e-mail 10/6

Dear lovely Friends and Family,

When writing in my journal or handwritten letters I like to add in the physical context of where I am writing from. I am currently sitting in my room at Stony Point Center in Stony Point, New York with the window open and leaves starting to fall outside.

Last time I spoke to many of you I was in very different places so lets play a brief catch up.

From February until May I spent three months driving and staying with wonderful family and friends from DC to California and back. That was my last big e-mail and many of you I gave the blog- roadtripramblings.blogspot.com. Unfortunately, the blog didn't make it past Mississippi/ New Orleans. But I did with many more stories and totally filled with all the stories and love of all of you I saw along the way. Thank you!

I got back with my mom just in time to attend formal graduation and the next week found out I got a position with the Higher Achievement Program (higherachievement.org) as a summer teacher. So after two weeks of training I began a journey with some wonderful, inspiring, tiring, and challenging 5th-8th graders in Alexandria VA. I taught 8th grade Science, 7th grade Math, and a Newspaper elective and worked with an amazing group of people that cared about every scholar and supported each other. I had amazing support and dialogue and pray for new teachers that really don't have that but huge class sizes. I loved getting the chance to try teaching and hope the scholars got a few things out of it.
(Side note if you are in the DC area the program has five sites around DC and can always use more mentors one evening a week. If you are interested please see the website/ or let me know)

So now lets explain why I am in Stony Point. Some of you know I applied to be a Mission Intern through the United Methodist Board of Global Ministries Young Adult Programs. It has been a long process and I will be serving as a Mission Intern in South Africa with the organization SHADE for a year and a half and then a year and a half in a US placement site. SHADE has 27 sites in 20 countries throughout Africa. As I know it now I will be working with facilitating orphan programs in Malawi, Botswana, and Swaziland. This will entail working out of the main office in South Africa (which will be in Cape Town the first three months and then the office and myself and counterparts will move to Johannesburg) and traveling for probably two weeks to each site. Two other mission interns, JEN TYLER AND RACHEL KELLER will be serving at the same site but working on different projects. There is a chance two of us may switch when we get there and speak with our supervisors more.

As part of the program I am currently in training with the other Mission Interns and US-2s (domestic arm of program). We are also do some group sessions with standard support Missionaries and Deaconesses and Home Missioners in the UMC. And there are great stories here especially between all the different groups and I love the other Mission Interns and US-2s).

We are all being commissioned on October 13th at 7pm in Connecticut. But its supposed to be a pretty big deal and this year for the first time they are broadcasting it live over the Internet with twitter and facebook chat feeds. If you are interested you can watch at ummissionaries.org. (however it may be two and a half hours long!) Then I leave for South Africa on October 15th from NYC.

I hope that helps get everyone up to speed again. Ohh and I have no idea what my address is yet, but I am starting a new blog and am trying to change my blogging ways a bit to post more bits a pieces.

hannahatshade.blogspot.com

Thank you all for your support. If you have any questions please, would like to unsubscribe, or have a random thought please let me know. I hope everyone is doing well and other new adventures are starting well. Also if you are changing e-mails let me know and I would love to get home addresses.

Cheers,
Hannah