Oh the weather outside is frightful

but the VSers are so delightful...

This week has been filled with holiday preparation, mostly including expanding our stomachs to a nice Christmas size, ready for mom's home cooking. Our counters are filled with food, which we don't quite understand seeing as we all leave in two days...looks like we've got some over indulging to do...we guess more than usual.

The highlights of the week included, snow, a good five inches of it which sent St. Louis into a frenzy. Amanda in particular was not a fan of scraping ice or walking through drifts of snow the size of her flats. Heather was not a fan of sweeping the sidewalk so Amanda could make it to the car but Tiffany on the other hand mocked the lack of snow and her roommate inhibitions. The week also included a food filled Christmas party, the monthly VS support meeting, movies with friends, and a hysterical children's Christmas program at church.

Basically we are all geared up to head back to our respective states for some holiday fun with our families. See you in the New Year!!

SLMF

St. Louis Mennonite Fellowship has a lot of perks. One of its big ones: variety. Variety of people , ages, ideas, perspectives and styles. On Sunday we had the pleasure of basking in the glow of our church family all day.

After church, Plowsharing (St. Louis' version of 10,000 Villages) opened exclusively to SLMFers. A portion of all sales that day would go to St. Louis Mennonite Peace Center (where Heather works). The store was full and we all enjoyed shopping for something of long-lasting value.

Us three VSers then, were invited to Dave and Pat Naffzigers home for an amazing pot roast meal. After some fabulous chocolate cheesecake and watching the last few minutes of the football game, we hurried home to get a quick nap before our next gathering.

Pastor Sam and Rachel were hosting a young adult Christmas party. The best and brightest of our church's self-defining young adults were present and the evening was packed with good food, trivial pursuit and some decidedly un-pacifistic rounds of mafia. As we drove home (around 11:30 PM), the three of us discussed the impressiveness of SLMF's young adult group. We're an admittedly small congregation but we do in fact boast a strong group of energetic, fun and (let's just come right out and say it) darn good lookin' young adults.

Even though being involved in a tight-knit church family isn't always flowers and candy, it's good to know you will never be far from wonderful friends, supportive arms and delicious pot roast.

People

Our week this week was all about connections, soul sharing and generally discovering the beauty of people.

Candles
On Wednesday, the three of us attended a Party Lite (a little company that sells nifty candles) party at our neighbor Tina's house. It was a fun little gathering of women brought together by a common love of a wax, flame and pleasant smells. More importantly though, Tina made amazing Christmas goodies and one fantastic cheese ball.

When You Least Expect It
On Saturday afternoon, the three of us plus our friend Joyclyn decided to go visit the history museum together. On the way we stopped at a restaurant that we heard was having free pictures with Frosti the Snowman. One fabulously festive/mildly embarrassing picture later, we were off to the museum. There we discovered little known facts about American history and the 1904 World's Fair in St.Louis.
Saturday evening we went to our friend Melissa Roth's house for a ladies-only dinner party. Melissa is a brilliant and sensational 44-year-old who lives with a couple of poets and Rodney, a decorator. Melissa invited several of her friends over and the group of us had a grand old time eating amazing food, solving one another's problems and vigorously discussing the frustration and beauty of the "adult world." As the night became later, Melissa's housemate, Rodney, came home. As it turns out, Rodney had just closed his decor shop that day and had lots of stuff to get rid of. We VSers jumped at the opportunity and, in a flurry of activity, found ourselves at Rodney's store, waist-deep in free decorations. At about 1 AM, we loaded an entire car with everything from baskets, to plastic poinsettas , to unreasonably large bolts of fabric. And by 1:30 Rodney was gone, leaving in his wake a whole new decor in the VS house. Sometimes you're not sure why you end up somewhere, or what the point was. And sometimes it's as obvious as the giant gold bow now resting on your front porch. And while the new look was cool, it was the new shimmer and shine we all felt, the refreshed and refined outlook on the world, that made the evening a succulent surprise.

Curry and Caroling
Sunday we invited Clay, Katie, Natalie and Elizabeth over for lunch. Clay has been coming to St. Louis Mennonite Fellowship for several weeks and attends St. Louis Bible College. We invited Clay to come visit and bring some of his friends from college if he wanted. Those friends turned out to be Katie and Natalie. Elizabeth, of course , attends our church and is just plain cool. The seven of us had a great curry meal (compliments of Amanda) and some fabulously enthusiastic discussion.
At about 4 o'clock, the three of us went Christmas Caroling with the church to two retirement homes. There was a great turnout and we all had so much fun singing timeless songs and sharing smiles with the energetic residents.

It's so easy sometimes to get into a really cozy pattern: go to work, come home, eat, talk with your housemates and go to bed. It's very easy to stay with a few people that you know and like and are so comfortable with. It's easy to not make connections. But there's something electric, something essential, about those new connections. A person is a vastly complex thing, overflowing with absolutely individual views, thoughts, feelings. And as we connect to those great complexities, we have each become deeper, fuller. Shared experiences become bridges and differences, gifts as we are allowed to see the world through a different set of eyes. Maybe visiting Frosti and sharing some curry isn't as big as all of that, but we think that's what VS is all about.

'Tis the Season

This week was spent diving head first into the beauty and brilliance that is the Holiday season.

Goin' Out
Wednesday night, the three of us enjoyed a VS rarity. We dug deep into our closets and found the coolest and classiest of our attire and went out for the evening to celebrate the beginning of the season. We went to a fun little Mexican restaurant and feasted on free chips and salsa and fried ice cream. It was a festive start to a lovely holiday weekend.

Turkey Day
Thanksgiving morning, we got up early to attend the St. Louis Thanksgiving Day parade. We braved the sub-30 degree temperature and were rewarded with marching bands, Shriners in little go-carts and many a waving beauty queen. After the parade, we went to our neighbors' (Tina and Kyle) house for Thanksgiving dinner. We had a great meal followed by a relaxing afternoon of conversation and card playing. Tiffany and Heather received a long over-due lesson in the art of Rook playing and some may say the student became the teacher when Tiffany pulled out a near-miraculous win.

It's Called BLACK Friday for a Reason
The three of us had decided to be adventurous and join the throngs of people in search of the best door-busting deals on black Friday. We left the house at 3:30 AM, determined to be the most hard-core Holiday shoppers you've ever seen. Like buffalo hunters armed with BB guns, we quickly found ourselves way out of our league. We walked into Kohls at 4:10 AM and found the lines already making their way around the circumference of the store. By the time we were ready to check-out, at about 4:50, the lines circled the outer limits of the building....twice. Our neighbor, Tina, bearing a considerably larger armload than the three of us, bravely volunteered to wait while the three of us explored the next stop on our list of conquests. Tina (bless her sales-driven heart) waited for an hour and a half in that line before we were reunited. The four of us spent the rest of that morning bravely battling lines, traffic and more than a few frightening female elbow-throwers. We went home that day at about 10:30 (do the math, that's 6.5 hours of shopping) with some great buys, great stories and great plans to sleep in next black Friday.

Looking Forward...
The rest of our weekend was spent taking naps, making pumpkin pie and pulling out a few sparse boxes of VS Christmas decorations. We cleaned, decorated, watched The Holiday and filled the house with Christmas tunes. Yeah, we like the Holidays.

As is the tradition with VS, our Unit Administrator, Immanuel Sila arrived for his annual visit this past Thursday evening to spend the weekend with us and check out unit life and our placements here in St. Louis. Friday, Immanuel toured around the city visiting our various placements, meeting our co-workers, and learning St. Louis history with his handy dandy tour guide Chris (our VS support committee chair). Of course as is also tradition we were taken out to eat at a restaurant of our choosing. The lucky winner was Fitz's, a unique restaurant located in a trendy area called the Delmar Loop, where they make their own soda, which of course we also indulged in. Saturday morning was started non-VS style with an early morning excursion to the Laumier Sculpture Park and tour of surrounding areas following by a nice lunch.

The highlight and lowlight of the weekend was definitely a Trivia Night with friends from church. Trivia Nights are popular events here in St. Louis where there are teams that answer together 10 rounds of 10 questions each, pertaining to various topics of pop culture, geography, history, songs, etc. Typically Trivia Nights are not ALL night events but this one seemed to be an exception to the rule. We had fun answering questions together but as the night wore on, the interruptions, stallings and broken sound system seemed to turn a fun Trivia Night into a Trivia Nightmare. We came away though with quite a killing of prizes including a super nasty smelling rose body kit, and a used smoke smelling deck of cards. I say we were winners!!!!

If The Shoe Fits.....Your Whole Unit?!

So what's cool about St.Louis? Well, we'll tell ya. The "shoe of shoes" that's what. On Saturday, we went to the Brown Shoe Company where, gracing the entrance, is the biggest high heel you've ever seen . The gigantic stiletto is actually made up of smaller shoes, about the number you might find at your local Payless Shoe Source. So naturally we figured, if a shoe is big enough to fit a whole VS unit, it would be poor stewardship to miss out on such an opportunity. Thus, the cu-nit climbed inside. VS is about looking at life in new ways and finding oneself in new situations. Well, how often does a person get to experience being a foot? Not so often, we would say.

In Other News:
We like it when our house smells and looks good. Even if our small monthly stipend doesn't always afford the same privileges for us, our house deserves to be pampered. This is our sentiment and as such, we spent much of our Saturday (when we weren't inside of a shoe) engaged in some seriously domestic business. The morning began with a marathon grocery shopping trip. After which, we split-up. The goal: a VS house face lift. Tiffany found herself scrubbing, dusting, vacuuming the heck out of the back portion of the house while Heather used similar tactics on the living rooms. Amanda, meanwhile, set to the task of creating the most perfect household perfume: fresh baked bread and granola. This task actually had double functionality. Our house smelled great AND as we rapidly consumed carbs, and we beefed up our winter insulation, saving valuable VS money that would have been spent on heating bills and blankets. At the end of the day, we had an amazing meal, the house looked great and we had fresh cookies, granola and bars on our counter. Not too shabby.

Supper Table Talk:
We like each other here in VS and we REALLY like eating. So dinner time is the perfect time to find out what each of us is dealing with and what concerns are at the forefronts of our mind. This week, we have been discussing issues of crime and poverty. All of us serve under-served populations through our placements, where poverty is often at the root of many issues. What does it mean then, for us to be involved in our work and our communities, while still keeping ourselves safe? Where is the line that divides healthy trust and ignorant behavior? As we grapple with these issues in our daily work, commute and home life we are thankful for the opportunity to experience first hand the struggles of so many in our community.

Woohoo we have a blog

So we have decided to start a blog, thus what you are currently reading, to update you on the greatness that is... St. Louis MVS.

Individual update time:

Amanda hails from Virginia, the most beautiful state in the world. For her second term of VS in St. Louis Amanda is working at La Clinica, a small Latino Community Health Center that serves predominately the immigrant and refugee population, as a nurse and clinic manager. On any given day you might find Amanda working along side patients and doctors, training new volunteers and employees, or meeting with other community non-profit organizations on co-operation ideas.

Heather hails from Iowa, the most beautiful state in the world. Heather works at the Mennonite Peace Center. The Peace Center office is located in Columbia Elementary School, which is one of the public schools here in St. Louis. It offers 3 main programs in the school; peer mediation, tutoring, and a school garden bed. The garden is our biggest program, so Heather spends most of her time in the garden with the students, planting, watering, weeding, or harvesting.

Tiffany hails from Minnesota, the most beautiful state in the world. Tiffany is working at Edgewood Children's Center as a teacher's aide in a classroom for low-functioning autistic children. This field of work is an everyday challenge/adventure as she delves deeper into the secluded minds of autistic children. She spends much her strategizing new communication methods, coming up with educational play ideas and planning ways to improve the classroom environment.

Unit Life OR The Fun That We Are

So, surely you are now wondering, well, what do these cool sounding people do for fun? The answer, my friend, is no short list. But to save your time and ours, here are a few highlights:

Festivals:
St. Louis has some pretty amazing street festivals during the summer months. In August and September we explored the Festival of Nations (in a park just four blocks from our house), the hot air balloon festival, Octoberfest, and the Taste of St. Louis festival. These exciting gatherings of St. Louis' finest are a great way to experience a condensed version of all the Gateway City has to offer.

The Rams Game:
You can keep your comments on the home team's current stats to yourself because we are die-hard Ram's fans. So when a member of our church offered us free tickets to a home game, we were there and we were pumped. Though the outcome was not ideal for our beloved players, it really lessen the volume of our cheers nor the excitement of the game. The good times continued with a great Canadian Thanksgiving dinner with our North-of-the-Border native church members.

Camping:
The city is great but sometimes three adventurous women need to get some space. Thus, our camping excursion to Meramec State Park. Meramec is a gorgeous state park just an hour or so outside the city. We spent two nights there eating campfire food, hiking, relaxing, reading, and eating some more. It was a chilly November weekend but we came prepared and never suffered few icy moments. The campfire and close conversation kept us warm and happy.

Pumpkin Carving:
Ahh, the Autumn. As we watched the trees along our street transform into bright, colorful collections, and as we passed by the overstocked costume aisles in every store, we felt compelled to celebrate the season as well. So down to the nearby discount grocery store we went. Fifteen minutes later, out we filed, each carrying our hand selected soon-to-be Jack-O-Lantern. We spent an hour the night before Halloween carving THE perfect Jack-O-Lanterns. Though, we may be a bit biased, we're pretty sure they're the cutest scary things you've ever seen. The following night, we overloaded ourselves with Halloween candy and adorable trick-or-treaters when we celebrated the night at our neighbors house.

We sincerely hope we've provided an adequate introduction to the lives we lead here in the the city of the arch. We do avow, to you our blog readers, to keep our little update space current. You can write some nasty posts if we don't. So that's it from us. Until next Monday :)