It was another busy week here in St. Louis.

Work Week
All three of us here managed to settle back into our work routine. It all felt a bit ho hum after such an active Easter weekend but of course, there's always something to challenge and excite when you're starting a new job or pressing on in the world of non-profits.

Rachel--Aunt of the Year
On Thursday evening, Amanda's aunt Rachel settled into the VS house for the weekend. The
Mennonite Health Association was having its annual conference in St. Louis this year so we had the pleasure of hosting Rachel while she attended the convention.

On Friday evening Rachel bestowed upon the three of us two fantastic treats: Thai food and Ted Drew's frozen custard. For those non-St. Louisans, Ted Drew's is a local ice cream stand whose frozen goods are so amazing, you will immediately stop caring that you've gained 10 pounds since joining VS.
Saturday Rachel spent the day at conferences and the three of us enjoyed a quiet afternoon. When Rachel got home, we took her on a little driving tour of St. Louis before all of us headed out to witness Amanda's latest claim to fame. In fact, a few weeks ago, JD Martin and Jan Garrett asked Amanda to do backup vocals for them when they performed for the Health Assembly. JD Martin has is a singer/songwriter and has written several chart-topping county songs as well as having appeared on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno. Yeah, how 'bout that for friends in high places? So with a little "We're with the band..." all four of us were welcomed into a lovely dinner followed by great music.
On Sunday, after church, we all enjoyed the famed Anheuser-Busch Brewery Tour. St. Louis is the world headquarters of the Anheuser-Busch corporation and a free tour is offered to anyone interested in exploring the 100-acre (we kid you not) facility. Despite the irony of learning about the production of beer on the Lord's day, it was a fascinating tour and an interesting look at the history of St. Louis.
Following the tour, we quickly carted Rachel off the airport so that she could make her way home. We're sure she was happy to be going home but we would of have been ok with a few more days in her company.

Easter, Etc.

Well this has been a busy, busy week at the VS House

Tiffany
Tiffany's entire family (Mom and Dad, 7 siblings, 3 in-laws, 2 nieces and a nephew) came to visit her this weekend. Anytime a person goes from planning life around two people to planning life with 15, there's bound to be symptoms that resemble culture shock. So while dealing with all the issues that come along with trying to plan a weekend with 16 people isn't always easy, it was definitely a fantastic weekend for Tiffany. Between visiting the City Museum, the St. Louis zoo and the HeadStart where Tiffany works, Tiffany squeezed in time for quality talks with the family she hasn't seen in several months. Have her family there for her 21st birthday (Easter day) was so much fun and saying goodbye to everyone was emotional and only bearable with lots of reminders of the next time everyone would be together again.

Heather and Amanda
While Heather and Amanda's Easter was a little less rambunctious than Tiffany's, they also had a fun, relaxing Easter weekend. Amanda's friend Karie from her EMU days was visiting for the weekend so Amanda had the fun of showing a friend around our city. They also visited the City Museum as well as the Farmer's Market we VSers often frequent and the three of them spent a fun evening at our friend Dae's house.

Wind down...
As there always is at the end of a looked-forward-to event, the three of us are now working on settling back into routine. Tiffany continues to work on Godspell and trying to educate three-year-olds, Heather resumes adjusting to a new place of employment and Amanda goes back to the always adventurous world of La Clinica. And as we go through the motions of familiar routine, we hold sweet moments, hugs and special times close to our hearts...right where our loved ones always are anyways.

Thoughts

This week was fairly uneventful for the ladies of St. Louis MVS. So instead of our usual event updates, this week we're going to take our readers on a little tour of the inner workings of an MVSer.

Amanda
While it's usually revered as a very selfless, purposeful and positive place to be employed, working at a non-profit agency tends to come with more than its fair share of bumps and surprises. Amanda has been contemplating the trying world of non-profits this week. It seems strange that these agencies, so crucial to meeting the needs of everyday people, struggle just to survive the day to day. Money worries, space issues, meeting federal codes, staying on top of paper work, less than ideal working conditions and client needs are what non-profit workers walk into every morning. Why are those working for non-profits usually struggling to meet their own needs? Even more disturbing, why do the presidents, founders and board members of non-profits tend to be upper-class citizens who rarely encounter the populations which their agencies serve? Why does poor management and poor employee treatment seem so prevalent in the world of non-profits? There's no real answers to these questions nor is it the job of the MVSer to solve them. We know that our job is to be Christ's hands and feet where few toes dare to trod. But still, those thoughts go through our heads and we can't help wondering.

Heather
The real world. It ain't so pretty. Having recently taken that leap from the relatively secure environment of MVS to the "real world", Heather is finding out why that term is rarely said with anything but a sarcastic smile. Though a paycheck is no unwelcome sight to a former VSer, things like buying a car, paying rent and the always harrowing job hunt make the cushion of an expanding bank account feel more like the cold reality of a hardwood floor. It's been nice for all of us, though, that Heather is working through that transition while still living in our sweet, little community. It's nice to have the support of a church family and warm, familiar home to come home to. But even so, the real world will take some adjusting to.

Tiffany
Ah, the next step. No matter how many one takes, there's always that next one looming ahead of you. Usually right about the time you feel yourself confidently planted, there you are, dragging your feet up again. Lately Tiffany has been contemplating next years' plans. March is the 6 month mark in her year of service and has coincided neatly with the little flutters of excitement and fear for the future. She's planning to move to Oregon in September to live with her sister and some college friends. Seems pretty simple at face value. However, the myriad details involved are beginning to be revealed. While living on the west coast with some of the best folks in the world is going to be great for her, there's still always doubts. How does one confidently make a move? When do you get used to rooting and uprooting oneself? When do you become good at it? As a good friend of ours once said, time is a scarce thing; how does one choose where and with whom to spend it? We suppose however, that the true question is what you will do with that time, wherever you are.

Eloquence

A Job Where You Make Money
Heather got a job a this week! After a week of being our stay-at-home housemate (which Tiffany and Amanda were really starting to get used to), Heather got a receptionist position at an up-and-coming organization. She's back to working long hours only now she gets this really neat thing that she calls "a paycheck." Amanda and Tiffany are fascinated by this strange concept but Heather seems to like it.

Work
The work week passed with a few ups and downs. Amanda and Heather continued to attend step classes at the YMCA and Tiffany worked towards her goal of eating her weight in icecream. St. Louis had a big snow storm on Tuesday (if you're paying attention to detail, yes it was 70 degrees just two days prior to the storm) so Tiffany enjoyed a snow day while Amanda, being the courageous clinical manger that she is, braved the snow and kept the clinic operating. Besides that, the three of us tried to capture the interesting, the humorous and even the ho-hum moments throughout the week to remind ourselves that our lives are uniquely ordinary.

Friday
We had an impromptu dinner party on Friday evening, complete with homemade pizza, games and good company. It was a fun night with lots of conversation and some less than sportsmanlike conduct during a high-intensity round of Cranium.


Saturday
We started the weekend right on Saturday by completing a lot of chronically ignored errands. We took out our recycling (no small task after about 3 months of neglect) and ran around the area returning various borrowed items to neighbors and friends. To reward ourselves for our extremely responsible behavior, we had a marathon shopping trip. Funny how coming home weighted down by heavy bags serves to lift the spirits.

Monday...Oops
As our loyal readers (an invisible group in whom we will continue to believe) may have noticed, we are a day late in our usual blogging routine. We do apologize but we do have a very good excuse. On Monday evening we attended an observable reading by Anne Lamott. While we've all been exposed to her writing in some way, the three of us really didn't know what to expect. That turned out to be okay though, because the thin, 54-year-old, dread-lock sporting woman who read moving excerpts from her own books would have far surpassed any expectations we might have had. It was in fact, a night of inspiration and insight. More than anything, the three of us walked away from the event feeling affirmed in the eloquence of the ordinary. Anne Lamott reveals her life in the most honest of terms, unwilling to omit that which might not seem pretty or appealing. She exposes her life as the raw, dirty, chaotic wonder that it is in order that her readers might understand the beauty in feeling ugly and the relevance of feeling unimportant. And so we feel that an evening which inspires us to embrace the messy world in which we exist was worth one late blog. If you, our readers, feel otherwise, we recommend you sit down with Anne's latest, "Faith (Eventually)."

A Smile

The Mini-Musical
This week, Tiffany has been working on a her most recent creative endeavor. Amanda, Tiffany and some people from the church had discussed the idea of doing some kind of theatrical production at SLMF. The result of that brainstorm: Tiffany will be directing "Godspell: The Mini Musical" on May 11th at St. Louis Mennonite Fellowship. Thus, Tiffany spent the week researching, planning, emailing other creative sources and talking her housemates into contributing their own dramatic abilities.

Thai for Becca
On Wednesday, the three of us went out for dinner with Amanda's two co-workers, Lindsay and Becca for Becca's birthday. While it wasn't our original plan, we ended up a cute little Thai place. Becca, Lindsay and Amanda swapped work stories and Tiffany and Heather enjoyed hearing the latest about our favorite La Clinica characters.

Fundraising
Recently, Amanda and Tiffany found out that the leaders of MVS decided that each unit needs to raise $300 towards traveling expenses for MVS retreat. The two of them announced that they would be doing odd jobs for anyone in the church in order to raise the necessary funds. So on Saturday, they donned their painting clothes and headed out to their first of many random jobs. They painted a playroom for a family in the church while 5-year-old Abby entertained them with excerpts from her favorite "Rainbow Fairy" books.
That evening, La Clinica was also having a fundraising at a cool local venue. While Tiffany babysat for Tina and Kyle, Amanda and Heather went out to support La Clinica and listen to a local Brazilian band.

The Sun Shines For Us
Sunday was the most beautiful day St. Louis has seen in months. It was a perfectly sunny, 70 degree afternoon so we did what any young adult group would do on a such a lovely day; we went to the zoo. The three of us and several other spunky 20 somethings from the church battled the bad parking and stroller-pushing crowds at the zoo and were rewarded with sea lion feedings, crazy double-billed birds and some great photo ops. Amanda, Tiffany, Heather and Dan finished up the day at Pho Grand, our favorite Thia restaurant just a few yards from our house.

Lighten Up
The week, while not void of low points, was a welcome lift after last week's multitude of valleys.
We know that, even though we can't smile all the time, we can always find people ready and willing to give us reason to.