Wednesday and Thursday of last week went off much smoother than my first two days. One of the boys, Ivan, taught me how to ride a bike with no hands! One of the groups even had enough time left over to do a little bit of one-on-one racing on the trail too. They really loved that. And on a small side note, by the end of the summer, I think I will be certified in efficient PB&J sandwich making! Monday through Thursday, before we leave SMU, I make an average of 18 sandwiches per day (crazy!).
Friday was spent at the Jubilee Park Community Center learning about how real urban areas strengthen their communities and increase comprehensive education within the children as well. We learned a lot about what Jubilee Park is doing to keep up their community, keep crime rates down, and build themselves an involved, safe place to belong. There were many interesting stories told, and a lot of things I learned about this new area of Dallas that I was unaware of before.
Friday night I went to Chipotle Mexican Grill with my friends Erin, Dai and Antoine. A small trip to get nachos turned into a three hour session of talking and opening up about Christian life and theories. After Chipotle closed and we were forced to leave, we took a blanket to a park on campus and laid out there admiring the universe and working out self imbalances for another hour and a half. Here were my favorite words of advice from the night.
This is the one thing I really needed to hear. I may be doing exactly what I want to be doing, but I'm not always doing it with God in mind. It's so difficult to always keep my mind conscious of the fact that I shouldn't be living for myself. As busy as I've been the past few weeks, it's slipped away from me way too many times to believe.
This weekend, I also got the chance to play video games for the first time since I got here! Some of the guys set up an xbox and were playing Halo on a projector screen in LXA. I eagerly jumped in, and after playing for way too long, I won the last game by one point, sending the room into cheers and I got so many high-fives after that I could have just won the Super Bowl and someone wouldn't have been able to tell the difference after! :)
Yesterday, a group of about 30 of us caravanned to Sherman, Texas to visit another group of Project Transformation interns. After the two hour drive to Lake Texoma (one side of the lake was Texas land and one side was Oklahoma!), we jumped in the lake, played around, wandered the beach, grilled burgers and then scooted out of there before the storm with predicted hail could hit!
As premature as this is, I'm really sad that I will have to be leaving Dallas in 47 days. :( It also doesn't help that the wonderful friends I've made don't even all live in the same area. So even if I wanted to, I couldn't travel to one place to see them all! I'd have to go from Austin to Kansas to Alabama to South Carolina. PT has already been an amazing experience of living in community with so many other Christians my age. I find it so amazing that as the older I get, the more joy I find in my peers with the same morals as I. The older we get, and the farther away from being controlled by others we become, the more truth to who we are stands out. Every single college student is here because they love children, Jesus, and figuring out where they're called to be. Every intern here is in the same walk of life I am and getting to know people from across the country is such an experience. For as nervous as I was to arrive here, and for as terrible of a first night I had here, I couldn't imagine this internship going any better than it is right now.
Thank you for keeping me and my summer in your thoughts and prayers. God is so prevalent in my life and in the people around me right now, and for that I thank Him constantly.
Listen to this --> Waiting Room by Jonny Diaz
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