A Walk in the Park

We had such grand plans for this year. We were going to be so intentional about marking more counties off our tour list and enjoying adventures together. And we were doing pretty well...until mid-March when everything shut down. And right about the time things began to cautiously open up around here, we were knee deep in a move and double job-change.

You know what? It's okay! We aren't upset about it. Our time together in quarantine may have been in a much smaller radius than we planned, but it brought a beauty of its own that we appreciated. And the same is true of our move. It's been busy, but it's been good.

Even so, we have missed our adventures here and there, so we were really excited this past week, when one of our "weekend" days gave us a chance to have some hiking fun!

We learned about Metea Park...a county park in Leo, which is one town over from where we live, so I hopped online to learn a bit more about it. Unfortunately the one thing I did not learn from the site was that you had to pay an admission fee, so we had to turn around and come back home for cash before heading back to begin our adventure. After researching the Allen County park system as a whole, I found the whole fee list - but it wasn't on the individual park's page. All that to say - if you go, take $2.00 per person.

The park also has two entrances, but we did not figure out where to find the second one until after we left, so we have a few more things to check out on our next visit.

This park has trails, and while they aren't rugged climbing trails, they are very nice to hike. Some are out in an open meadow, and some are in the woods. We went on a hot day and found plenty of shade to wander around!

Here are some of the views we found:

There is also a small lake with a beach, and it was nice to see some families out there enjoying some swimming!

They had picnic tables there, too, though we didn't eat in the park that day.

We really enjoyed our time and would probably consider purchasing the annual pass so we can enjoy multiple hikes out there! It's a pretty nice park to have so close to home!

God Wastes Nothing

This probably won't be new information to most of you, but I am a firm believer in the power of a reminder! Whether this is new to you or merely a reminder, I hope it starts your Monday with some encouragement!

After my desert days (a decade ago now), one of my biggest prayers was that God would not let me forget the pain. It was more than fine with me if the pain lessened, of course, but I didn't want to forget it entirely. And as I made my way into a relationship with Ryan a couple of years later, I asked God to make sure I didn't forget what it had been like to be single. I didn't want to get so caught up in the answer to my prayer that I failed to relate to others still awaiting their answers.

But the truth is...

God wastes nothing.

We don't see most of His work while it's in progress. We plod along and live our days, and then a ways down the road, we look back and realize He was busy stacking up skills and lessons we would need for a future day. A day so in the future, we can't even fathom it.

This past week, I caught not one, but two glimpses into just how much He wasts nothing.

The first moment came Monday evening. One of our tenants had asked if I'd walk with her to Dollar General so she could get something she needed. I agreed, and we decided to meet at 7 p.m. to make our shopping pilgrimage. The skies began to cloud over, so I checked the weather. It looked like some pretty strong storms were due to roll in around 8, and I wasn't sure we could walk there, shop, and be home before 8. Since I wasn't eager to get caught outside in a strong thunderstorm, I told our tenant we could just drive instead of walk to make sure we were back well before bad weather hit.

But as we ambled down the sidewalk toward the van, the tornado sirens rolled to life. The skies didn't look any different than they had a few minutes ago, but I checked the weather again. A bright orange screen said TORNADO WARNING, so we did an about-face and headed back into the building.

Though I hate storms - tornadoes most of all - I felt remarkably calm in that moment. I was keenly aware that we were the leaders of the building, and the safety of all on our property ultimately fell to us. But you see, back in 2007, my sister and her family lost everything in a tornado, and in the months following, I learned so much about how to respond to storm warnings, get through a storm, and walk through the aftermath if the worst really does happen.

So I directed tenants on what to bring with them to the shelter. I gathered the things we needed. I stayed in contact with Ryan and our tenants away from the building. And when it was all over and we emerged unscathed (and thankful!), I began preparing some storm training to help teach others the same things I learned 13 years ago.

The second moment came a couple of days later, when another tenant, who was preparing to begin college, started talking about paperwork still in process for the upcoming adventure. I was sitting on the other side of the room, minding my own business when the conversation began, but I heard a couple of Financial-aid-ese words, and suddenly my head snapped up, and my full attention centered on the conversation across the room.

Before I realized what was happening, script-like sentences from my decade-old job surfaced, and I started talking in-depth about things I didn't even still know I knew in living color. For a moment, it felt like I was behind that desk in 240-F again, talking to incoming freshmen about the responsibilities of preparing financially for college.

If I really stopped and thought about it - I know I would come up with even more examples from this short time, where God has been so faithful to make moments from the past count for the present. He wastes nothing. He doesn't waste the big or the small.

He doesn't waste anything in your life, either. Everything you walk through is for some purpose. And now and then, you might just catch a glimpse of how He chooses to use it!

The Shafferland Shuffle

Well guess what this week has NOT been? Boring! What an adventure-filled week! Here's a look at some of what we did...

* We visited another church last Sunday morning and really enjoyed the service. We had a chance to meet a couple of the pastors, and they were quite welcoming. When we got home, Ryan made one of his famous breakfasts, and it was delicious! I'm glad he hasn't lost his breakfast-making touch. We took a little down-time that afternoon to rest, since we were in the middle of a solo work stretch, and then spent some time that evening with our tenants! One of them wanted to go on a walk with us - and we got to enjoy a beautiful sunset while we walked!

* Monday was full of meetings - one right after the other. We hadn't had that many meetings in a row since our training, I don't think. We finally decided to call it quits for the day, and right about then...the tornado sirens went off! We had to gather all our residents and a few visitors we had in the building - and take them to the shelter. I was so proud of how well they did! And also - it is the first time since 1996 that I've had a tornado shelter, and I am thrilled to have one. (I wasn't expecting to need to use it so soon after arrival, though.) Braeya, like many animals, isn't wild about storms, but she did really well. I was proud of her, too! All in all, the day lasted mannnnnnnnnnny hours, but I was thankful for safety for our people and our property in the storm!

* Tuesday was a MUCH nicer day outside! We had turkey burgers for lunch, and Ryan even sliced our first big tomato from our beloved plants. We successfully raised a tomato! That afternoon, WillowBridge received an amazing donation of school supplies, and Ryan caught me taking pictures of them. (I love school supplies - what can I say?! They're photo-worthy!) We ended the day running some errands - and that involved a quick dinner out. Out, of course, still means picking it up in the drive thru and bringing it home.

* Ryan spent part of Wednesday putting together our bookshelves so I could begin unloading the office boxes. I was so happy to have those shelves back! I worked on putting together a gift basket for one of our tenants who was leaving for college, and this included getting to sharpen a bunch of pencils! We tried to run a few more errands that day and learned that up here, Starbucks closes EARLY! We stopped at one location about 1:32 and a barista told us the car in front of us was the last car they were serving that day. She told us about a different location that she thought was open until 3. We squeaked in before they closed!

* Thursday was our last work day before our weekend, and we spent the afternoon celebrating one of our tenants' recent life accomplishments! The said celebration included Ryan jumping on the trampoline, and serving ice cream with the most delicious chocolate sauce I've ever eaten. We also had the chance to interact with some of our fellow Gateway Woods co-workers, and we really enjoyed that! Met some new friends!

* I spent all day Friday working on unloading our office boxes - and I got the bookshelves loaded. Felt so good to have all my book-friends back in their proper homes!! We're so ready to be able to consider ourselves completely unpacked and fully settled. We went on a sunset walk that night and OH my goodness - the sunset! It was so very, very beautiful! What a perfect end to the day.

* We had the day off together yesterday, and we took a little bit of time to hike in a park. It was a hot day, but it was a beautiful park - not that far from home! We had a great time exploring - and it was fun to have a date day after so many weeks of prepping, moving, and unpacking. :) And while it wasn't the most vibrant one I've ever seen, we got to see a rainbow in the evening, which was the perfect way to end the week!

So that was our busy and wildly unpredictable week!

The Saturday Six

One.

One of you asked this week if I would blog about what to take to a safe place during a storm - so I thought I would share a post I wrote a few years ago about that very thing! We had a line of bad storms this week - and I know it impacted a number of states, so it's not bad information to revisit!

Two.

 Are you an expert at sheet folding? I most certainly am NOT! We actually don't have a ton of sheets right now so that helps with storage. Not that you care, but when we moved, we downsized from a king to a queen bed, so right now we just have one set of sheets for our bed. (I just wash them and put them back on the bed every week.) Eventually we'll invest in a second set, but one is plenty for now. Our guest bed sits as a twin and expands to a king, so I have one set of twin sheets and I kept one set of king sheets to make it up at either size. We got rid of all the rest of our sheets before we moved. But I remember how BULKY some of them were in storage! I guess I needed this tutorial earlier.

Three.

Well isn't THIS a good idea?!?!?!!? Essential oils on little felt pads - like you would put on the bottom of furniture - to make a mini air freshener. I see this happening in our kitchen trash can. It's been a bit on the pungent side lately!!

Four.

Ryan and I have been super challenged in finding ways/time to work out right now. It's a priority for us to figure out as we settle into our new way of life. While hunting through Pinterest, I found this idea, and I thought I'd share it, because I know some of you struggle with being able to work out for any number of reasons. (Health issues, time, lack of equipment at home, gym restrictions because of quarantine, etc.) Probably over a decade ago now, I did some of Leslie Sansone's "Walk away the Pounds" workouts on DVD, and it appears she has really jazzed it up now! You can do a week's free trial and subscribe by month or year, and it's pretty affordable in my opinion. You can walk in your home (yes, it really does work!) and it looks like she's added in some things with curls and squats and such while you walk. Check it out if you need an at-home workout!

Five.

Ahhhhh, the hostess gift. I'm always looking for new ideas - and this was a good one - and inexpensive, too!

Six.

I'm not hurrying fall here. I love fall so much, but I'm content to enjoy a few more days of summer before it arrives. (Saw a house completely decked out with pumpkins on my walk last night, though, so I think it's officially been invited up here!) Anyway! I do love fall foods, especially pumpkin foods. And there was a lady in our small group who got me totally hooked on whoopie pies, so to find a pumpkin whoopie pie recipe was pretty exciting. I think this looks amazing.

Small Town Livin'

I grew up out in the country, and I didn't appreciate it nearly as much as I should have. I had all that wide open space to run and play. I had sunrises that I never saw because they happened prior to noon. I had sunsets that I never saw because I was probably reading. :)

When I moved out of my parents' house for college, I got pretty hooked on small city life. If I wanted Burger King (which I did, frequently, in those days), I could be there in less than ten minutes. A Polar Pop was just a couple of blocks away. Hobby Lobby was right there! I declared I would always live close to everything. It was the very best.

And for about twenty years, I lived in that small city - not loving the questionable neighborhoods, but loving the convenience of being close to everything.

And then we moved to Kokomo, which was just a rearranged version of the same life. Some things were closer. Some were farther away. But in general, it was the same.

And then we came here to Grabill, and I had no idea what to expect from small town life. It was an odd feeling from someone who is FROM a small town, but never lived IN the small town.

So far? I love it. I mean, I really, really love it.

We're just a short drive (in a couple different directions) from areas with stores and restaurants. We're less than a half hour from the proper city part of Fort Wayne, with all its shopping and restaurants. It's convenient. It's the closest we've ever lived to a large city, actually.

But we're in the small town. We can get everything we need, pretty much, within walking distance. And we do a lot of walking.

A couple of funny stories about that, actually...

Ryan and I came back from walking to some errand the other day (in the middle of the day, when it was pretty hot) and one of our tenants said to us, "Y'all do WAY too much walking." LOL!!! We love walking and have done a lot of it for our entire marriage, but we sometimes forget how strange that is for others looking in!

***

I picked up a tenant from work and she asked if I'd gone to the post office to get the mail. I had absolutely planned to walk there earlier in the day, but it was one of those days that just kept falling apart in schedule, so it didn't happen. I said "I haven't but I'll walk down there as soon as we get back." She said, "Or we could just drive there on our way home."

I cracked up inside because that truly had not occurred to me! I wanted to get back home to ditch the car and walk to the post office!

***

So clearly, we love our walking, and we love the quietness of the little town.

We love hearing the train blast on its way through - multiple times a day.

We love walking to the hardware store, and I particularly love it that the hardware sells honest-to-goodness butter churns.

We love walking to the post office to get our mail.

We love walking (occasionally) to the ice cream store for a summer treat.

We love quick trips to the grocery store for random supplies we didn't get on grocery day.

We love meandering through neighborhoods, checking out the pretty houses and picking our favorites.

We love hearing shouts from the occasional ballgame at the ballpark.

We love the pretty trail with all the wildflowers and the horses next door.

We love being within walking distance of the coffee shop!

And we love all the things we have yet to explore - like the little shops, the other ice cream store, the walking trail to the next town, and a couple more restaurants we haven't gotten to just yet.

It's a sweet little town, and I think this kind of livin' suits me just fine.

And here are a few glimpses of our small-town-life adventures:

Our First Community Night

One of the really great things about WillowBridge life is community night! We've been told they can take on quite a variety of forms - anything from a simple hang-out-and-watch-a-movie-together night to something that requires a little more forward planning. It gives the staff and the tenants a chance to spend time together and have fun while building relationships! 

This past weekend was our first time to plan one, and we had a great time with it! We wanted to try to find the balance between keeping it pretty low key (so no one felt nervous) and using it as an opportunity to learn more about these people we share daily life with. 

We thought it went pretty well!

I dialed back a little of the typical over-theming that I normally do for a get-together, but I did have a theme! Favorite things.

Our current group enjoys food and most of them are pretty good cooks, so we asked them to bring one of their favorite snacks to share. (They could make it or buy it - but we just wanted them to bring something they enjoyed.) We brought food too, and we had a little icebreaker game that was a mix of questions about their favorite things and would you rather questions.

We took homemade chocolate chip cookies and cheesy Mexican dip with chips!

Our tenants brought spicy dip, Pop-Tarts, ice cream sandwiches, and chicken wings! We had quite buffet of snacks going on in there!

Ryan led the game portion of the night, and he rocked it!

We loved the answers to the questions - and the thought they put into them. Even on the questions that didn't prompt them to explain their answers, they did, and they had quite a process behind every single answer! 

When we finished those games, they asked if we could play Uno, so we did! As expected, I lost (solidly) but we had a GREAT time.

And then they all sat around to talk for a while, and we loved that. We loved it that they didn't rush out - and we loved what we learned about them in conversation. 

Sorry we look so bedraggled. Second day curly hair, wind, busy days...and I need to cut my bangs. 

But bedraggled looks aside, it was a great night, and we were thankful for it! 

What's Up at WillowBridge?

Over the past few weeks, I've had a few people ask me if we are considered missionaries - meaning they want to know if we have to raise our own financial support and if we write monthly newsletters to a crew of people who have agreed to support us.

We don't have to raise our own support, and we don't have a newsletter mailing list, but I thought it might be a good idea to write one post a month that sort of serves that newsletter purpose. Even though those of you who read here daily will probably generally know what's going on in our work life, via random stories, this might help you better know what we're working through and how you can pray!

OH! And since I already have so many regularly scheduled posts that fall at the end of the month, I decided to do this one on the second Wednesday of each month - just to make sure the end of the month schedule can breathe a little! So here is a glimpse of What's Up at WillowBridge!

What's Happening Around WillowBridge?

* We haven't been in our full-time daily role here at the building for a full month yet, so one of the biggest happenings involves just figuring out what needs to be done and what kind of schedule to keep to make things run smoothly. It's a learning curve, for sure, so we'll have much more of this taking place in the weeks to come. The building is fairly new, so it doesn't have major issues or renovations that need to take place, but every building needs regular care and maintenance. Ryan is working on learning the needs that exist and making lists so that he and Tim (our co-worker) can take care of everything well. This place belongs to the Lord, and we're just the stewards!

* In addition to that, we've devoted a lot of our time to getting to know our tenants. Each of them has a unique personality (just like anywhere else in life) and a specific set of gifts and needs. We've been spending time talking to them, trying to learn how to best support them, and what sorts of things are important to them in life. We'll continue to do more of this in the weeks to come, too!

* While Ryan is brainstorming about the building, I've been doing the same thing in the office! I'm learning the administrative tasks and making lists of things that would be great to implement as we have time. (Case in point - I realized during our tornado warning this week that most of our tenants don't know what you should take with you to the shelter in the event of a storm. You know what? Until the tornado that took my sister's house, neither did I! Not really. Not the important stuff. So that's one of my near-future goals: to work on making lists of things to grab quickly in the event of an emergency.)

* Since the building is so new, the majority of the time has been devoted to making sure it has everything it needs to run smoothly, day-to-day. But no one has really decorated too much yet - so the place is a bit of a blank slate. Last weekend, I decorated the entryway, using some extra pieces that didn't really fit in our apartment. We've gotten a lot of positive feedback on the presence of a little life in the entry! It just makes it cozy and homey, and we are looking forward to doing a little bit more of that in the shared community spaces!

* We are also working on creating some social media pages just for WillowBridge. Currently we're an extra part of Gateway Woods' pages, but we are working on finding out what we need to know to have some pages specifically for our work - so those of you who love social media can follow us there and stay in the loop on what God is doing here!

How Can You Pray?

* We would welcome your prayers for us as we continue to learn as quickly as we can. Ryan and I are our own worst critics and put a lot of pressure on ourselves to learn as much as we can as fast as we can. We want to do well and minimize silly questions and mistakes, so we need every bit of strength and grace from the Lord!! Every single day brings something new for us to learn!

* We would also welcome your prayers for our work team as we continue to figure out our working relationships and friendships with each other. We are so grateful that the Lord provided co-workers who are not just great and helpful workers, but they're really fun to be with. We love our new friendships with them! We want those relationships to continue to grow and strengthen!

* We pray daily for our tenants - and even though you don't know their names, we invite you to pray with us for them! We have really loved getting to know them and seeing what God is doing in each one of them. And we are also praying that God will show us the best ways to interact with them and help them.

* We are also praying for a few more volunteers to help - especially with transportation. We don't transport tenants everywhere they go (they are responsible for finding some of their own rides) but currently, none of them have cars, so we do a lot of driving around here. Because we don't have a full house right now, it's manageable, but as we increase in tenant number, it will become challenging to juggle rides, we know. But we're praying for God to begin lining up those answers to prayer even now, so we'll be ready when we need them!