Moving to Amsterdam!

Dear Friends and Family,

Many changes have taken place in my life in the last few years. In 2007, I graduated from Wheaton College in Chicago, IL, and relocated to Southern California (Costa Mesa, to be exact) to pursue…well, nothing really. I had no plans in mind, other than being closer to home and near my brother and sister-in-law, Kevin and Rechelle, who lived in the area. I began working at MindFireInc, a software company, doing office management, marketing, and executive assisting. I got involved in Rock Harbor church as well as a small group, found some roommates through church, and got settled in.

I also volunteered at Mika Community Development Corporation (www.mikacdc.org) teaching English to Hispanic immigrants in Costa Mesa, and interned under Crissy Brooks, Mika’s Executive Director, to learn more about the community development process. I joined Mika staff for one year in June 2008-June 2009 as a Neighborhood Advisor for the Baker neighborhood, where I oversaw all the meetings and events that took place with the neighbors in that area. I intend to take this experience into a Master’s of Urban Planning program with a focus in Community Development in the Fall of 2010.

Which brings me to next adventure in life: Amsterdam. You may remember my summer trip to Europe in 2005 with Youth Hostel Ministry. The purpose was to stay in European hostels, befriending fellow travelers, with the intention of sharing Christ’s love and the Gospel message. Along our route was The Shelter City, a Christian hostel in the heart of Amsterdam, whose sole purpose of operating is to be a light for Christ in a city consumed by darkness. I have the opportunity of joining the staff at The Shelter City beginning January 1, 2010 until August 31, 2010. My responsibilities during this time will range from supervising cleaning crews to working reception to leading Bible studies. I will be living in a community house with 30-40 other staff members located about a 15 minute bike ride from the Shelter. To read more about the Shelter City and Youth Hostel Ministry, please visit www.youthhostelministry.org.

I’d love for you to participate with me in this ministry! Most importantly I ask that you participate through prayer. Although I will have plenty of support from the Shelter staff, moving to a different country, living in a large community house, and constantly serving is going to be an entirely new experience for me. Please consider committing to pray for me on a specific day each week. If you would, please let me know what day you’ve chosen so I can be praying for you as well.

Secondly, I ask that you consider supporting me financially. While on staff at the Shelter, I am technically a volunteer and will receive no income. The concrete costs I will incur are travel to and from Amsterdam, the cost of food while living in the community house, international insurance, and various other incidentals. For the 8 months I expect to live there, I’ve estimated my costs at $3,500. (I have a specific breakdown if you’d like more information.) If you feel led to support me financially, I’ve included instructions below to donate money.

I leave California on December 29, 2009 and will follow up with more details about how to contact me overseas.

Mikkele


Instructions for donating:
Unfortunately because the Shelter City is internationally based, donations made are not considered tax deductible. If this is the only concern keeping you from donating financially, please let me know and we can try to work something out.

To donate, please mail a check to me (or hand it to me, depending). You can make the check out to me and mail it to my parents’ house whose address I will not be placing on here for security reasons. If you need this info, post a comment or email me at MikkeleSuzanne@gmail.com

community in the truest sense

Last night I experienced my first Salvadorian/Guatemalan/Mexican Thanksgiving feast. There was salmon, turkey, ham, rice, potatoes, arroz con leche, pazole, and soooo much more. I ran into Walter, the new neighborhood advisor for the Baker neighborhood, at the Mika volunteer party on Friday, and he invited me to come. I was hesitant to attend because when I left in June I told everyone I was moving overseas (which I am, just not as soon as I had originally thought) so I thought it might be weird if I showed up. Either way, I agreed to attend, and the moment I showed up people literally jumped out of their seats to run and hug me. Before we ate, we all sat around (30-40 of us) and talked about what we were thankful for. The neighbors stood up and thanked me, the "mujer bonita" who spent hours walking up and down the street trying in my (very) broken Spanish to get to know everyone. I was overwhelmed by everything as I thought back to this time last year when I only knew a handful of people who had lived there for many years but didn't know anyone else in the community. I listened to stories of the parties they have and the weekly meetings they hold and the police officers that come to those meetings to build relationships. Some of the Baker folks are even attending bi-weekly planning meetings at the Mika office with neighbors from the three other Mika neighborhoods.

Mike Brumbaugh, a leader in the Halecrest neighborhood association across the street from Baker, was also there last night. This morning I received an email from him:

"My wife and I joined our Baker Community neighbors/friends last night for a Thanksgiving gathering and I could only compare it to how the very first Thanksgiving must have felt. Sharing a meal and conversation with new and old acquaintances gave chance to strengthen relationships. Everyone had a chance to offer what they were thankful for and one of the common responses is the relationship being formed by our community partnerships. My wife and I are blessed to have been invited to take part in the celebration and are truly thankful for the new friendships and the inspiration given to me to know the value of these partnerships. Friendship is gold and just as my wife and I were offered the many hands of friendship as we moved into Halecrest; we now feel the new friendships offered to us. Health and money are surely important but it is a lonely place without friendship. I sometimes worry about the things I don't have but then I see what I do have and realize how blessed I am to have such a great family, neighbors and friends."

Only by the grace of God can a white girl who speaks no Spanish and has no experience in community development walk into a community of mostly Hispanic men and women and form lasting friendships. I now know that no matter what I do and what adventures I embark on elsewhere, there are always people in the Baker neighborhood who will welcome me into their homes with open arms and no questions asked. I went into this neighborhood a year and a half ago hoping to teach others about community, but instead they have taught me.

fun with mystery google, part 2

this unicorn mission is turning into something incredible. here are some more of the received pictures:


okay i have no idea what this is but it FREAKS me out


this is not a unicorn. this is a horse.


this guy thought he was pretty clever


this also freaks me out


this is the funniest thing ever


and this person just needs to be a little less into harry potter.

more to come i'm sure.... to contribute, email your picture here.

fun with mystery google

so, for those of you not familiar with mystery google, it is a new search engine where you type in whatever you want to search for, but you get the results of what the person before you searched for. for instance, i just typed in themcmakens.com to mystery google, and i got the search results for "that is not possible!!":



my dear friend emily just tried something out on mystery google, and the results were AWESOME. she typed in the phrase "your mission: color a unicorn and email it to me" (with her email address). I don't know what her results were, but I do know that soon after she had these in her inbox:






the last one is definitely my favorite. if you would like to contribute, feel free to send your own colored unicorn to unicornmission@gmail.com.

the office in real life, part 25

Today one of our sales reps got this email from a prospective client who found out she lived in southern California. I removed people's names for privacy reasons. It definitely got forwarded around the office:

Hello ______,

I didn't see a link to click so I am just sending you a reply - yes.

I lived in a one bedroom cottage at the end of 10th St in Del Mar from 1968 to 1971. I was a student at Revelle College and had a part time job as a lab assistant working at STOR (Scripps Tuna Oceanography Research). The Munk Lab was always my favorite building. I took classes from Herbert ______ and had a nodding acquaintance with Angela ________, Brad ______, and Lowell ______ (The Insider).

Where I lived was called the Del Mar ghetto. My rent was $40/month.

My neighbors were Hawk who did light shows, John who did wood carving and made intricate women's hair combs from tortoise shell, Isaac ______ - a former bracero who married the landlord's daughter and worked now and again as a construction laborer, Mr. and Mrs. ______ - a retired couple, and Will - the local drug dealer.

Isaac also worked at the race track during the season. He was Mexican and strikingly handsome. We were friends. His English was fairly rough and I used to help him write love letters to the bevy of Anglo woman he met at the track who found him irresistable. He gave me a special discount on the rent.

His wife (there were no children) and father-in-law passed away. I imagine he sold the property and returned to Mexico a wealthy man because the five cottages and big house stretched all the way to Ninth St.

There used to be huge cypress trees and a wooden trestle over the tracks to the cliff. When the Santana blew you could see all the way to San Clemente Island. There was a horseshoe shaped kelp bed below with surf breaks (left and right) at either end. It was my special paradise. I could surf or go spearfishing.

At that time the cliff was about 60 to 70 feet wide and had a small structure used by the railroad. Now it barely exists. The ravages of time.

that which is rarely noticed.

When I was at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston last week I read this quote next to a photograph of a man walking down a semi-busy street, and I thought it just summed up my worldview so well--

"I focus excessively and dramatically on that which was never really hidden, but rarely is noticed."

--Philip-Lorca di Corcia

...and now I've been to Boston in the fall

I am currently on the tail end of a 10 day trip around the East Coast. Let me say, it has been SO FUN! so fun. I got to see Emily and Jeff in Virginia and meet all of their new friends and hang out with Jenna (Emily's sister) and celebrate her birthday. We went to the Atlantic and watched How I Met Your Mother episodes and played trivia at Buffalo Wild Wings and I didn't end up with a Virginia is for Lovers shirt (which I really wanted!!) but that's okay. [How did Virginia get the "is for lovers" slogan anyway? Why not Mississippi? Or Iowa? Or New Mexico? but I digress.]

We totally surprised Jeff on Friday by not telling him that I was coming and then (unintentionally) getting seated in the front row of the play he was starring in. He saw me towards the beginning and broke character for a moment but was quickly able to redeem himself and did a wonderful job the remainder of the show.



On Wednesday I flew to Boston to visit my good friend Ben. It had been about a year since I (randomly) happened to find out we were in Chicago at the same time and saw each other for approximately 30 minutes, and about 2 years since the last time I visited him in Boston. Ben and I have been good friends since college and our visits are always full of good conversations about theology and race and gender roles and the church, not to mention speaking truth and insight into each other's lives. I also got to meet and hang out with Ben's girlfriend Monica, who took this lovely photograph of us:



My friend Colin drove all the way out from Vermont to say hello, and we sauntered around the city on Thursday. Unfortunately, it was raining most of the time, so we didn't see a whole lot. It was fine though, because we just found fun things to do indoors, like hang out inside this covered bridge and watch people walk by:



Another good friend from college, Joel, will be driving out from Portsmouth, NH, tomorrow (Saturday) to pick me up and take me for a short jaunt around his city before flying back home to California on Sunday.

It has been an absolutely amazing trip. Everything worked out really well, down to the details of where I am staying (one of my college roommates lives in Boston now, so I am staying with her! not only did I get a chance to catch up with her a little, but now she is in Chicago for the weekend and left me with a key, so it's like having my own apartment in the city!) and the days people were able to meet up with me to ensure there were no days that I had to keep myself entertained while people worked.

I will post more pictures on facebook when I get home. Also, stay tuned for a post about my amazing Halloween experience.