When I was a wee little thing, I was as shy as could be! (I still can be incredibly shy at times). One way in which my shyness would manifest itself was in a great dislike of talking on the phone (mainly because there was no way I could hide behind my mother's leg on the phone and have her talk for me). It was simply me and the other person on the other end of the line...no barrier, no blockade, just the two of us. (No Will Smith reference intended). As I grew out of my shyness, I still clung onto this dislike of speaking on the telephone. In high school over the summer months, friends would celebrate when they held me on the line for more than a half hour! One day, a friend was actually able to keep me on the phone for a whole hour! That hour long conversation remained my record for longest phone conversation until this year actually. Despite this aversion to phone conversations, I have found myself practically with one ear glued to my dumb phone (opp...
Businesses, corporations, stores, non-profits, religious orders. What do all of these have in common? Mission statements. A small phrase or sentence that encompasses what it is these groups of people have set out to do. FOCUS itself has a mission statement, as does our Team at MIT so that we might all be united. But I also, through the encouragement of my wise Team Director Joey Gruber, have created a mission statement for myself. What is mission? Why am I at MIT? Why am I serving with FOCUS? All of those questions are very succinctly answered in my mission statement. And I wish to share it with you: To boldly enter into students' lives in order to combat the lonely isolation created by today's society by sharing and witnessing God's unconditional, uncalculating, Fatherly love and by giving God permission to act through me. This is the thing that drives me. This is my purpose. This is my mission as Ann G...
Through Ann Brashares' series entitled The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants and Ken Kwapis' film of the same title, many young women have been learning what it means to be a "sister" to one another. From learning about what it means to trust your friends to learning how to continue to invest in each other from across the country, Tibby, Lena, Bridget, and Carmen grow in friendship and sisterhood over the course of the series. I grew up with these characters and admired their camaraderie; however, I have been learning more and more what their friendship was actually missing. Their friendship was missing the solid foundation of Jesus Christ. At FOCUS' New Staff Training (NST), we are divided into groups of about eight women or men, called colleges. This year I was blessed to live and pray alongside seven other women in the College of Saint Catherine of Siena (pictured below). And it was here that my definition and understanding of sisterhood began to deepe...
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