Coming to a Close...

We had to say goodbye to one of our friends from ECU today. She is one of the bubbliest, and most beautiful people that I have ever met. I absolutely love that I will see her again some day though, either at a Project Reunion or in Heaven. She is leaving early for a wedding, and then RA Orientation. Two more people from ECU will be leaving soon for the same reason.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. We should start with Sunday.
Sunday was the usual: church, Prayer and Impact Team meetings, and Project Fun. But this Project Fun was structured a little differently. We split off into guys and girls and we had men's and women's time. The guys played touch football in the park (I only know this because it was on Facebook), and us ladies did something ultra special.

 It began by being told to bring a mug, and to dress comfy. When we got downstairs, we were told to pick out a bookmark, and then find our names at one of the blankets. Believe it or not, I just so happened to pick out the bookmark design that matched my place card. And they were cut from right next to each other too! We got cupcakes, and just chilled together for a while. We finished this section of the night by writing encouraging notes on the back of each other's place cards.

So cute right? After this, we made an encouragement web! I don't have any pictures of this, but it was basically like a spiderweb with multicolored yarn. We passed the ball to someone we wanted to encourage and then sat down. We did not have nearly enough yarn, but somehow Jesus made enough. It was a 5 loaves and 2 fish incident!
Our theme for the night was "Our Beauty in Christ", and it was just so great to be with other women who desperately want to follow the Lord.

Monday was a nice relaxing day. I spent the morning crafting, and then we had pizza as a Project and our Monday meeting. Our theme this week has been "I AM: love", and it has been really cool to look into how God is love more deeply without glazing over it as I sometimes do.

Tuesday was another campus day. Katelyn and I shared, and since it is exam week, we did not find many people who were willing to talk with us. It was still a successful week though because we initiated conversations. Our Action Group was a little different that night as well.

 We had a picnic! As you can see, our view of campus was super pretty, and I got to spend the evening with some super awesome women of God. I have come to love these girls insanely and will miss them like crazy. And look...

Roommate pictures! Katelyn and I are on the left, Jaz and Hannah are on the right.

 Wednesday was a little interesting. We did an outreach with Cru's Soularium on campus. We put pictures on a board and when people where interested in what we were doing we went through the survey with them. More people were on campus on Wednesday than Tuesday (as is usually the case, it was just amplified by finals week) and the outreach was very successful. We had a lot of interesting conversations. Our last Encouragement Meeting was at nine that night, but the Prayer Meeting was a little different. Due to several last minute complications, we could not have it on Tuesday or Wednesday night. Instead, we had it during our weekly Night with the Lord. We told people that they were free to come, stay, go, or just have their Quiet Time in the meeting room, and if they wanted prayer for something specific we would be available to pray with them. It worked out so well; we wish we'd been running it this way the whole time!
Wednesday night we planned an apartment "Block Party". People in our apartment complex don't care for us that much, so we threw them a party! Free pizza (I was in the group that went to get the pizza and everyone on the trains wanted to be our friends by the way), free snacks, free pop, and hang out. It was really well and a ton of people were there! Too bad we're leaving next week though.

Thursday was my last campus day. It's sad to think that my time sharing at the University of Illinois at Chicago is over, but God has lights there to continue His work. And who knows, maybe I'll come back some day! My only conversation the whole day was with Mayra (the girl with whom Katelyn and I had been continuously following up). We had a surprise when we saw her.

She made us chocolate roses! They are so cute; I can't even handle it. Katelyn didn't get to spend the whole time with her, but I did. We went through the Satisfied booklet (a tool Cru has that explains more clearly how to live a Spirit filled life) and then had a teary goodbye. I'm going to miss that girl.
Our dinner Thursday night was Polish food, and it was delicious. I had sweet cheese for the first time ever. It was interesting, but that is definitely not how sweet normal cheese is (you would think that I would have known that by the name "sweet cheese", but it still surprised me; it was that sweet). Our meeting was fun, and it's so hard to believe that it may be the last one that we have!

And that brings us to today.
We said goodbye to our dear friend Lindsay this morning, and then I had a knitting/crocheting party in my room. Only a few people came, but we had a blast either way! Tonight I am going out to dinner with some people from Project, and then will be crocheting with a girl who missed the party because she had to work. It was her idea and silly me scheduled it at the wrong time! Oh well; I'll see her tonight.

So that's all Project wise. Craft wise I finished this:

This penguin was created for my friend Courtney. I made her the Amigurumi Snowy Owl, but she cannot find it. Our theory is that one of the staff kids took it before they left (which is totally okay with both of us), so I asked her what she wanted and she asked if I could make her a penguin. He took me roughly three hours (I was timing it exactly, but them my computer decided that it needed to update, successfully restarting my stopwatch), and he turned out super cute! If you would like to see more pictures, you can check out my Ravelry page for him.

I also made this unicorn. There are many things I would change about this if I were to do it again, and quite frankly I do not enjoy that the neck is its own piece, but overall this pattern worked up nicely. How to attach the mane and tail is not clear, and how I attached them is most certainly not child proof, but I believe that to be okay since it was made for my friend Tommy on Project. Anyway. If you would like to see more pictures, or read my notes, you can check out my Ravelry page.

That's all for week nine! Until next time!
Jenn