Happy Thanksgiving!

I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving weekend and were able to enjoy time with family, friends, and loved ones. It was definitely one of the more unique Thanksgiving days I have ever had, in that it felt much more like a regular day than a holiday. In the morning, I went with a friend to lower Manhattan to hand out bags of non-perishable food to people in need, along with serving coffee and bagels. After a few hours of that, we went back to my apartment for a lazy afternoon before going to a church up in Queens to serve dinner to approximately 200 people from that community. Even though it was different for me to not be with my family, or even my second family, the Foster's in California, it was such a blessing to be involved in both of these opportunities. I met some wonderful people with incredibly generous and loving hearts. Both the people who organized and carried out these events, and the people who were there in need showed me what the true holiday spirit really looks like. It was so great to see a big church putting on events like this and showing people Christ's love, not simply telling them about it.


Aside from that, everything else is a bit chaotic right now for me. Wednesday was my last day at the community service office, and working with CFL altogether, for that matter. I was so touched by the parties that each office I was involved with threw in honor of my time with them. The leaders and kids in the Wave group put together a fun little celebration with cake and other goodies, and games that we played as a group. They made me a bracelet with one bead to represent each of them, which I will wear as I make my way around the rest of the world, and made me a card that they all signed. At the CSP office on Wednesday they gave me a couple cards with some small goodies, and we played games and just hung out together after all the clients had been taken care of. After closing up the office, I was taken out for my first experience with Puerto Rican cuisine. Wow, do they know how to eat or what? On Monday, I plan to have a final debriefing session with the directors of each office and the director of CFL as a whole, where we will discuss my experiences and my reactions to those experiences.


Also, next week I plan to take a bus down to Philadelphia and Washington, D.C. I want to see these places and use the few days away from the city to process and organize the last 10 weeks. I hope to spend some time with a good friend of mine in D.C., and outside of that I will just spend time by myself, journaling and praying. I am very much looking forward to this because it will give me a much needed opportunity to take a deep breath and take a tough, honest look at this situation from the outside. Being in the midst of the chaotic whirlwind that was the last 10 weeks has made it really difficult to do anything but simply react. I will have a final write-up analyzing the types of issues and programs I have just experienced, as well a specific write-up for CFL that I hope they can use as they continue to grow and improve. Being a part of not only helping them first hand, but also giving them my thoughts and ideas that can potentially help them perform better is so exciting.


That is all I have for now. I will share whatever thoughts and analyses I come up with over the next week, and until then, I hope you all enjoy the rest of your weekend and have no trouble getting back to work and the rest of normal life next week. The photo at the top is of me with two of the turkeys we had donated to us, that we then delivered to local families. We were able to order 40 more turkeys, thanks to the generosity of a few people, but they were not delivered to us in time for the holiday, so we will pass those out for Christmas. The next photo is of the dinner that we helped serve. You can see how packed it was and what a great environment it was for everyone. Then you can take a look at all the kids and the other leaders of the Wave group. In an effort to quickly explain my facial expression, we decided we were going to do a goofy one, but I think they set me up because I was about the only one to do so. Finally, there is a shot of the table that we were using to pass out the bags of food and hang out with people in the community. Have a great week!