So I have been playing around with Google Earth, which is just so cool! A friend sent me the location for our orphanage in Nicaragua. Very cool. The pictures are like a year old, but how cool is it that you can find pictures of just about any location in the world via satellite? I am trying to find other places in Nicaragua that are important to my, like our church and my best friend's house. It's harder for Nicaraguan locations because they don't use normal street addresses like we do. I found my house very easily because I just typed in my address and zip code. But in Nicaragua, they use addresses like "from the statue 6 blocks south and 2 blocks west"
And speaking of Nicaragua, I booked my tickets today for my trip in May! I will be there for 27 days this time. I am bringing my resume with me because now is as good a time as any to look for a job down there and maybe I would even be able to move this summer. Maybe a teaching job, at the Nicaraguan Christian Academy or the American Nicaraguan School or maybe an admin job with Pharaoh's Casino or one of the nonprofit down there, or at the American Embassy. Who knows? If anyone reading this has any suggestions, I would love to hear them.

My New Job

So I officially started working for Frontier Horizon this week. I am really enjoying it so far. It's definitely very challenging. I've never created a budget or written a grant proposal before but now I am learning how to do both. I feel a little lost but once I have more experience and feem more like I know what I am doing I know I will feel less lost. But even though I feel a little like I have NO idea what I am doing, I love it and it's a MILLION times better than working for my most recent employer. I am so much less stressed out. And the stress I do have is good stress because I am in a job that is actually challenging me, not stress over how I am going to be treated by my boss when I come into work each day. It is so wonderful to be working for someone who is probably even more passionate than I am about helping orphan kids and the impoverished in third world countries.
In other news, I saw "Inside Man" today. One of the best movies I have seen so far this year. Really excellent cast: Clive Owen, Denzel Washington, Jodie Foster, Willem Dafoe, Christopher Plummer, etc. I think it's probably one of Spike Lee's best films. I really need to watch it again because the plot is very complex, but it's worth the cost of the ticket to see it again.

Home Again

I am back from the Promiseland Conference at Willow Creek and I think one word pretty much sums up the whole experience. Wow.
Willow Creek is AMAZING! It's absolutely HUGE and so beautiful! I have honestly never been inside a church before that has escalators, a waterfall, a food court and a bookstore. Just amazing.
The conference was awesome too. Such great speakers: Bill Hybels, Reggie Joyner, Jack Groppel and Kennth Ulmer, to name a few. Worship sessions with Matt Redman on Wednesday and Rebecca St. James yesterday. But yet, even all of that is not the best part. The best part, the most amazing part, is what we get to be involved in here on earth building God's kingdom with His precious little kids. We get to teach kids about God's amazing love for them, and that is the most important thing we can do.
I also met a new friend at Willow, Barb K. We only got to talk for about 15 minutes before the New Community service Wednesday night, but it was very enjoyable and I hope to keep in touch. I also got to see my friend Eren and her family, who I hadn't seen since they moved away last year. It was so great to see them again!
After the conference ended yesterday we went to downtown Chicago to walk around, window shop and have dinner. We ate at Ed Debevic's, which was hilarious. The wait staff there are all very rude, but that's part of the act. I am not sure what our waiter made of us, since we told him we were a church group. He seemed to have the rudeness toned down with us. :)

Well, tomorrow I am heading out to Chicago for the Promiseland Conference at Willow Creek and I am very excited. Not exactly thrilled at the weather report, but I'll deal. It has just been so beautiful here in Virginia Beach the past few days. Sunny and temperatures in the 80s. My kind of weather. This weekend I set up my hammock on the back patio (finally moved it out of my living room) and took a few naps out there on the hammock. Simply wonderful. Today my friend Louise took me out to lunch to celebrate the new world of opportunities that has opened up to me since I lost my job. We sat outside and enjoyed the beautiful weather and conversation. And tonight I took my roommate out to dinner for her belated birthday celebreation and once again we sat outside. It had gotten a lot windier so our napkins kept blowing around, but still so pleasant to be outside. Unfortunately, it looks like temperatures are going to drop back down to the 40s and 50s by the time I come back to Virginia on Saturday. Oh well, it is still March after all and so this is normal. And I know Spring is on the way and with it warmer weather again. :)
I talked for a while tonight with Ivonne. Her new job is still going well as is her English class. It's cool that we are starting to be able to have conversations in English now too. She was supposed to have a presentation today in her class but that got delayed till Wednesday. Last night when we talked she was practicing her presentation, though and she was doing great. It's funny, though, a lot of the things she finds most confusing about learning English are the same things I find really confusing too about learning Spanish. Sometimes I wonder which is harder to learn.

Maybe?

My friend Donna passed along a wesbite she wanted me to check out: http://www.finishers.org/
It lists all kinds of missions opportunities throughout the world. Most of the positions are volunteer or raise-your-own-support type things but they do have some paid missionary jobs. I filled out the profile thing and so in a few days they shuold be sending me a list of possible matches with my interests and preferences. That would be very cool if I could get a paid missionary job that would let me live in Nicaragua. The only thing is that I would want to make sure that it wold still let me spend time with my kids at the orphanage and also Ivonne and her family. I really feel like eventually I am supposed to be living in Nicaragua, I just don't know if it is going to be sooner or later. I just have to keep praying about it and trust that God will lead me there in His timing for His purposes.
So this time next week I will be in Chicago for the Promiseland Conference at Willow Creek. It has occurred to me, though, that it is still March and that Chicago is not exactly the warmest place on earth. I am reading John Ortberg's new book right now and this is a direct quote from the book: "I lived for a decade in Chicago, which was founded when a group of people from New York said 'The crime and poverty are good but we'd like it colder'" I am not a cold weather fan. I could totally live with Nicaragua weather all year round. Give me nice and tropical and hot. Not cold. So if anyone who is reading this would like to send up a prayer for a sudden heat wave to hit Chicago next Tuesday-Saturday, that would be awesome! :)

Moving On

I think I am going to file a grievance with my former employer. At first I wasn't sure about it. I don't know what I want to get out of it. Honestly, I just want to put them behind me. I know they are in the wrong and what they did was just totally wrong, but I just want to move on and leave them in the past. Even if they were to offer me my job back, there is no way I would take it. I don't want to even go back to pick up my belongings, they can mail those to me. But my cousin is encouraging me to talk with a lawyer and another friend of mine who works in HR is just appalled at what happened, and she said I should at least file a grievance. I may be able to get some kind of settlement or severance from them, and maybe it will keep this from happening to someone else. Like I mentioned in one of my other posts, every single person in my unit who has FMLA is on corrective action of some sort. So tomorrow I am going to call the Dialog folks and see what I can do.
Thankfully, I still get to go to Willow Creek next week for the Promiseland conference. I had told them that because of losing my job I wouldn't be able to go but they said not to worry about it, they want me to go, so it is taken care of. Wow. I know it will be an amazing experience and I am very excited. I have been wanting to get out to see Willow Creek for four years, since January 20, 2002, my first day at Spring Branch Community Church. And I have never been to Chicago so that will be fun. The conference ends Friday morning or midday so we're going to spend the rest of Friday sightseeing in Chicago. Fun Stuff. And I found out that Rebecca St James is leading worship for the 2 sessions on Friday. I've seen her in concert and she is an amazing worship leader. Lots of stuff to look forward to. Things are definitely looking up and I am just taking them one day at a time.

A New Day

Well, things are looking better today. Vinny emailed me from Nicaragua and told me he's going to be able to hire me, at least temporarily. I don't know for how long, or how many hours per week, but at least it's something, and I am sure when he gets back from Nicaragua we'll go over specifics, maybe sooner since he said he would try to call me from Nicaragua. So that's something. It would be perfect if I could work for him till at least June, that way I can try to get something more permanent lined up to start when I get back from my trip to Nicaragua in May.
So I am not really too worried right now. I am going over my finances, figuring out where I can make some cutbacks, if I also need to get another part-time job in the interim I will do that. I am not really depressed anymore either. Honestly, it is a relief to not have to go back there. That place is poison and it was sucking the life and energy out of me. No, I think right now, I am just pissed at the situation. It's such a load of crap. If my performance was really as bad as my manager says, then why did they keep me there for FIVE YEARS and give me raises and bonuses every year??? (this year being the only exception, but that was after my manager started her witch hunt with me) I am just incensed that after giving them 5 years of my life they would turn around and treat me like this, just calling me to a meeting with my boss and her boss in an isolated room and then not even letting me go back to my desk for my things. The two of the them went back to my desk and brought me my bag, coat, cell phone and keys while HR was going over the outprocessing stuff with me. And they were supposed to pack up the rest of my stuff and get it in the mail to me this weekend. But I didn't even go back to my desk to say goodbye to my coworkers. After working my butt off for them for five years and 5 months, that is all the thanks I get? My old manager would never have done this, she was awesome and if I had been able to stay with her, I would still be working for them and may even still be enjoying it. Then again, the company itself had changed so much over the 5 years I was there that many people were becoming disatisfied. So it is definitely for the best that I am out of there now, and I guess if loyalty is what I am looking for, I can get that from my dog.

74 Days

Okay, so I usually don't start my countdown until my tickets are actually purchased, but I hope to be doing that within the next couple of weeks, and Ivonne has asked me a few times how many days there are until I go back to Nicaragua. So I will be there in roughly 74 1/2 days, give or take a few hours. For a week of this visit, I am actually going to be staying with my Nicaraguan family in Managua and not at the orphanage. That's because the Executive Director of one of the orphan care ministries I volunteer for told me if I am going to be going on my own to Nica, then he doesn't think I should be at the orphanage when the team from my church is there. His reasoning is that he doesn't want people to start thinking that this organization sends people to the orphanage just whenever they want. Which is absurd for a few reasons:
1. When I go to the orphanage by myself, I am doing just that, going by myself. I am not going as part of any organization, just as Meg.
2. Because I go by myself, it's not like he even has to do any extra work. I book my own tickets, I make the arrangements with the orphanage as to where I will sleep, I do everything.
3. Everyone who is going on the trip in May knows me and knows I go all the time by myself to the orphanage. None of them care and none of them are going to start to insist on going by themselves just because I do. They know I have a special relationship with the orphanage and the people there.
4. These are people from my church who are my friends. I couldn understand if it was a group from another church and then it might be a little awkward to be there, as an outsider, but these are my people.
But whatever, it's actually probably better that I just go to Ivonne's when the team is there. For one thing, it will be awesome to get to spend that much time with my second family because they are really incredible people and they are so special to me. Also, we were planning to go out to Ometepe Island anyway that weekend, and it probably would look odd if I was with the team but then took off their last two days at the orphanage. And it will also be cheaper, because all I will need to pay for is my airfare and then maybe $50 or $75 for my room and board at the orphanage, which will free up more spending money. I defnitely want to chip in for food and stuff for Ivonne's family while I am there, but all in all I will still probably be spending less than $1000 all together whereas it would be closer to $1500 if I stayed with the team. So it's all for the best, it's just annoying to be told I can't be at the orphanage because people know I volunteer so much for this organization and therefore they might think that the organization sponsors my trips. It just makes me feel like I am being penalized for all the work I do for them. If I was justvolunteering only for my friend Vinny's orphan care ministry, it wouldn't even be an issue because he doesn't care when I go. Anyway, sorry to rant. It's working out better anyway.