The World Series

Wednesday evening brought the conclusion of this year's World Series, the images of which will likely be imprinted in the minds of million's of people across the nation. I am not one of those millions. As a staff member, I could have watched it, but a mild interest in the series led me to witness to final strikeout in a way I never quite had before.
I was in the second floor of the Carriage House. With two participants who are Phillies fans. Listening to it on my radio. Which I was holding above my head in the one spot that it could pick up the radio station. We had gone through the FM and AM stations several times before we finally found the game (which we knew was in the later stages) as the ninth inning started. When we found the right station, I had to try to find a spot where the radio could pick up the station at least decently. I found a nice spot about two feet above my shoulder. I held it there, and the Rays put the tying run on second with two outs. The potential final batter came up to the plate...and the reception went to almost none. I frantically started lifting the radio up and down (mostly for the benefit of the Phillies fans there, not so much for mine) and finally found another spot that picked up the station. After strike three, the two Phantics ran out yelling and I was left to ponder the depth of my bad luck as a sports fan. I basically follow baseball and football, and follow two teams from two different cities (Baltimore Orioles, Philadelphia Eagles). As of Wednesday, I have, in my sports concious lifetime, witnessed championships by a Baltimore team and a Philadelphia team. But not the right ones. It's almost like missing a coin flip lottery twice. Hmmm...
But yet, somehow life seems to go on (to borrow a Phelpsulous line from Calvin and Hobbes). I'm still here at HDC. I'm still serving in the same ways as I was before. And life is still good. Maybe now I'll start following the Bass Fishing Championship.

Volunteer Staff

Here's the funny bunch. Left to right: Myself (Community Outreach, House Keeping), Audrey (Kitchen Coordinator), Ryan (Manager of Maintenance), Jacki (Office Assistant, Hospitality), and Erica (Training Assistant).

Ummm....Update #...4?

I'm feeling the need to update, but not feeling very inspired, so I'll just give a quick list of what's been happening and then rumble my mouth off about something.

-Teams Spain, Kenya, and Guatemala just got back from the Bronx, where they've been since Thursday evening on a mini outreach. From the few stories I've heard, it seems like they had a great experience and had some good chances to talk to people about what they're doing and why they were there.

-Teams China, Pakistan, N Africa, and Honduras are starting to get back from their backpacking/team building experience on the Appalacian Trail. I'm looking forward to hearing some of their stories.

-We as staff enjoyed a quite weekend with an empty HDC. Not to say we were glad to see the participants leave, but it was nice to have a bit more relaxing of a weekend.

So, yeah, I think we're all feeling a bit more refreshed after the weekend (staff that is, the back packing groups are in need of a little rest, I'm sure). Our activities included trying to give each other rides in a huge bear bag with shoulder straps. That was fun. I didn't really fit in it that well, so I didn't go very far, but Audrey (kitchen coordinator) gave Jacki (office assistant) a decent ride, despite almost launching her into a wall while trying to sit down on a sofa. That reminds me, I should really put a staff picture on here sometime. I don't think we've taken one yet, so once that happens, I'll try to remember to put that on here.

Yesterday afternoon, we went to Operations Manager Andy Hock's house for lunch and stayed there for a while talking and stuff. It was fun getting to know him and his wife a little more.

Okay, this isn't turning out to be very informative, so I'll put a cap on this entry.

Fun in the Leaves

Fall is here, all of the participants are away (in New York or Backpacking), and the yard was covered in leaves, so I spent this afternoon "re-greening" the yard. This resulted in several sizable piles, and afterwards, some of us staff and director Chris Epp's family took advantage of the opportunity.

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Whenever I have a mind blank, or can't think of something to write, the result is usually: jfjfjfjfjfjfjfjfjfjfjfjf. It is normally deleted (and sometimes repeated), but I thought it would be an appropriate title since I can't think of a creative way to say, "What has happened during the last two-and-a-half weeks that I forgot/was too busy/was too lazy to tell you about, but since a number of things have happened since then I'm not going to bore you with the minute (this is supposed to be the word that is pronounced "My newt" but I can't think of a different way of spelling "minute") details of each of our activities, so here is one of the last couple week's events (and maybe a few thoughts on some others):"

(note to self: just think of a title next time. Doing it this way is much more complicated)

Monday night started off as an interesting cross cultural simulation courtesy of Darryl Hostetter, our speaker that afternoon and a former missionary to Swaziland. We met in "the upper room," a room set aside for prayer and special events, in the setting of a church meeting in Swaziland. Participants were put in situations that they might (or might not) be in during outreach, such as being asked to give a short devotional on the spot.

The evening progressed from a time of sharing, to a time of worship and offering, to a time of praying for people. It was the prayer time that really made the evening memorable. The center of the room was opened up for anyone who wanted prayer. In the end, only a hand full of people were prayed for, but what a powerful time it was. I'm not sure how much I can really say, for confidientiality (wow, that's an awesome word) reasons, but some of those who were prayed for have been dealing with/working through some really, really deep stuff. I can't say how impactful it was for them; I'm not them. But I have a pretty good guess: incredibly impactful. For one participant, it was realizing that people believe in him and support him. This may seem simple or trivial, but for this individual, I think it was huge.

-Ben

In the Beginning

Week 1 is complete, and we are two days into week 2. I had a great first week, and I think the participants would say the same. Activities ranged from fun activities (Olympics, flag football, and "Capitol Chase," an event in which staff and team leaders scattered ourselves around the capitol area, dressed up or disguised in some way, and the participants tried to find us) to powerful sessions, in which, as one participant put it, "the speaker said we were free to go to lunch, and no one moved."

Seeing the teams start getting to know each other and bond has been especially exciting for me to see after last year when my team leader got there three weeks after training started. I remember that during those three weeks my team mates and me being kind of unsure how to start to bond, knowing that someone else would be coming at some point. So to see teams already past just "getting to know each other" this early is pretty exciting for me to see.

One of my big projects this past week has been helping to set up community outreaches for the teams. I was kind of worried about my ability to adequately assist the teams in finding locations for outreach depending on their interests, but God has blessed me with an amazing contact for outreach locations, a little bit of personal experience and knowledge of outreach locations from my training, and some teams that have had the initiative to take some ideas and run with them themselves. So today, most of the teams started their community outreach assignments. We are still working to finalize and concretize plans (umm, put plans into concrete form), but we are farther along in the process than I thought we might be at this point, so I'm excited.

-Ben Herr

HDC Olympics

It has been a busy past couple of days, marked by the arrival of the fall training YES (and STEP) teams. There are a lot of things that could be mentioned, but I'll focus on one event that started as a passing idea a couple weeks ago.

We as staff were talking about who knows what when the idea of doing an Olympics with HDC related events came up. We did some brainstorming and came up with the following events:

Short Track Van Racing-Before you picture people driving vans in circles, this event is based off of short track speed skating. In this event, contestants raced around our big van, Oscar, five times, advancing through heats and semi finals.

Van Slalom-A timed run through the row of vans in the parking lot out back.

Team Leader Van Parking-Team leaders (being the only ones with driving priviledges) get twenty seconds to back a van into a parking space (a skill that they will have to use many times over the next couple months) and scored by how many inches off of the "perfect park" they are.

Round Robin Ping Pong-The classic ping pong for many people game.

Synchronized Laundry Folding-Different articles of clothing/laundry are given degrees of difficulty, and the performance is judged by synchronization, flair and creativity, and quality of folding. We had some doubts about how this would work, given that the teams only found out about the olympics a day ahead of time, but were very impressed by the effort put into it.

Country Find-Contestants try to be the first to locate a country (or landmark in the later rounds) on a large world map after it is called out.

Sword Drills-Contestants try to be the first to find a passage of scripture after the reference is given.

At the end, medals (circluar pieces of wood cut out with a circle drill and painted gold, silver, or bronze) were given to the top three performers in each event as well as to the teams that cululatively scored the most points (3 for gold, 2 for silver, 1 for bronze)

In the end, I'm not sure who had more fun, the participants who competed, or us staff who got to see about two or three weeks of planning play out. For both groups, I'm sure, it was a fun evening with memories created. Following are a few pictures from the festivites. I don't personally have pictures of many events due to making sure everything was working, running some of the events, and judging some.

Above, the HDC Olympic logo projected for the opening ceremonies (in which we spoofed off of the Beijing Olympics with a drum routine, had a parade of nations, and lit the olympic flame below)
contestants round the first corner hard in a short track van racing heat
round robin ping pong
The crowd enjoys watching synchronized laundry folding
Oh, yeah, for those of you interested in how your Mountville Mennonite Church representatives did,

Jamila took the Bronze medal in the Country Find,

and Sarah took the Bronze medal in synchronized laundry folding, along with team mate Melanie.