Good Thing For My Classes

Needless to say, I fail in the "keeping up with my blog" department. I didn't send out the final results of the Operation Christmas Child Shoe Box drive! But, have no worries friends. Thanks to the importance of emerging technologies in the communication field, I am required to write a blog post once a week! I love it when classes keep me accountable to do things I should have been doing these past few months anyways (another example: reading books).

I think it's crazy how emerging technologies continue to develop even when I'm not paying attention (like when I'm off studying in another country or state). Even since my freshman year at Purdue, new technologies have emerged. For example, all communication majors who pass through PU are going to required to post a blog once a week. Twitter has become just another way to relate to people even if that relationship happens to be via the invisible world of cyberspace. I was recently opposed to accepted all forms of emerging technologies. Someone suggested I get a twitter if I wanted to be "marketable" to future employers, so I went and got one. I am thrilled to actually learn how these technologies relate to my future career.

There are technologies I don't even know about. They are intriguing, and sometimes it makes me sad that I will need to accept these head-spinning technologies simply for a career. That being said, I admit I utilize many of these technologies on a daily basis. The more I understand these emerging technologies, the better understanding I can maintain of our world today, whether or not it's moving at a slightly faster pace than I am comfortable with.
I hope to use this blog as a way to communicate how these emerging technologies relate to my future career. Maybe I can figure out how to link the technologies on this page so you all will actually know what I'm talking about.... hopefully, I'll actually know what I'm talking about : )

For me, the most fascinating part of learning about emerging technologies is anwering questions about what kind of an impact they are having on my life and the live's of their users. Do people relate differently to each other now that we "facebook stalk" one another and already know the answer to questions like, "what did you do last night?" Is studying abroad as much of a growing experience when we can call our friends and family five times a day via skype? No matter where technology takes this world, I hope to be one who maintains the values of interacting with people over solely interacting via cyberspace.

The Start of National Collection Week 2009

This sums up how happy I am that collection week is here! This little girl and I share the same joy about Operation Christmas Child.

KLOVE packing party

I learned a lesson about trusting God today. We were diving in blindly to a shoe box packing party that could either be a real success or a complete disaster. This year KLOVE radio partnered with Operation Christmas Child and all throughout the U.S. there were packing parties going on. Of course, the packing parties can only become as big as the community wants them to; without donations, our party would have been a disaster. BUT, God did more than provide. I should have known God was going to do something great, as always!
Right at 2:00 when things were starting up, we had a massive rush of families bringing loads of things for the boxes. We had bins marked in different categories for people to place the items in, which seemed to work great until they got too crowded because so many people had showed up... What a great problem to have! We did some rearranging and for about an hour straight, boxes were being packed and placed into OCC cartons.
We were right around the 300 mark when we started to run out of fillers for the boxes. Many of the kids were coloring pictures for their boxes and people seemed to be looking for tasks to complete. We were packing the boxes in a large garage type building, and all of a sudden the large door opened. We all glanced out and you could hear everyone get silent as we all wondered what was happening. All of a sudden we saw the trunk of a truck open up and it was filled with hundreds and hundreds of more items for the shoe box!
Everyone was so excited, and we all got busy packing! We ended the night with 519 shoe boxes! Praise the Lord!
The Family pictured below had a wonderful idea; they put deflated soccer balls, pins, and a pump in each one of their shoe boxes. This is such a great idea because the ball can be used by dozens of kids, or even an entire village. Good job Hutchinson family for thinking of this!
Collection starts MONDAY!!!!

Thelma Rivas Handmakes Dolls for Shoe Boxes

Hi everyone. I wanted to share a story about a lady from Sedona, Arizona who has such a heart for Operation Christmas Child. This article is special to me because I pitched it to the media and they turned into an amazing article that hardly gives this woman of God enough credit!!

https://webmail.purdue.edu/imp/view.php?thismailbox=INBOX&index=3677&id=2&actionID=113&mime=c7f1a111ff9b372f2d14bd1f7da0d9f2


ONLY 5 DAYS UNTIL NATIONAL COLLECTION WEEK 2009!

TWO WEEKS UNTIL OCC COLLECTION BEGINS

It's crazy how fast time flies, between people visiting, snow storms, pitching to 11 different states media outlets, running half marathons, and school work. Today, however, I had a lazy Sunday which allowed me to take a few deep breaths and reminisce on how life in Colorado can be.
The weather here is nuts. As my friend Laura once told me, "If you don't like the weather in Colorado, just wait five minutes." Sure enough, this week (Wednesday and Thursday) it snowed nearly two feet, and by this weekend it was almost all gone minus a few small patches and random snow plowed piles in parking lots. Thursday was a great day though, because I got to experience what it's like to work from home... I gotta say, I love it! Staying in sweat pants literally all day and drinking coffee non-stop was wonderful. Even though I was working it felt like I wasn't. I think this job is teaching me more and more about what I want to do in the future. Now working from home in some way or another is on that list.
Last weekend, my friend Quinn came to visit me and some other friends we both know from Spain and see Colorado! We went up to Boulder and Estes Park, which is beautiful with all the snow and elk during this time of the year. The pictures I posted with this blog post are of us in Rocky Mountain National Park.
I cannot believe there are only two weeks until we begin processing shoe boxes. I think "processing shoe boxes" does not give the process we are about to undertake nearly the credit it deserves. We are about to see, open, sort through, and box up a hundreds of thousands of shoe boxes filled with gifts for children around the world. Well, that is what the thousands of volunteers will be doing. I will be sitting in my office, making thousands of phone calls to media outlets, trying to get them to publish hundreds of articles about our thousands of shoe boxes. My point is, with all of the thousands of volunteers, shoe boxes, media outlets, and hours we spend planning and gearing up for collection week, I am ready to see it happen!
There are two stories in particular that I just cannot wait to pitch to the media. They are both full circle stories, meaning that a child once received a shoe box in another country and now he or she lives in the U.S. and packs shoe boxes for other needy children. These kinds of stories are rare and I feel so blessed to have one in each of my regions.
Vladimir Jensen was born in Kazakhstan and lived in an orphanage there until he was adopted by a family from Oregon. While he did have food and a roof over his head, he had never received a gift. He said, "There were 300 kids in one room with 300 different boxes -- it was amazing! The best part was that each one of us got something different, and we were able to share what was inside our shoe boxes with others. I had never owned something that I could share before I received an Operation Christmas Child Shoe Box."
Vladimir's favorite part about the box was that it was his own -- nobody could take it away from him. He then couldn't wait to share it with others!
Janice Dreiling, a 16 year old from the Philippines who was adopted by a Colorado Springs Family, had a similar experience to Vladimir. Her favorite part about the whole box was the gospel booklet. She read it over and over again and ended up making a decision to follow Christ after the words of the little booklet started to click.
Both of these teenagers have amazing stories of how a simple shoe box impacted their lives. Even as I pitch their life stories to the media, I am brainstorming ways I can make even more boxes for children just like them. Each box reaches another child!
I hope everyone is busy shopping, especially with all of the clearance sales on Halloween candy! Today I bought three gigantic bags of candy for my boxes, for under $5.00! Get a box and start packing!

I'm a published writer!

http://www.denverchristianfamily.com/uploads/DCF_October_2009.pdf


My first article ever published, in Denver Christian Family Magazine. Follow the link above to read!

Mom in CO and Sarah GO

A week ago my Mom came to Colorado to visit me!! She was able to meet Bob and Marge and see where I am living, as well as get a tiny glimpse of the amazingness we call Colorado. (Sidenote: Today I read a bumper sticker that I wish I had, it had a picture of the Mountains and said "Ok, so I'm not a Native but I got here as fast as I could.") But anyways, the reason I said she got a tiny glimpse, is because it was foggy all weekend. If you have been to Colorado and seen the mountains, you understand that they are not just something you can miss. They reach to the clouds and block your view of other things. It was so foggy most of the days that it looked like there were no mountains! In fact, I think she maybe doubted there even were mountains for the first day : )
Since it was a bit chilly (aka freezing) and Mom hit it off with Bob and Marge, we played quite a bit of Mexican train the first night she was in town. She got to experience some of Bob's Hungarian cooking. I won't forget the look we exchanged when Bob proudly exclaimed, "This is a great dish, it only has five ingredients... sour cream, butter, eggs, sausage, and cheese! I hope you two aren't trying to diet!"
I played the chauffeur as Mom gazed out the window when we went to Red Rocks and then Colorado Springs the next day. In Colorado Springs we took a tour of focus on the family, ate ice cream in Adventures in Odyssey's Whit's End, explored Garden of the Gods, and had some good mother daughter bonding time.
I loved that my Mom was able to meet everyone at work! The day before she arrived, I asked Rick if she could stop in and he explained how he was thrilled to see his son's and daughter's work places, so I should always bring my Mom in to work wherever I end up. I thought this was great advice, and realized I am never too old to show my Mom what I am up to! So she toured our little office and saw my desk. I was able to explain in a more detailed way exactly what I do each day, and I think that her being at my actual desk made things clearer. She was also able to sit in the back room and watch the new veggie tale clip!
I am praying that my Mom and come back in December and volunteer in our processing center, which will then be filled with a quarter of a million shoe boxes!!!
Many of you might be wondering about the title I chose for this post: Mom in CO and Sarah GO.
Well, as previously mentioned my Mom was here, and the Sarah GO means several things. First of all, I am obviously busy with my full class schedule and full time job. GO also describes the way I feel at work lately. We sent out a press release recently, and I feel as though I have to be in complete pursuit if I want to see any positive results. GO (get 'em) really describes what I do at work as I sift through my contacts and try to convince them to publish something about OCC. There have been results though, and I am encouraged as more and more articles get published every day. The final reason I wrote Sarah GO, is that I am running the Denver Half Marathon in 8 hours from right now... so I better get some rest!

I miss everyone!

Sarah Green

WARNING: these things may or may not be true

Once upon a time, I was obsessed with the color green. Green things just started appearing in my life, I kid you not. Some of them were given to me as gifts; some were things I bought. Either way, I was surrounded by the color green. There was only problem: they were not all my green, the green I was so obsessed with. There was only one way to solve this problem: identify exactly which color I was so fond of, and name it after myself.
So, three or so years ago, Donna Perrott coined (I have ALWAYS wanted to use that word!) the term, "Sarah Green." It started as a small concept, and only a few selective friends and family members really knew about my color, and even my obsession. As the obsession grew, so did the popularity of the official color, "Sarah green." Instead of it being my color, the world started using the phrase "going green!" They stole my green, and changed the name! Everything turned green, from advertisements for organic foods to televisions. Now, I am in complete support of recycling to save our world, but did they have to steal my color?
For about 2 hours, this really bothered me, because I felt like it was my unique favorite color, and an obsession to say the least. But then I realized, now I can have a whole world full of green things! Everything I could ever want to buy comes in Sarah green- so I am constantly going Sarah green!

Labor Day Weekend

So, when Ben came to visit a week or two ago, we attempted to fit all of Colorado into one weekend. Now, if you have been to Colorado you know that this is impossible. But, if you have met Ben and I, you know this is maybe possible! I don't know if we fit everything into the few days we had together, but we sure came close.

We started by going to Ihop, as I am sure you all already guessed, with Hannah and her friend Josh. Josh actually had just arrived in Denver, on a bike! He is attempting to bike in all 50 states in about a years worth of time. Ben and I were very interested in his adventure, and continuously drilled him with questions as we devoured our pancakes.

Friday morning Ben and I brought donuts in for my office, and I worked on writing an article while Ben took my car to get the oil changed... Thank you Ben for that. I didn't realize how hard it is to maintain a car and have a "real" job; everything closes before I am off work! Friday evening, after a big dinner with the Gypeses at Texas Roadhouse, we went to a concert at Redrocks! We saw Jack Ingram, Pat Green, and previously known as Hoodie but now all country... Darius Rucker!! It was a great concert; not only did I know all the songs, but we had great seats and we kept easing our way down to the front. Even if the music was awful, I would have been content just sitting in our seats watching the sunset over the red rocks and the city of Denver. It was quite a place for a concert.

I was able to squeeze in a quick run Saturday morning before Ben and I took off to head up North to Estes Park. We left around 10 and took our time getting there, which is something I love about the way Ben and I travel. We stopped in random places, from a farmer's market to starbucks to wave at the hundreds of bikers we were passing. (Sidenote: we saw all these bikers in Boulder, which is apparently the most biker friendly city in the U.S.; there were more bikers than cars, no exaggeration.) We didn't get up to Rocky Mountain National Park until about 4, which ended up working out well because we got a camp site, and set our tent up with plenty of daylight to spare.

After the tent was pitched and we had set up our sleeping bags and piles and piles of blankets I brought along, we went on a hike! As you can see by the pictures, the scenery was gorgeous and Ben and I had a blast exploring a trail. It was nothing like the Wyoming hike, because there wasn't much of a climb, but it was great nonetheless. Once again (I must have some sort of magical luck or something), it started raining right when Ben and I got back in the car, so we opted to head to town for dinner. We walked around in some stores, and dashed through the rain when we had to go outside. We obviously dashed a little too much, because we got yelled at by a police officer for illegally crossing the street. I once again played the "tourist from Indiana" card and we kept running until we made it to another store to continue our browsing. It was a fun night; we ended up eating at a local pizza place. By the time it was done raining, we were done eating and we bought some firewood and headed back to our tent. After I attempted multiple times to get a fire started, Ben took over and had a huge fire blazing within seconds. You would think after all these years of camping, I would be able to start a fire...? I think we would have been cold sleeping, but I literally brought 4 blankets plus a sleeping bag for each of us, so we didn't freeze!

Sunday morning, we met up with my friend from Spain, Chris. You all remember, if you have read my previous blog posts, my running buddy? So of course, we went on a run in Boulder. And again, of course, we ate pancakes for breakfast. I feel so predictable these days. We said goodbye to Chris, who is also traveling to every state in the U.S., but in a car (which was actually just stolen, but that is another story....) We made out way south to Colorado Springs. My magic was lost and it started raining on our hike through Garden of the Gods, but we still had fun! We saw Pike's Peak from a distance, found a Dunkin Donuts (only one in CO), walked around downtown, and made our way back to Bob and Marge's'.

Labor Day morning we got up and went to the Taste of Denver festival downtown. We tried all sorts of things, from cupcakes to crocodile meat. Then Ben got to experience his first major league baseball game... go Rockies! Then I got to experience my first major human fight. We were sitting at the Cheesecake factory (and this is a true story), and these two wanted drug lords happened to walk past the undercover police her were searching for them. A few tables were knocked over, shattering plates and knocking into bystanders, as these two huge guys jumped the criminals. It was crazy to watch, I was so scared. I didn't think that we would get entertainment like that at dinner! They arrested them and we enjoyed the rest of our meal.
Saying goodbye to Ben was hard, as always. Saying goodbye is never fun. This is so much easier than Spain though. So I will admit, we didn't see everything Colorado has to offer, but wouldn't you say we saw a lot?

Medicine Bow Peak

As you all can tell by my lack of blogging (thanks Mom for reminding me), I have been busy. Taking 21 credit hours (I am crazy) and working 40 hours a week (I love my job) is going really well; it's the fact that I squeeze in hiking, running, exploring, and other adventures into every other waking moment of my day that leaves me no time to blog.

Since I have been so busy, I have tons of updates! I have been working on an article for Denver Christian Family Magazine, which will be published in October. I interviewed a family and pretty much stalked them with my camera as they chose things for their shoe box. I will have to copy my article to here once it is published. I have also been working on getting media about OCC published anywhere possible. That is going fairly well, but I know that it will only get better as we get closer to Christmas. Oh, yes, and I have been working on the ridiculous task of organizing these things we call P&A forms. They are the forms each drop off center is required to fill out if they want to work with our organization.... I have been trying my best to complete the missing information, and it took me a full day just to organize them all into a binder!

I love my job though, I really do. It's so encouraging to hear how wide-spread Operation Christmas Child really is. Hannah and I went camping and hiking at Medicine Bow Peak, in Wyoming a couple weekends ago. After a wonderful night of camping, and quite an adventure cooking our breakfast.. well let's just say I accidentally knocked water over and put out our fire... we drove up to where we could start out climb up the peak. We pulled up the car and as we were getting out we noticed that the van next to us had an Operation Christmas Child sticker on it! We started talking to the man driving the van and as fate would have it, or as God would have it really, his wife was an area team volunteer, and both Hannah and I had previously talked with her on the phone. We were encouraged as we started our hike up the mountain, and we ended up running into another group of people who all packed shoe boxes every year! Hannah and I agreed that it is trully wonderful to hear of how many people participate year after year, and how united we are in the project.

We huffed and puffed our way up the mountain, stopping every 100 ft. or so to catch our breath. The scenery was obviously breath taking, and every step I took I realized that I was climbing higher than I had ever been before. Reaching the top was quite a challenge; we actually had to climb up these huge rocks, sometimes getting on our hands and knees so we wouldn't fall. We made it to the very top and realized what a feat it was to climb 12,013 feet.
As we were sitting on the highest rock we could find and eating our lunch, we ran into another couple of people who knew all about the project. It was as if everywhere we turned we were meeting people who were familiar with Operation Christmas Child. We enjoyed sliding down part of the mountain that was covered with snow, and then we continued our 5 mile journey down the mountain. I was really tired at the end, probably due to the extreme elevation change. I don't know how people climb Mt. Everest... hmm maybe I can do that someday. Once we made it to the car, and got our shoes off and jackets back on, it started pouring down rain; perfect end to a great climb.

All this to say, that Operation Christmas Child is huge. It's not even about the number of boxes I pack per year, or the number of boxes you pack per year. It's all about ALL of us coming together and packing 8.2 million shoe boxes. Yes, that is 8.2 million children who will have a smile on their face this Christmas.

: ) Ten weeks until national collection week!