"Early to bed, early to rise, makes a (wo)man healthy, wealthy and wise." Benjamin Franklin
I don't know about the last two of that statement, but I am definitely starting to feel like my old self again after forcing myself to go to bed at 9ish the last few evenings to try and kick whatever has been kicking my butt.
Feels good to be writing again.
I've been sooooooo busy! At my part-time gig at CrossRoad Ministries, we're preparing for their annual Family Fall Festival (a safe alternative for children Pre-school through 5th grade) which takes place this Saturday, October 31 from 6:30pm - 8:30pm a the CrossRoad Learning Center preschool's Gym located at 15916 Crenshaw Blvd., right across the street from El Camino College.
It's free - come on by!
Previous years have had upwards to 800 attendees because CrossRoad Ministries includes two schools - a preschool called CrossRoad Learning Center, and an elementary school called CrossRoad Christian Academy.
The church does a major outreach to the local neighborhood hand-delivering invites with little bags of candy corn attached to get the kids excited about attending. If the Easter Seal Volunteers enthusiasm about preparing the invites are any indication of how children will respond when they receive these invites, then we should have another great turn-out.
I also sent out a press release to the local media to help promote it, but in light of tightening space due to low advertising sales and other similar events, not sure it will get picked up, but remain hopeful.
I am really blown away by how giving all the people at this church are with their time and candy donations. This is only a sampling of what's been donated! The Easter Seal Volunteers have been great too. They're so happy to help and really do a nice job.
This was the second Easter Seals group to come through to help staple the candy corn packets to the orange invite which reads: "Join us for a corny good time at the Family Fall Festival" with the details of the event.
Having never worked in a church before I had no idea what to expect and have been happily encouraged through this experience. For those of you curious about what I'm doing now, I was hired as a part-time Administrative Assistant to the Pastor of CrossRoad Ministries, Scott Fairchild, who is a great guy.
I like to call myself a real live "church lady" now and have been working on cleaning up my language. lol I remember always teasing a teacher in high school for using the word "damn" and he always told me it was the other use of "dam". Now that I'm working in this environment I realize how much I used to say it too.
Not no mores!:) I like training myself to be a better person and this job is perfect for that. My weekly responsibilities include preparing the administrative aspects of the Family Fall Festival - i.e. copying and preparing the invites, overseeing the volunteers, creating bags for distribution to the neighborhood, copying and preparing the registration forms etc.
Then on a completely separate basis, preparing the weekly bulletin which for those of you who don't attend church, or know that term, it's a weekly marketing tool of the church to promote and advise attendees of what's happening in the church.
Here's an example of the front which shares the message theme that Pastor Scott is speaking on: You may recognize the image from the cover of Max Lucado, a famous Christian author/speaker's book by the same name, Fearless. I believe the sermon series is based off the book, but I'm not positive since I only work there, it's not where I attend which keeps things clean.:)
I buy the bulletin paper from a company called Outreach. Here's an example of some of the announcements I write and/or edit and highlight each week based on what the Pastor and others provide for inclusion:
There's always something going on!
I also prepare the weekly PowerPoint presentation of all the announcements which includes finding interesting background images to highlight what we're announcing which is fun to do.
It also means downloading the worship music the new Worship Music Leader, Dave Ower, has selected off this cool website called www.worshipteam.com. Who knew there was cool software for the church community too? I had no idea the level of sophistication available. Sure makes life easier. I'm getting better at using PowerPoint too which is great!
Really helped when I was preparing my presentation on Blogging: What's the Story? which I recently gave for Blitztime's Women in Biz group. If you've never experienced that online networking site I recommend checking it out. At least once. Still undecided on whether or not I like it for long-term use, but it was definitely interesting.
I spoke for 20 minutes on Blogging (you can find out more details on my seminar on my professional blog here: www.thejoywriter.typepad.com/thejoywriterpr or by clicking here) then heard a quick recorded commercial from someone in the group before being connected to another attendee for a timed six minute "networking" session.
This repeated three times and then we all came back together for the final wrap-up. I was expecting questions during that time, but either no one had any, or the leader forgot since she basically pitched her group and other networking opportunities on Blitztime for the remaining time.
Interesting group of women participated and it was nice to have immediate feedback on my presentation with those I did network with. Very gratifying to hear people enjoyed it because I spent over 10 hours preparing for it! Now to take it on the road.:) Or at least to some of the local learning institutions I have relationships with to teach this course with them.
I'll keep you posted. Back to CrossRoad Ministries.
Who knew working in a church was like working for a major corporation? Especially this one since there's two schools in addition to the church. Fortunately everything is run by two very competent independent school staff. Our office hosts the business office manager which is why that type activity still comes through here though.
This week I'm preparing the November/December birthday cards for the congregation. I've also updated some of the marketing brochures, handled correspondence with the shut-ins, distributed mail, answered phones, greeted visitors, in addition to all the other administrative duties you would expect in this type job.
It's been fun seeing the inner workings of what is involved in running a church. Never in a million years did I ever anticipate working in a Christian environment, although I've been one for years.:) I enjoy the spiritual aspect and the knowledge that what I'm working on is benefiting the congregation and community. Makes me feel good like what I'm doing matters and is in line with my beliefs too.:)
Very nice people for the most part and the days fly by. It's kind of like immersing myself in a whole other world for the time that I'm there and then when I leave I re-enter my regular life if that makes sense.
Tonight I have two networking events which I'm looking forward to attending. Also been invited to a couple new fashion shows, have a friend's Halloween birthday party to attend over the weekend and other fun activities that I'm sure will just pop up - they always do.
Have a good one!
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