This morning I found myself on a plane headed to Birmingham Alabama for staff training, I will spend three days there with my staff developing solid relationships with them, leaning more about my position and warming up to southern culture.
One of my favorite movies in the world is Elizabeth Town, I love the level it takes people too, I would consider it a more viewer friendly garden state. Near the end of the movie circumstances find Drew Baylor, a once wealthy business-man who recently floped, found out his father has died, reconnects with his family, and meets a fantastic girl all in an hour of film, at a cross road. He has to choose weather to morn longer over his father, and his vocational failures, or take what he has learned from the family that he was until recently distant from, Claire, and his father's life and turn a page in his own life. He is in the middle of a road trip that Claire has designed for him totally equipped with mix tapes, maps and notes with instructions on how to make the trip interesting (what a woman). Drew finds himself in a wooded path where Clare instructs him to dance with one arm waiving free. The scene is brillient. With no one watching (sans thousands of movie viewers) Drew cuts loose and dances around this wooded area with one arm waiving exuberantly in the air, its incredible.
What I find incredible about this scene is not necessarily Drew's dance moves or Clare's edgy charm. What I think is incredible is how accurately this scene depicts turning a page in life. All of us turn pages, big pages, small pages, pages we may want to return to, everyone does it. I have a tough time with this. I'm sentimental and want to hang on to everything and everyone. However, I have found that the best way to approach this is by doing just what Drew did, he counted his loses, but focused on what he was gaining from the situation and went into the next page dancing. I am not at all comparing my situation to Drew Baylor's, my father is alive and my job is secure, but a page is still turned.
As I began to walk down the coridor onto my first plane this morning a stranger would have seen a weird, entirely to awake, kid with a beat up backpack waiving his hand in the air somewhat victoriously. I however, knew that that hand in the air was me dancing into the summer with one hand waiving freely and shamelessly.
Monday, May 21, 2007
Tuesday, May 15, 2007
my first post
welcome to my blog.
I'm starting this mainly to keep in contact with close friends that I have over the summer.
as many of you know I will be leaving for gulf coast luisianna on monday. I have been given a job as a site director at the Youth Works site there.
Youth works has over seventy sites all over the United States, Canada, and Mexico. The organization invites church youth groups to come out and spend a week at these sites to participate in Children ministry, work projects, urban ministry and a variety of other types of ministry depending on the site. My site in Houma Louisiana will concentrate a lot on providing hurricane relief, and working with the local youth. The over all goal of all youth works sites however, is two fold. Youth Works strives to not only make a lasting difference in a community through empowering local leaders and churches with willing hands, it is also our intention to transform the hearts of youth. We want to get the youth to really think about issues like poverty, racism, and social injustice and our responsibility to these issues as Christians. It is our hope that participants are able to take the things they learn on their week long trips and use this passion to transform their own community.
My job will basically be to supervise and manage the site, work with adult leaders and provide leadership for them, strengthen community relationships, oversee each ministry site and complete weekly administrative functions, and be a leadership and mentor figure for my site staff. It seems to be the job of my dreams.
The past few weeks have been pretty crazy trying to wrap things up here at home (both Stow and Canton), and beginning to get in contact with my site staff and community members in Hauma. While holding down the fort for my Dad at the Hartville Market whare I have worked for the past two summers. My hope is that I will be able to update this blog fairly often when in Hauma to keep my friends and family up to date.
Blessings to all.
Ben Capps
I'm starting this mainly to keep in contact with close friends that I have over the summer.
as many of you know I will be leaving for gulf coast luisianna on monday. I have been given a job as a site director at the Youth Works site there.
Youth works has over seventy sites all over the United States, Canada, and Mexico. The organization invites church youth groups to come out and spend a week at these sites to participate in Children ministry, work projects, urban ministry and a variety of other types of ministry depending on the site. My site in Houma Louisiana will concentrate a lot on providing hurricane relief, and working with the local youth. The over all goal of all youth works sites however, is two fold. Youth Works strives to not only make a lasting difference in a community through empowering local leaders and churches with willing hands, it is also our intention to transform the hearts of youth. We want to get the youth to really think about issues like poverty, racism, and social injustice and our responsibility to these issues as Christians. It is our hope that participants are able to take the things they learn on their week long trips and use this passion to transform their own community.
My job will basically be to supervise and manage the site, work with adult leaders and provide leadership for them, strengthen community relationships, oversee each ministry site and complete weekly administrative functions, and be a leadership and mentor figure for my site staff. It seems to be the job of my dreams.
The past few weeks have been pretty crazy trying to wrap things up here at home (both Stow and Canton), and beginning to get in contact with my site staff and community members in Hauma. While holding down the fort for my Dad at the Hartville Market whare I have worked for the past two summers. My hope is that I will be able to update this blog fairly often when in Hauma to keep my friends and family up to date.
Blessings to all.
Ben Capps
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