2011's hanging out with weird statue in the strip mall

Wednesday: Water Day!

Hey everyone, it's Emily and Catherine!

Yesterday, Wednesday, we woke up to more rain. We had lesson study and wrote letters to our donors. Around 11 we left for the water park here in Iowa, the "Lost Island". We had Sonic for lunch, and for many people it was their first time there. Then we went to the water park, which was in a different city, so it was sunny and perfect weather. Our group divided into smaller groups and ran off to go to all the slides and rides. We were having so much fun, we decided to push dinner back so that we could have more time at the park. So much fun in fact, that we didn't take any pictures (Sorry!).

After a full day at the park, we all were starving. We left to make our reservations at Olive Garden where we enjoyed our last dinner together. Back at the church we had ice cream and a farewell party. We shared highlights and gratitude, and we did a candle activity. Each person picked a name of someone else out of a basket and shared a great quality of that person. We had some packing time and watched a movie, getting us to bed around 2 a.m.

Overall we had a great last day together and we are really sad to leave Iowa :(

Jeni and Ed are in Control!!!

Leaders of the Day Tuesday!!

Bowling and Poo Head.

Hey guys! Glad you’re all reading our blog, it’s pretty awesome to have one. Today we were planning to mow a whopping 22 lawns, but last night Kim did a rain dance and it’s been pouring cats and dogs ever since. So, instead of doing service work, we hung out in the morning doing class time, had Indian food for lunch, and then we went put-putting and bowling! Drew won put-put with a score of 43 (I think) and Ed served us in bowling with 141 (Jeni at close second one point behind). It was great when we all kept changing our names on the bowling lanes: Scott was Cot and Something Awesome and Andy was Striker. Then Gen was Humblest Person Ever, Best Bowler Ever and Superbowler, haha.

After bowling we went to dinner at a great hamburger place called hamberg’s. Their were pictures on the walls of all of the presidents that had eaten there, including Obama, Reagan, and Clinton. And George Washington… just kidding…but really, he did. We played a game during dinner where Kim was supposed to freeze at some point during the meal and everyone who saw her was supposed to freeze too when they saw someone frozen. Then there were only three people still talking: Andy, Jeni, and Ed who were oblivious to the game for about a minute after everyone else was frozen. Everyone was cracking up when finally they noticed.

At night we played a big card game called Poo Head. The point is whoever loses is officially the Poo Head until the game is played again. Poor Ari. Some of us affectionately call her Pooh Bear.

Anyways, it was basically a party day after many days of work and none of us can believe the trip is almost over! It’s really sad :(

We’ll see you all on Thursday!!

-Andy and Scott

Farewell to the Apartment Complex!

Hey guys, it's Lauren and Emily and we are reporting live from St. Andrew Presbyterian Church on Monday, July 20th. Today we spent our last day at the apartment complex we have been fixing up for the last three days or so. Our drywall, painting, mudding and sanding work (along with some spur of the moment weed-wacking) was completed and we took one last final picture of the group in front of the building. This morning we had a chance to sleep in until 7:45, which was a big change (about an hour later than usual), which made most of us VERY happy :) We ate breakfast and had lesson study before hopping in the vans to do our service work. After working for three hours, we were treated to a free lunch at the chinese restaurant down the street! We are all very thankful that we got a free, delicious meal before going back to work. Tonight we've had some down time and soon we will be heading off to have some yummy pizza and do some class work all together. We are sad that our trip is a week through, but we also are happy that we've had so many memories made already. Thanks for reading! - Lauren and Emily

Tour of St. Andrew

Sunday Funday Blog Video Update!

Saturday Blog (and Song!!) Vid

Sunday Funday!!!!

On Sunday we rose early to make the 8:30 service at the St. Andrews church that we were staying at. Attending a different church was a new experience for all of us and opened our eyes to see what other church services are like. After church we were able to explain to the congregation what the National Leadership Council was and what we were doing in Iowa. Overall the group presented very well and the audience had many questions sparked by interest. They wanted to know things such as how we joined the NLC program and how often we see each other in a year.

The next part of our day was driving for over two hours to the Furbush's home on Lake Panorama. On the long drive we passed endless fields of corn and beautiful blue skies. When we arrived, seeing the Furbush's glowing faces assured us that the rest of the day would be amazing. We all had the opportunity to go tubing, water skiing, kayaking and canoeing. Mr. Furbush drove the boat and took most of us for a wild adventure of tubing and a smooth ride of skiing. Other activities included ping pong, air hockey, pool, foosball, and laying out on a hammock. These activies gave us time to relax and hangout as a group. Mrs. Furbush was kind enough to cook all of us dinner and dessert, and boy she makes good food. We approve! At their home we were able to have Sunday School and split up into two groups by gender. The groups both had very good discussions and enjoyed Sunday School very much. After the beautiful sunny day we headed back to the church for the night.

Lindsey & Kim

Drywall! Painting! Mudding!!

After a rousing breakfast, we jumped in the vans and headed off to the low-income apartments. It was pretty chilly outside, so everyone wanted to get his or her assignments, get inside, and stay warm. We divided up the tasks, including dry walling, painting, general clean up, mudding, and landscaping. The tasks grew increasingly difficult, and the drywall teams worked on holes in warped ceilings and in a skewed under-the-stairs cupboard. Different people worked on different types of projects allowing those of us who had gained proficiency in certain fields to lead the way for others.
Brian and Gen worked on patching a three by four foot hole inconveniently placed on the ceiling in a corner. There were two lips around the edge of the hole that we thought we would hypothetically use to rest the new drywall patch. Unfortunately, the task of fitting the new drywall proved impossible while tensions rose. As soon as we calmed down, we decided that we would only use one lip and cut the other off. We then managed to place our masterpiece on the ceiling while balancing on scaffolding. Once completed, Ed gave us a chance to work with mud, a molding paste with a white hew used to smooth rough surfaces such as screws and cracks. This was really exciting for Gen, since she was familiar with the paste from art projects. Brian was willing to try it and concluded that it was annoying.
Once our nine to five shift ended, we voted on our evening activities. We choose to view a seven forty showing of the new Harry Potter movie at the theater in the Coral Ridge mall roughly ten minutes away. The devout Potter fans could not stop talking about it afterwards.

See you soon!
Gen and Brian

First Day of Renovations

"Do small things with great love"

Today we started our renovations on a local low income apartment complex. There were a lot of jobs to be done - putting up dry wall, priming, painting, weedwacking, landscaping, and sanding. Luckily we have an eager and willing crew.

When we first got to our jobsite, we split up into teams of sanders, primers, drywallers, pumped up the music, and started. Some apartments had been worked on previously, so they all needed different jobs. Each person spent most of the morning learning and mastering one job. Closer towards the end of the morning we started changing tasks around, and realized we needed a weedwhacker.

We broke for lunch soon after, and went back to St. Andrews in the vans. We had spaghetti, caesar salad, and pudding for dessert (Jeni was going to throw it out, but Drew demanded a taste test) ^.^ Shortly after we headed back to our jobsite and picked up our work right where we left off. Four hours and many band aids later (just kidding) we left a decent looking apartment complex and returned to the church for a relaxing evening.

Stay tuned for our next update tomorrow: Day 2 Renovations!
- The Raleigh Kids (Catherine and Ian)

Painting and Singing

Our Visit to Amana

Tourists Unite! The Amana Colonies

After a day and a half of mowing lawns, weed whacking, and sweeping driveways under the hot Iowa sun, our fearless leaders decide its about time for a chill day. For the morning we had a bit of time to discuss a couple of aspects of what our class is all about. The first was how we have been expressing what we have learned about being leaders. We went around the circle and told a brief examples of that expression. A quick break and off to our second aspect; changing the world. With a partner we discussed our goal and the first step we were going to take in order to achieve it. After the discussion it was on to a lunch of left over Chinese food then hopping into our "Rent-a-Wreck" vans for an hour plus drive along the pretty Iowa countryside. We pulled into the parking lot of two small buildings. In one held the largest rocking chair I've seen in my life standing about 20 feet tall, using 300 feet of lumber. The other contained wood crafts and a broom making shop. We then went to the Amana Colonies, a communal society once based on a religious way of life founded in Germany. We visited a museum and watched a video on early Amana culture. We were then let loose in groups to tour the quaint little town. Looking into craft shops and walking through the old town cemetery, we were given a taste of what living in Amana would be like. We are excited to see what tomorrow brings as we start renovating low income apartments! -Ariana

DAY TWO VID UPDATE

Blue Shirts

DiscoveryBound NLC is working under the direction of the Presbyterian Disaster Assistance and the United Way. These two organizations are coordinating flood relief projects in Iowa City. We are all wearing the blue shirts that St. Andrews Church gave to us that say "Presbyterian Disaster Assistance." We did not want the people living or driving through Mosquito Flats to think that we were random teens mowing lawns, so to avoid suspicious questions we coordinated by wearing the blue shirts while mowing the lawns. --Lyssa & Lena

This morning we continued to mow the lawns in Mosquito Flats, we ended up mowing a total of 21 lawns. When we returned to St. Andrews Church several of us went for a swim. We then went to diner at Hunan Chinese restaurants. We had plenty of leftovers, almost 20 full takeout boxes, the restaurant was very generous with the serving size!!! After diner we rushed over to church and had a lovely testimony meeting with a few of the Christian Scientists that live here in Iowa. The testimonies shared were very inspiring and included many different types of healings. We shared details of the NLC program with the congregation,they seemed very interested and were eager to learn more about us so we went out for ice cream at Cold Stone's. Night Family, Friends, mentors, and everyone else supporting our trip!--Lyssa and Lena

The 2011 begin painting and drywall tomorrow

First Day On a Big Job

Mowing Lawns

Original Video - More videos at TinyPic

Mowing 10 lawns in one day and having fun while doing it.

We arrived!

Hey!

Yesterday the NLC class all arrived here in Cedar Rapids safe and sound. The majority of the travel was harmonious and the travel that wasn't was a learning experience. There were many demonstrations of God's Law of Adjustment throughout the day, and we all had many stories to tell of travel plans falling into place. The weather was very nice, and we were introduced to our two vans for the weekend, nicknamed Snowball and The Whiner. When we got to Saint Andrews Church, where we're staying, we found a warm and welcoming environment also finding that all of our clothes were trapped "in the flood" and we would have to do without them for the next day. The hypothetical flood was set up by Ed and Jeni, our class leaders, who told us to leave everything in the vans and then locked the vans for the night. It was simulating the floods that the people of Iowa City and Cedar Rapids had to go through - losing their belongings with very little warning and having to make do with what they had available to them. This was only as small taste of the inconvenience which the people had to go through, as we got our belongings back this morning. We discussed the loss which many people went through and how they didn't know when or if they would get anything back. We also looked at pictures of the flooding and devastation, putting our night of no change of clothes and no hairbrush into perspective.



This morning, we had a very meaningful discussion about the lesson, talking deeply about Life and death. It's a bit cloudy today, but that means that hopefully we won't be too hot for our day full of lawn mowing! We will be maintaining 18 lawns of homes in the area, today and next week. You can imagine that with enough rain for a flood the laws are hopping! A lot of what we will do is still shrouded in mystery but we know that will will be putting in dry wall for a couple of days. We are having a great time with allot of lightning bugs at night that make for great entertainment and many nice people for us to support and learn from. It was the first time for most of the West-coasters to see lightening bugs, so they had fun catching them and admiring them. We got a cup of them, releasing them right before bed.



We're having a lot of fun and miss you all back home! Thank you so much to all of our donors - it's so cool that the good going on can be spread all over the country. Also thank you to the practitioners and all the people who have been supporting us and have made our trip so harmonious.

:) Olivia Krishnaswami and Gunther Ott

Thinking about the weather...

Here are some quotes about how weather cannot disrupt the harmony of Divine Love.

And the same day, when the even was come, he saith unto them, Let us pass over unto the other side.
36 And when they had sent away the multitude, they took him even as he was in the ship. And there were also with him other little ships.
37 And there arose a great storm of wind, and the waves beat into the ship, so that it was now full.
38 And he was in the hinder part of the ship, asleep on a pillow: and they awake him, and say unto him, Master, carest thou not that we perish?
39 And he arose, and rebuked the wind, and said unto the sea, Peace, be still. And the wind ceased, and there was a great calm.
40 And he said unto them, Why are ye so fearful? how is it that ye have no faith?
41 And they feared exceedingly, and said one to another, What manner of man is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?
Mark 4:35-41

And a man shall be as an hiding place from the wind, and a covert from the tempest; as rivers of water in a dry place, as the shadow of a great rock in a weary land.
Isa. 32:2

All that God imparts moves in accord with Him, reflecting goodness and power.
S&H pg 515

All that is made is the work of God, and all is good.
S&H pg 521

The divine Mind maintains all identities, from a blade of grass to a star, as distinct and eternal.
S&H g 70

:)

quote

Obstacles are those frightful things you see when you take your eyes off the goal.

Henry Ford

Everybody can be great...because anybody can serve. You don't have to have a college degree to serve. You don't have to make your subject and verb agree to serve. You only need a heart full of grace. A soul generated by love.

Martin Luther King, Jr.

Scott Duvall

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882)

A PSALM OF LIFE

WHAT THE HEART OF THE YOUNG MAN
SAID TO THE PSALMIST

TELL me not, in mournful numbers,
Life is but an empty dream ! —
For the soul is dead that slumbers,
And things are not what they seem.

Life is real ! Life is earnest!
And the grave is not its goal ;
Dust thou art, to dust returnest,
Was not spoken of the soul.

Not enjoyment, and not sorrow,
Is our destined end or way ;
But to act, that each to-morrow
Find us farther than to-day.

Art is long, and Time is fleeting,
And our hearts, though stout and brave,
Still, like muffled drums, are beating
Funeral marches to the grave.

In the world's broad field of battle,
In the bivouac of Life,
Be not like dumb, driven cattle !
Be a hero in the strife !

Trust no Future, howe'er pleasant !
Let the dead Past bury its dead !
Act,— act in the living Present !
Heart within, and God o'erhead !

Lives of great men all remind us
We can make our lives sublime,
And, departing, leave behind us
Footprints on the sands of time ;

Footprints, that perhaps another,
Sailing o'er life's solemn main,
A forlorn and shipwrecked brother,
Seeing, shall take heart again.

Let us, then, be up and doing,
With a heart for any fate ;
Still achieving, still pursuing,
Learn to labor and to wait.

Going Forward 2

groupthink

Service Skills

Post your skills...

Build a fence?

Paint a room?

Plant a tree?

What have you done that would help our group skill level?

inspiration

What is termed matter manifests nothing but a material mentality. Neither the substance nor manifestation

of spirit is obtainable through matter. Spirit is positive mater is spirits contraire, the absence of spirit.

(Science and Health, pg.173)

Wilt though set thine eyes on that which is not? (Proverbs 23)

As God is substance and man is the divine image and likeness, man should wish for, and in reality

has, only the substance of good, the substance of spirit not matter.

(Science and health pg. 300)

Planning List for Iowa Service Trip

2011s,

Saint Andrew Presbyterian Church is looking forward to our arrival! The church stayed dry during the flood, but is a short distance from flood-ravaged areas. Together with the United Way they are grateful for our willingness to help the community recover. The congregation has been blessed to participate in 9 mission trips to the Gulf Coast to help with Hurricane Katrina clean-up. Because of these experiences they are able to effectively serve as a host site for us and for other volunteers.

Our time together on our Service Trip is almost here and it will require each one of us doing our part to make the Service Trip a meaningful and productive experience.

• Review this Planning Guide and bring everything that it tells you to bring!

• Participate in the metaphysical support work that our Prayer Committee sends us!

• Pay attention to the class assignments and to your individual committee work!

• S&H reading assignment (see above post for more information!)

This planning guide will tell you what you are REQUIRED to bring. It will also answer questions about transportation, as well as give your parents crucial numbers to reach us (should they need to do so). 

Beginning JULY 8TH reach Ed and Jeni on their cell phones at 503-939-3419 (Ed) or 503-939-3437 (Jeni). 

REQUIRED ITEMS TO BRING - MANDATORY!

Plan for warm to hot weather with humidity. Google weather for Iowa City, IA

All clothing should be lightweight for summer weather! Remember, no laundry service - hand was only!

• Spiritual preparedness/inspirational ideas to share

• 1 Bible and Science and Health - chalk, quarterly/full text/My Bible Lesson

• 1 Science and Health - one you can mark in!

• Highlighter pen

• 4 writing pens

• Log sheets and/or journal for recording hours of service work and spiritual goal

• 2 pair LONG legged work pants - lightweight! (Required for work days!)

• Minimum of 5 work shirts - (for 7 days of work!)

• 1 long sleeved lightweight work short for sun/bug protection

• 1 pair of work gloves

• 9 pairs of socks (7 for work days)

• 1 pair of athletic shoes for work and play

• 1 hat for sun - baseball style works well - for work and play

• 1 bandana - for sun

• 1 swimsuit - for girls: one piece or if a 2-piece: board/swim shorts and a jog bra/athletic-type or tankini top acceptable, no bikini bottoms/string bikini/bra-type tops.

• 10 underwear - fewer if you hand wash

• 1 pajamas - appropriate for mixed company

• 1 nice outfit (conservative) for Sunday service @ St. Andrews

• 1 sweatshirt

• 1 rain jacket - lightweight for work and play (remember the flood was summer 2008!)

• Sandals/flip flops - (shower trailer is outside of main building)

• Travel clothes - to and from Iowa

• DB appropriate style casual clothes for playing, touring, and hanging out for 9 days - including 1 pr. long pants for air-conditioned lodging/restaurants

• 1 laundry bag

• 1 day pack

• 1 water bottle - 32 oz.

• 1 flashlight and extra batteries

• toiletries

• 1 bag for carrying items to/from shower

• lip balm

• sunscreen

• INSECT REPELLENT!

• 1 bath towel and wash cloth

• 1 swim towel

• 1 lightweight sleeping bag or blanket

• 1 set of twin sheets

• 1 pillow and pillowcase

• Money for incidentals, travel days, touring & souvenirs - $50-$60 

• MONEY FOR CHECKED BAGGAGE!

• NLC journal

OPTIONAL items to bring!

• camera w/film, cards, batteries, chargers, USB cords for uploading photos

• umbrella

• extra athletic shoes for playing/light hiking/other than work shoes

• playing cards

Transportation Information:

Arriving by plane or car:

2-4:00 PM - meet in baggage at Cedar Rapids, IA airport

For those departing by car:

2-3:00 PM - pick up inside Cedar Rapids, IA airport

DB Headquarters Info:

5201 South Quebec Street

Greenwood Village, Co 80111

(888) 416-7348 phone • (303) 773-0291 fax

www.discoverybound.org • info@discoverybound.org

Service Trip Location:

St. Andrew Presbyterian Church

1200 Melrose Avenue

Iowa City, IA 55246

319-338-7523 (9-5 CDT, M-F)

www.saintandrew-ic.org