreat.

9:30 am: Flip-Flop

Fun and friendship for the kids. While parents attend Common Grounds, the children and Family Partners attend Flip-Flop – a time of fun where kids play all kinds of games, make cool crafts, swim in the pools, and fine tune their talent show skills.

12:00 pm: Lunch

Volunteers prepare a great lunch with parent and kid friendly foods. Volunteers make sure all retreat children and parents are served and waited on before they begin eating.

1:00 pm: “Conched” Out

A little R & R for retreat families and volunteers. Families are free to do as they wish. This is a great time for families to reconnect relationally. Many nap and relax, others watch movies together while others spend the day on the beach. There really isn’t a wrong way to “Conch” Out.

6:00 pm: Dinner

Volunteers prepare a great dinner with parent and kid friendly foods. Volunteers make sure all retreat children and parents are served and waited on before they begin eating.

7:00 pm: Evening Activities

Fun-filled festivities where everyone enjoys the community of family and friends in a carefree environment. Activities include a *Game Day, a special night-out for the parents, a beach party, a low country boil, a talent show and more.

*Game Day

One of the highlights of the week is Game Day. On this day, everyone is filled with team spirit and high energy. Families “go for the gold” as they participate in fun beach games like sponge relays, sand castle building, egg tosses, and more! It’s a fun time to laugh together and cheer one another on.

Lighthouse in Seagrove Beach, FL

So what does a retreat look like? I put together a short 2:00 minute video I took with a Flip of some clips from the week. I hope you enjoy it.

Lighthouse Family Retreat

This summer I am working with a ministry called Lighthouse Family Retreat. Lighthouse gives children who have cancer and their families the opportunity to experience a week at a 30-A beach free of charge, with volunteers who look after their every need, and an environment created to give them the week of a lifetime.

For the last couple weeks of May, I worked in the main office in Atlanta, GA, helping the existing staff to get the retreat logistics nailed down. For the last two weeks, I have been down on 30-A (in between Panama City and Destin) helping to run the retreats, working with the volunteers, and capturing the retreats in video form so that we can better share with others the work we are doing here.

So, what are we trying to do for these families? It boils down to 3 things:

(1) Make them laugh. These families have had long, hard battles. We love to give them the chance to just have a fun time. This is their escape--their chance to leave the hospitals and doctor's appointments for a week and to enter an amazingly positive atmosphere.

(2) Help them reconnect as a family. Cancer, as you might guess, is extremely hard to deal with. It comes with a huge emotional and time price tag, and it wears on the relationships in the families. Siblings start to feel left out. We seek to highlight the siblings of those without cancer as well as those with it to help them feel special too. When battling cancer, parents grow distant as they often have hardly any time at all to spend with each other--especially not alone. There is a very high divorce rate among families with a child who has cancer. Lighthouse gives the parents a chance to connect alone during environments that are parent only during the day, and a date night during the week. We take such good care of their kids, they are able (many times for the first time in years) to leave their children.

(3) Help them find hope in God. We don't want to shove a religion down their throat or make them feel uncomfortable. However, we do know that real peace in situations like this only comes from our Father. We want to give these families many things, but if they walk away with a stronger connection with the Creator, then they really have something of eternal value that will aid them invaluably in the fight ahead.

As a staff person-

We work all day, every day, and it is exhausting. Each day we're up before 7:00 and probably not in bed until midnight, with plenty of heavy lifting and children tossing in between. Ironically though, lighthouse is probably the most refreshing experience I have ever had in my life. Constantly serving other people wears on the body, but the smiles and laughter that comes from the families we serve is energizing. The knowledge that what you are doing is effecting people's lives in an amazingly positive way is tremendously motivating. Seeing children that have battled cancer--some for years--race on the beach or wrestle you in the pool makes your troubles seem small and your heart feel full.

What volunteers at Lighthouse soon find to be the case is that though they are physically exhausted at the end of their week with us, they are emotionally restored and spiritually encouraged.

As I'm down here continuing to work, I will continue to update this blog with my experiences with the kids and Lighthouse.

You can also follow Lighthouse on twitter at @LightouseFR or on Facebook.