My weekend...

The spiritual life is first of all a life. It is not merely something to be known and studied, it is to be lived. *– Thomas Merton

I stole this quote from a friend of mine that is in South Africa with Radical Journey. Thanks Anna :)
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This weekend is going to be filled with friends, food, laughter, more food, no homework and lots of girl time. Well, there are only a few ways that I can discuss my weekend and that happens to be through pictures.... so here we go!

These are pictures from sledding, Hannah's house, shopping, dancing, and a lot of friends.

10 things about Senior year that I love...

1. My friends
2. The spiritual feeling on campus
3. Shining Through
4. The dances
5. My internship
6. My roommate and our fish
7. Watching Bluffton welcome new faces
8. Seeing old friends return for a visit
9. No homework (second semester)
10. and being on this campus for 1 more year...

Enjoy the pictures... it was an enjoyable weekend. :)

Week 7?

When did February come and go? I can't believe that I am almost complete with my 7th week of my internship already. Things have been going great so far and I am excited for the next 7 weeks.

Outside of that, I am frantically planning for our Shining Through Spring Break tour. This happens every other year, and lucky me, I've gotten to plan this sort of trip 2 times. :) I am looking forward to this, but I'm hoping that we have everything done by next Friday. This will be a time of fun, friendship, fellowship, and praising our God. Oh how this group LOVES to do that!! It shall be one for the books!!


Whether I am running from internship to work, work to a meeting, class to dinner, or Shining through to my bed, I seem to be speeding past people these days and forget to take interest in the little things. I love catching up with old friends via phone or a coffee date, I love thinking about my Semester abroad that I was able to take, getting a morning text from friends, or sharing laughs with my closets friends. I was able to do all of those things this week. What blessings.
I hope that you find a "little thing" to cherish this week and take time to stop running from place to place and enjoy it.

Blessings of Peace,
Anna

What am I doing right now???

Sitting in my room with my roommate anxiously watching the school 2-hour delays go across the screen. See, she hasn't had a full day of school in about 2 weeks. I know, I have entered the wrong profession. ;) Ashley has been excited to start teaching for the past few weeks, but she hasn't been able to with all of the delays and cancellations. Oh the lives of Seniors.... praying for snow delays and being jealous of the other for having them. :)

So far this week I have been in a panic. I took a look at my calendar for the rest of the year and realized that I only have 1 weekend free. Are you kidding? When did I get so busy that my life is planned up until the beginning of May? Don't get me wrong, I love being busy, but I graduate in May, and it is already coming quicker than I expected, so I have NO IDEA what I am going to be doing with myself after that.

I hope that you are all enjoying yourself tonight. It is fat Tuesday, so eat a lot of food, and I hope that you have a great start of Lent!

I am going to post some pictures from Freshman, Sophomore, Junior and Senior year.... :) It will give you a taste of the past few years...



--senior, junior, sophomore, freshman---

Blessings of Peace,

Anna

Social work Capstone...

Well,
Many of you might know, if you have been following my blogs for the past 3 years, that I am a social work major. Yes, am one of those people that want to change the world and make little money. :) In previous posts I've talked about my internship and everything that has come with it, but something that I don't necessarily talk about is the Capstone class. Every Tuesday, I leave my internship early to drive back to Bluffton for an evening full of class. One is to check up on us to see if things are working out and the other one is to focus on Professional Development, Social work ethics and what we might expect after graduation. Within that last class we have a large paper that is due at the Beginning of April. The minimum is 25 pages. Granted, if we work enough ahead then things shouldn't be too bad, but for that one instance when we fall behind... it will be a rough couple weeks.
Within this paper, we are supposed to pick any part of social work and learn about it. Because I am working in a community Development section, that is what I picked. What is community dev. How can it help? What are some examples,etc. It should be an interesting paper, once I get into it, but until then... I am struggling to start it. I just need to put forth about an hour a day.. or even 2 hours. Any free time that I am sitting down I should be working on it... but there is so much more to do outside of homework..... ;)

I need to get my priorities straight. :)

Hope that you are all staying warm!!

Blessings of Peace,
Anna

I love having....

This has been such a GREAT week! I have played in the snow with my closest friends, I've had a day off from my internship, and I've run an internship workshop. Oh man, it was incredible. I've had an awesome week. Yesterday at my internship was the "big day" that I've been waiting for. I had been planning for this workshop since the first week of my internship. Yesterday after my internship I've never felt so grown up. I was able to sit down and talk to these members of the Community of Lima and talk to them about what they can do within their organization. How impressive.

It was a good day overall and now I will be going home for the first time since Christmas break. I can't wait to sit and relax at home with some good food and my parents!
I hope you all have a good valentines day! :)
Blessings of Peace,
Anna

LDP retreat

This past weekend was awesome. I know that it is Wednesday and I am just writing about it, but I think that it is an important event to talk about. LDP Retreat. Leadership Development Program. This program consists of all of the "leaders" on campus. If you are an RA, Hall Chaplain, Student Senate, MCB, or any spiritual life activity on campus. If you are a student coordinator, then you apart of LDP. This weekend has always been one of my very favorites. It is a time when we as leaders spend time together and learn more about each other. It is a time of fun, relaxation and friends. One of my favorite things about this is that we have a group of our "advisors" also there to join in the fun. From learning about our civic engagement theme, to playing multiple icebreakers and worshiping together, LDP was incredible.

Along with our weekend of learning, came a weekend of SNOW. That was the start of the massive snow storms that would soon hit us this week. Driving back to Bluffton wasn't very exciting, but very terrifying. I learned alot this weekend, whether it was through loving friends, playing games with people I didn't know, or through helping one another push cars out of the snow. There are quality people at Bluffton, and I have the opportunity to know a lot of them.

I hope you aren't snowed in...

Stay warm,
Blessings of Peace,
Anna

A picture speaks 1000 words...

I promise that I will post all about my weekend tomorrow... but I wanted to get some pictures up beforehand! :) :)

There are some from my internship office, this past weekends LDP retreat and the people that I love!! :)

Our weekend pep talk... from Megan...

A February full of things....

Good Afternoon,
I wanted to update you all a little bit on what I am doing within my internship. I am at the Department of Community Development in Lima. I am working with "the city" and have noticed that there are quite a few stipulations that go along with that title. I working towards my social work practicum so I will be doing this field placement until the end of the semester. I will be honest with you... I am already exhausted and have gotten a little tired of sitting around waiting. The very different thing with my placement is that I am working within the Macro field of Social work instead of the micro. I don't necessarily work with individuals like my friends and other social work students might, I am building this relationship between the community, activities, events, and the individuals. I seem to like the term "umbrella group." We have alot that we are trying to "keep dry" and build up beneath our department. We have neighborhood specialist (whom I work under), Property Maintenance, Affordable housing, and much more. Within the department we have about 11 people working. I really enjoy going into work every day because I like to listen to the conversation around me.... chatting about their long day yesterday, about the shows on tv, but also about what it is they want to accomplish within the day. I have my own "cubby" as I might call it where I have access to a computer, phone, printer, and a LOT of informational tools. From older manuals, to new journals and books. My field instructor is an incredible woman that is always encouraging me to read new things. She likes to let me go off and figure things out by myself, which is a challenge, because I'm not a decision maker. :)

This is my 4th week at placement and I have been designing different workshops that will include differnet people from the neighborhood associations as well as the community members. It is a very exciting task. I've been prepping for this event and it is right around the corner. From trying to find speakers, to making sure I know the information, it has been a busy week.

Outside of my internship I have to go back to Bluffton once a week for class. I have 2 differnet classes, that only meet once a week, and I tend to not really call one a class. It meets for about an hour once a week and is alot of discussion.....

I can't wait to share more about how the workshops have turned out, my time at placement, and the last semester of my career at Bluffton.

I hope you enjoy the day and that you are staying warm, because it seems to be snowing here.

Blessings of Peace,
Anna