The Good News...

...is that I made MAJOR headway on the seemingly insurmountable children's ministry paper today.  I changed the topic from second-generation immigrant cultural identity to "moving from cliques to community", which fits wonderfully with my very community-centered small congregation for that much-detested case study that was a surprise requirement of the paper.  Did that sentence make sense?  Well I understand what's going on, and ultimately that's what's most important.  None of you are going to read my paper.  In any case, today I acquired 9 typed pages of research from 10 sources, which will shortly be organized into outline form, from whence I will write the actual paper itself (this is my patented three-day paper-writing process, although it's going to be squished into two days in this case).  Hopefully I'll do that tonight (it's 11:45, but I'm not tired yet and it's all copy-pasting) so I can focus on writing tomorrow.  Ideally, I want to whip out a Theological Reflection Paper for my internship tomorrow (that little gem is due next Tuesday night at midnight, which is the day after I get back from Thanksgiving).  Needless to say, if I can achieve my ambitious goal of writing two papers tomorrow, it will be a very good thing...leaving me to focus on studying for my two December 5 finals and writing a final paper that is due on December 7th.  Follow all that?

I'm actually really hopeful about being able to write those papers tomorrow...I'm planning my strategy today, which was "Suck it up and just do it" (very profound, I know).  Thanksgiving break is a good motivator...nothing on my to-do list will be neglected, I am adamant about that.

In other news, week two of the kid's fellowship ministry I designed for the church where I'm interning was SPECTACULAR.  Literally flawless.  I couldn't believe it.  It was exactly how I envisioned it.  The kids were well-behaved, we had enough food, every kid had a seat at a table, the volunteers got to eat, the kids were excited to come back.  It was a beautiful thing.

Back to paper land.

Update:  I power cleaned.  And in an hour I had a clean apartment, and knocked 5 things off my to-do list for tomorrow.  Boo ya.

Success!

Today was the launch of a new children's fellowship ministry that I designed for the church where I'm completing my internship...and it worked!!!  I don't know if people (aside from my mother) fully understand how nervous I was about this.  I can design new projects all day, but implementing them totally intimidates me.  As was to be expected, there are some kinks that need to be worked out, but all in all I was really pleased with how well it went!  It's really cool to see a program that I designed come to life, and to see the kids enjoying it, and the adults appreciating it...and, this is the first big thing I've done at work that I completely came up with (as opposed to just doing things that I'm told to do).

Even though it went well for the most part, I was EXHAUSTED when I left work.  It's been a long time since I've corralled a large group of children, and it wore me out!  I therefore spent the afternoon on the couch watching mindless television and going out for celebratory Smores Hot Chocolate with a friend.  I skipped Bible Study because I was just too tired to go, and instead spent the night watching The Big Bang Theory reruns and painting glass jars into Christmas-y luminaries.  There's something very therapeutic about painting at the end of a long day...I ought to do more of it.  The crafting phase may be here to stay.  I'll post a picture of the luminaries once they're done - they're still in the process of drying right now.  It's not a complicated project by any means, but it's fun :)