A Suprise!

So today my call team was working - obviously since we were at work. My supervisor had been gone for two weeks and today was her first day back so we were all really striving to do our best and make her proud ya know. Then we're sitting at our little cubicle/desks and she tell us all to "Get off the phone right now. If your talking to someone tell them you'll call back later."

So we were all really really apprehensive about what was going on and scared that we were in trouble or something. Then our manager and my supervisors boss comes up and talks to her more (they'd been in a meeting before she came out and told us to stop calling). So then we go in one of the big offices and like sitting there, all staring at each other like scared/unsure puppies. Our manager Mr. Hart popped his head in and just said "I'm proud of you guys, your truely awesome." Then we sat there for awhile before Ms. Skirving my supervisor *finally* tells us whats up. Turns out, my call team and another one of the teams from Global Expeditions Call Center Promotions (where we work) had been temporarly put on a different calling job. So for the rest of October we will be working as Aquire the Fire callers. We'll be calling youth pastors everyday and signing them up to go to our ATF events. It's really weird. We have to switch shifts too. I'm B shift right now - basically everyone i know on campus is B shift - we really don't get to see A shifter's that often because they work mornings B shift works afternoon and nights. So now we are going to be A shift as well. So that means waking up in the morning before all my roommates and leaving for work before they do! So we probably won't be seeing much of each other for the rest of October...sadly. We'll see each other at nights of course in the room, but that's basically it. But it's pretty exciting. Like, these two teams were hand picked out of all the call centers on this campus. ATF is really struggling, events aren't getting sold, seats are empty and the season has just started. So they've recruited (i totally ruined the spelling of that) us to help fill the seats and call more youth pastors and pastors everyday. I feel blessed. Like, i know God has called us to switch our jobs temporarily for a reason. Something great is going to happen, we just have to be obedient and let Him do His thing! lol But yea, nevertheless it's going to be difficult so prayers are definately appreciated and welcomed! We're going to have to be trained tomorrow on how to call for ATF. So i'll be facing the world at 9am instead of ....gosh i think we had class at 12 yesterday so i wouldn't have had to get up for awhile! Tuesdays are usually sleeping in days for B shifters!

But yea anyhow - i wanted to share my exciting news with you all. It will be a journey - i can't wait to see what's at the end of the road!

Rachel-


(sorry no time to proof read or spell check - gotta get to bed!!!)

Time for an update?

Well since i've done justice in neglecting my poor blog - i've decided to spend some quality time just to update it.

Life has been pretty good lately. Time seems to be going by so fast, yet at the same time days drag on for hours. I'm so excited for mama, daddy and the girls to be here next weekend! You have no idea how excited i am for that! So i'll get to stay with them at the hotel all weekend long. My roommates and core mates are all going to be in Houston having quality time down there, and i will be livin it up with the fam.

We have intramural sports here at the Honor Academy. Right now it's football season! Well, flag football. But it's so much fun! I haven't been able to play because of my knees, but it's fun watching too. Our brother core plays, and then my whole RD group is a team as well. We're called TPS (The Pilgrim Society). Everyone calles us the Toilet Paper Sisters though...:( lol how sad. It's funny because TPS is so hardcore - they've done amazing. We've won everygame so far. But yea, it's so much fun to get into the games and put on face paint, wear the teams colors and scream like a fool.
But that's it for the sports side of intern life.

Work is going well. I got my very first application the other day. I was so stinking pumped. I get a lot of people "wanting" to go but no one has ever been like "I don't care about anything else, i know i'm called to go to this country so i'm going." And i got a girl like that Friday afternoon, so she'll be going to Autralia for a month next July!

I helped out with the 1 and 2 year olds at church this morning. It was pretty great, but i'll admit - i missed being in the actual service. The church i go to is called CCF - Community Christian Fellowship. It's the church that Paul Baloche leads worship at. You may not know his name, but i'm sure you've heard and sung his songs before. "Above All", "Open the Eyes of My Heart", just to name a few - plus he's won a Dove award before. So yea, i love the worship at CCF. It's not like it's a big church either...it's kind of small actually. I know a lot of interns don't like going there because soooo many interns DO go there, or they don't like the services - but it fits me perfectly so i'm going to stick with it!

I haven't been able to put pictures up very often. My computer at work only lets me put like a few pictures on the hardrive before it freezes up. So my roommate Savanah put all the pictures on her laptop and we put all of them on the internet yesterday. So feel free to check them out whenever you feel like it. We'll be putting pictures on this site all year round so if you're ever bored, with nothing to do, check our photo album out!

http://s240.photobucket.com/albums/ff83/family_core/

Mama and Daddy are bringing my laptop when they come so i'll really be able to bombard ya'll with pictures! Thank you Jesus! I miss being on good computers. Not that the office comps aren't good...they just stink when it comes to pictures and such.

I'm not sure if we're going to be doing anything right now... i really feel like going to the sno cone shop and watching a movie or something, or maybe i'll read. I'm not quite sure. What i *am* sure of though is that i LOVE the weekends!!! They just end to soon!


Rachel

Check out Paul Baloche's website - http://www.leadworship.com

Pictures!

Ouch!

Well, where do i begin?

The last two days i've spent in the hospital trying to get my knees taken care of. At the persuading of my mama and roommates i missed class and work yesterday afternoon and spent the day at the Mother Frances Hospital Regional Health Care Center, ER in Tyler. I had my roommates Katee and Savanah with me. It was pretty cool. Everyone has been super nice and understanding, beds were comfy, nice air conditioning, plus i got to watch my favorite show ever....REBA! Ah, that was nice.

So as it turns out, i have a staff infection in both knees and in the heels of my feet. So i was put on a very high dosage of antibiotics and was told to come back the next morning for wound care "whirlpool treatment".

So this morning Katee and i leave campus at 8, get to the hospital at 9 for my wound care stuff. I get to be pushed around in a wheelchair a bit, which was pretty cool. This morning my knees and my right heel especially were just throbbing and aching. ah, it hurt so bad. But back to the hospital stuff. They ended up having to like scrub off all the dirt (that still has yet to come off) off of my legs and feet. Then they doctor like took scrubbers and tweezers and like plucked away all the skin around my knee wounds and pulled the scabs off my heels. Oh my gosh..it hurt so bad! lol. Then i told the doctor that i'd been feeling really sick as of the last 2 days. My throat was getting swollen, i had lymph nodes swelling up and aching, headaches, fever. So she decided to run some tests on me. So i had to get 5 vials of blood drawn. They think i may have mono. :S Not fun. I've been coughing like the dickens all day.

Anyhow - right now is supper break and yes i'm skipping it to update you all on my life.

I got pictures from the hospital so i'll put those up sometime. I have to go back to the hospital on Monday morning, and they're calling me with my test results tomorrow sometime. Hopefully all's well.

But yea, right now i'm pretty good. My knees are really aching and throbbing, but other than that i can't complain. My poor mama is having it rough though. I miss her! I was sitting in the lab waiting room with Katee this morning and all the sudden i was like ......."i want my mommy....." Katee's like "don't start crying now!" and then she looks over and i already was. lol

Ah, i'm emotional right now! lol

More updates later!


FYI: incase you were wondering how i got my knees all nasty it was from ESOAL on the very first day when i had to low crawl the football field once. My capri's rode up and didn't offer any protection for my legs. Then for the whole rest of ESOAL they just had to be in all that nasty mud and junk so..it got infected.

My feet have still been getting swollen. They'll get all poofy, i call them my ogre feet. It's weird they'll get all tingly like they're asleep, even though all i'll be doing at the time is sitting normal on the floor or whatever. It's never done that before, so hopefully the doctors get it all good and taken care of!! :)

Love you all,

Rachel

This is the night i die....

Oh my gosh - so i'm completely nerve racked right now. Tonight we all have to be ASLEEP on the football field by midnight - if you aren't asleep (or faking it really well) you will pay the consequences. So yea, i've still got to pack a bit. Memorize like crazy. Clean our room. And even though it sounds completely strange - i want to take a shower. I feel so dirty i haven't showered in two days. Like i set my alarm off really early and the past two days i've forgotten to take it off silent so...the alarm goes off but i don't hear it.

Any how - one HUGE request to ask all of you. Please whenever you think of me, PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE be praying. It's going to be extremely tough mentally, physcally, spiritually and emotionally. So yea, everyone in my platoon told each other we wouldn't let one another ring out before the end end of ESOAL. They said the this is called the legendary year because they're throwing allllll new stuff in and it's going to be insane pretty much...lol. Like this year they have the people in your company/platoon in your family core as well. So everyone in my plat. are my brothers and sisters and coremates.
Anyways. i'm like experiencing a whirlwind of emotions right now - i feel like barfing but other than that God is amazing and it's going to be an amazing couple days until Sunday - when ESOAL is going to be over...Lord knows when on Sunday...but it will be over.

Love you all!!!!!

Rachel

Emotionally Stretching Opportunity of A Lifetime

Well, ESOAL officially begins Thursday morning at 3:30am. No one is for sure when it will end, longest ESOAL was 90 hours. I'm a bit uneasy about it... It's going to be intense! lol. But in a weird sick and twisted way i'm looking forward to it. I'm especially looking forward to it being over. ESOAL marks the end of Orange Block, which means, texting whenever i want, eating sugar, listinging to music other than worship, and corporate excercise only once a week. Orange block really wasn't that bad, but i will look forward to texting my mama whenever i want to. I really missed doing that.

So for more info on ESOAL - watch this promo video

http://honoracademy.com/esoal.php

I'm going to sign off and go to bed. yea, 10:19 and i'm super ready for bed. My whole room slept until 4:30PM on saturday well Alaura woke up a bit earlier than me and Katee, and Savanah slept later than 4:30. Oh well, it was an amazing sleeping opportunity. Then afterwards the girls in my room and some of our brothers went snipe hunting. lol

Love ya'll
Talk to you soon
Rach-

This would happen to be my new favorite song.

So we sing this song alll the time during worship here at Teen Mania, but i'm glad because i LOVE it. It's my new favorite song, i'd never heard of it before HA. So yea, it's called Mighty to Save and Hillsong sings it.



Everyone needs compassion
A love that's never failing
Let mercy fall on me
Everyone needs forgiveness
A kindness of a Savior
The hope of nations

My Savior
He can move the mountains
My God is Mighty to save
He is Mighty to save
Forever
Author of salvation
He rose and conquered the grave
Jesus conquered the grave

So take me as You find me
All my fears and failures
Fill my life again
I give my life to follow
Everything i believe in
Now i surrender

Shine your light and let the whole world see
We're singing for the glory of the risen King...Jesus

Welp.

So yea - i just got off work, it was a long day CRM the computer database we use was really slow so i only got to call like 31 people. :( sad sad . most were messages too. Welp. I'm going to peace out and hang with my core.

Better blog to come later this weekend.

I love you all! More than you'll ever know!!!!!!


Rachel

Ok, now for a real good update!

Alright, so i know i've been slacking in my bloggin updates. But for good reason... WE'VE BEEN STINKIN BUSY! But yea, i'm skipping dinner right now and eating trail mix and chips ahoy cookies at my desk, just so i could send you all an update. You should feel special!

Well i'm just going to walk you through a somewhat typical day of an intern here at Teen Mania.

4:15am - Wake up and get ready for corprate.
5:00am - Corprate excersise
6:00am - shower
6:10am - go back to bed!
9:00am - get dressed and ready for class
10:00am - class
11:00am - lunch
1:30pm - go to work
5:00pm - dinner
6:00pm - go back to work
8:30pm - get off of work (though sometimes we'll work until 10pm just depends on the day)
Free time blah blah blah
11:00pm - hopefully be in bed and ready for tomorrow!


So yea thats just a little snippit into intern life. Sunday was amazing. We went to church at CCF (where the worship leader Paul Bloche is the worship leader if you don't know him your crazy and need to check him out - a new cd comes out in novemeber i think)
but yea we went to church from 11am-12:30pm - went back to the dorms and since my whole room has a nasty cold, we slept all day until like 5:30. Then we officially met our brother core last night and we carved pumpkins with them and then afterwards some of us went to sonic and walmart. amazing fun. But yea. We have ESOAL in like 9 days. For those of you who don't know...ESOAL is sort of like this intense mock navy seal training in a spiritual form. lol. you can't really explain it but that's the best way we know how. They had this navy seal guy come in and watch ESOAL last year and he was like "Every Christian needs to go through this." anyhow. Everyone is pretty much walking around like scared and nervous puppies because we have NO IDEA what we're getting ourselves into. But yes. Oh let me tell you just a bit of what my SATURDAY was like.

Well see, during Orange Block we have this thing called room checks. They're every weeknight and are pretty much crazily intense. Like i had a hat sitting on top of a box in our closet and they marked us off one point saying "There was a hat on the floor" even though it was perfectly orderly in the closet. but yea that's how intense they are. You have to dust, clean your mirrors, vacuum, beds crisply made, absolutely no particals on the floor, fridge and mircowaves cleaned out, like everything must be neat and orderly or you will get marked off. You can only get two things marked off or else you will fail, and thus have to go through extra training. Now speaking that since my room failed three times, that equals three hours of extra training on saturday when normally we would have been able to sleep in and have a carefree day... Nope, not anymore. If you had extra training then the first part of your day is working out and cleaning up the campus. It was so funny. Mr. Hasz (director of the Honor Academy) made us do 200 push ups. After each set of 20 you had to scream "I will clean my room!" So lol, you hear all of these people grunting and groaning pushing out their push ups, and then you'll hear these desprate cries shout "I WILL CLEAN MY ROOOOM!!!!!!!!!" lol, it was pretty funny. Everyone is like all weak and scraggly, and from all over the basketball courts (aka the anvil) where we work out and do corprate you hear these like weak shouts "i will clean my roommmm!!" "i will clean my rooom!!!"

Haha, i was just laughing was my room pushed our set out. It was really nice though, one of our brothers came along and did the push ups with us until we were done.

I have officially been able to run 2.5 miles! woot! I think it was in like 20 minutes...something like that. We had to run with our ESOAL platoon and well, the first time we ran with them we were the second group to leave, and then we were the second group back to the Anvil (sports courts). Then since they noticed we made it back fast, the next day they made us leave like second to last and we were STILL the second team back!! woot. We're hardcore now. Word!

Advice for all incoming interns. Do like a million things of pilates of something like that everyday for like 30 minutes. Work them muscles out and tone them! Also start running, it's all endurance running so just keep on moving! We've had a few people throw up mid run just because they're so rockin' hardcore. When i first got here, Gauntlet week was like torcher. I seriously wanted to be dismissed or quit, whatever i just did NOT want to be at the HA. But like i told my parents i could have been in Rome and i still would have wanted to be somewhere else, aka HOME! I'm still homesick like crazy. But the only thing keeping me here is this; i know with all my heart that i've been called to the HA this year, i gave them my word that i would stick it out, so i am. Quitting now would only give me reason to quit when things got tough later on in life. I'm here for a reason, and i'm going to find out what that reason is. But i will admit, i do have a countdown going on towards graduation! lol. But like i was saying. Gauntlet week was killer, not just emotionally, but physically. I was so insanely sore. Like i had muscles aching in places i didn't know muscles excisted! So incoming interns, work out before hand and get that sore stage over with!! You'll be happy for it!

Lets see. Oh as for my job. I am a Global Expeditions promotions caller. So i call kids from like 3:00pm to like 8 or 9:30pm every weekday and tell them about Teen Mania's missions program. I'll be calling kids who've either filled out an info card at an Aquire the Fire or BattleCry event, or kids who asked for info via internet, or alumni who are wanting to go on more trips. So yea i call them and tell them about all the trips we've got going on right now. Right now we're promoting the Holiday trips to Honduras; Panama Jungle; Tijuana, Mexico. So yea if you want some details just call me at 1.866.545.6239 ext. 7211 hahaha. But yea, it's cool job, still trying to get adjusted to it and do it better, lol. But my team rocks, and my supervisor Sarah Skirving is awesome. But yea, i'm trying to think about what else to blog about.

Oh, i only have 4 girls in my room now, including me. We had a full room at first but one of our girls was switched to a different room/dorm/core because she was A shift and we are all B shift so all of our schedules would conflict and we would never see each other. Then on Saturday night our other roomie who's name was Rachel also decided that "God was calling her to go home" if your an intern or have been an intern you'll recognise that as the convinient excuse everyone gives when wanting to bail the internship. Like, it's riciculous because we had our commitment banquet and we hence "commited" to staying the whole year, fully recognizing how tough it was going to be. Anyhow, i just think it's pretty crazy. So yea Rachel packed up her bags saturday night and then left sunday morning. Apparently quite a few people left sunday, a girl from my sister core left also, and then multiple people from around the campus. But yea, more closet room for us now... Hey now, i'm just trying to be optomistic!

Anyhow, everyone is pretty much back from supper and it's 6'clock must get back to work. Maybe i'll update more later when i can think of more stuff. So yea

Love ya'll!!!!!!!

Rach

I'm here, i'm here!

Ok so quick post. I FINALLY got my desk and computer assigned to me. So yea, i'm pretty pumped about that. Tomorrow we have this ginormous test in the GE call center and everyone is pretty much freaked out about it. We have to get 80% or higher to pass. Though they did say you can take it again..but really...who wants to do that. Ugh... i hope i pass!! Please Lord, lol. So yea, anyhow, i'm going to have to get off soon so i'm going to peace out.

Keep in mind now that i have a computer to work from, i will be online alot more than i have been the past few weeks. And when i have time i'll update ya'll on everything that's been going on with me - because there is quite a bit! oy ya yoy!

Peace out-
Rae

hey everybody!!!

Thinks to help of my dear sister..I finally am able to update my blog..somewhat anyway, lol! Things here have been going very well, though I have been homesick like crazy! I have been counting down the days till I get to go home for thanksgiving... I miss my mom! I have been having to get up every morning at 4:30 to go to corprate...which will last till Sept. 20. My days have been really busy thats why I haven't been able to get on the computer, but I will find out what my ministry placement is tomorrow. Right now I am packing up all my things again, because I will have to move into a different room, possibly a differnt dorm. Its going to be sad to change cores, all the girls in my room now are all great! Thats all for now... I am getting ready the commitment banquet. I love you all and think you for the prayers thay have been greatly needed. Call me whenever you what..if I don't awnswer I will call you back. Call or text!! haha
My number is: 785.643.0446

Rachel (and andi)

Albertine

I'm in love with this song! It's called Albertine - by Brooke Fraser. She's a wonderful musician from New Zeeland, and aside from her solo music - she also writes music for and tours with the *amazing* band Hillsong United!

Rachel

Hello!

I figured making one universal blog would be a bit easier on everyone than randomly posting on Myspace and Facebook. This way anyone who doesn't have an account on those sites can comment and such. Since i won't be able to get online much during the first 6 weeks at the Honor Academy i wanted be able to write quick updates on one site, and not have to hopscotch around. But nevertheless i will still check the others (especially after the 6 weeks is over with). Anywho - Welcome to my new site!


Rachel