A quiet day at the office...

I'm making an attempt to update this blog more frequently instead of one big update every so often. It's proving especially difficult because a) its Winter and the lack of direct sunlight really zaps my energy, and b) we spend a good portion of the cold months in the office working on the plans for Spring through Fall while also having programs inside the building. I guess it doesn't help that I keep playing music like The Swell Season, and other slow moving musical groups.

Today we are working on several things. Rachel is hammering out a rough budget for the co-op/gap year house, while I am promoting some of our existing stuff like Dodgeball, the concerts, and more.

Two cool things happened today.

We met with Gary Ashley from UM Flint about their Alternative Spring Break. We're going to be partnering with them by providing a work site (the house we are gutting and looking to acquire) and they will be recruiting students to work on the site from March 1st - 5th. This helps us out a lot in not having to do a ton of promotion for the Salvo Spring Break, especially with the baby's arrival a little over three weeks away! We gave Gary a tour and talked about other possible ways we can partner with UM Flint to contribute towards urban renewal.

I also received a call from Jon Taube who is working at a corps in the NW suburbs of Chicago. He is looking at ways to bridge people from their community in with the corps through existing ministries such as day camp, and through new avenues such as after school program and a possible summer lunch program. It is encouraging to know that there are people out there who really want to dig deeper into their community as we have done here. I look forward to hearing what fruit comes from these new ventures.

This weekend will be a quiet one at the corps. A few of our youth are going to Re:Generation, and the schools have a 4 day weekend, so there is no after school program Friday and Monday. This will mean lots of time to work on our own house getting the rooms ready. I took a personal day yesterday to finish gutting our (soon to be) bedroom down to the studs. I am going to re-wire the house room by room, insulate the walls, drywall, and add new carpet or flooring. I also scored some windows from the Habitat ReStore. We desperately needed new windows because they are caked in lead paint. Our doors will need to be removed too. Habitat is awesome, and their ReStore is also. You should go there if you are in need of house materials. This helps to sustain their work in our neighborhood.