Follow-up to a comment

For those out of the area, here's a link to the original video that was shown on the news when the Jefferson Award honorees were announced. It highlights another honoree as well.

I don't have anything from the National Awards nor the newscasts while I was there...which is actually okay by me! There may be more pictures going up on the National Awards site, but it might take a little while.

DC recap

There are many thoughts running through my head about my time in DC. Over the last few days, the emotional letdown of these last few months has hit hard. It's been an overwhelming roller coaster! I am so grateful for the experience and though the awards stuff is behind me, I've been left with the question rolling through my head "what are you going to do with this God? What's next?" If this is the end of the line, awesome ride...but my feeling is that it's not. I think there is more to come and I'm excited, EXCITED, to see what God does with this all. So, that said, here's some pics of the week!

1st TV interview of the evening. Outside the Mayflower Hotel in DC.Meg and I in the Mayflower Hotel lobby waiting for the first evening's dinner.Kathleen Kennedy Townsend giving a welcome speech at the Welcome DinnerGiving my one-minute speechMeeting Barbara Boxer
2nd TV interview in the hallway of a Senate Office Building
Meeting Dianne Feinstein
Waiting in the lobby for the buses to the Gala Dinner at the National Building MuseumPapa Bear, Yo Momma and I at the Gala Dinner at the National Building Museum

Gala day

Okay, can I be honest. There's a little part of me that is sad about not getting a top 5 honor...but good grief, the people that did deserve them!

I've learned a lot in the last two days about what volunteering and serving means to other people. I've sat at a table with men and women who mentor youth, have set up free health clinics, have sold hundreds of dollars worth of lemonade for great causes and I have heard the stories of women and men who have given their all for the things that God has led them too. It's very honoring to be a Jefferson Award Honoree and have been given the chance to come to Washington DC to hear the stories from around the country, and around the world.

This morning we heard from the CEO of Goodwill, a NBA star, I met my Senators, had ANOTHER on camera interview and this evening went to a Gala Dinner. I sent a text to K at one point that and said "whose life is this?" because it certainly doesn't feel like mine.

There are pictures to come in a day or so. Right now, bed is calling. Tomorrow is one last photo op wherever we land and then home. Grateful for the experience and wondering how I can pack these awesome flowers in my suitcase! :)

Connections

I wasn't going to blog about this until I got home, but it just can't be left for later.

I'm in Washington DC this week. In March I was honored with a Jefferson Award for Community Service for my local community. I was chosen, out of those 6 people, to represent the Central Coast for the National Awards. Tonight was the beginning of the festivities. Each nominee was asked to give a one minute speech about why they were nominated. Mine went something like this:

"Good evening. My name is Brittany and I am here tonight because of Hurricane Katrina. Over the last four years I’ve had the honor of leading 9 teams of people, totaling around 60 people, from my hometown of Felton, California on work trips to Pearlington, Mississippi, a town ravaged by Hurricane Katrina. Over the course of those 9 trips we have worked alongside the residents of Pearlington to recover and rebuild their homes and their town. We have torn out and rebuilt, talked and listened, laughed and cried, sweat a lot and even left a little blood behind. Hurricane Katrina left a gaping hole in the lives of many in the Gulf Coast that almost 5 years later is still waiting to be healed. My team and I are committed to helping the residents of Pearlington heal for as long as we are needed or useful, and we do so honored to be used by God to bring hope back to the residents of Pearlington, Mississippi and the Gulf Coast."

I don't think it came out exactly like that, but it was close and it made Papa Bear cry, so it's all good!

After listening to the others give their speeches, we were dismissed for the evening. I headed out to double check on something that is happening tomorrow, when a young woman approached me and said "I just wanted to come say thank you for what you are doing. I lived in Pearlington."

This young woman, Chelsea, and her family are living in Memphis now, but they lived in Pearlington before the storm, right across the street from the post office. After she graduates, her parents are planning on moving back to Pearlington to rebuild. Chelsea is here because her school group is getting a Jefferson Award for Students in Action.

To put this into a little bit more perspective. There are 309,559,474 people living in the United States. There are probably about 500 or so people at the Jefferson Awards (I'm guessing, it could be a smaller number). Pearlington had about 1700 people living in the town before the hurricane. The odds of running into someone from Pearlington at the Jefferson Awards are so low it's ridiculous. But there I stood, talking with Chelsea. I told her my team would love to come help build her house. Tomorrow I plan on getting a picture with her and I'm gonna pass my phone number on to her as well. If the reason that I am here, right now, is to meet Chelsea, than the whole trip was worth it!

AND to top things off, when I checked into the hotel there was a note from the Washington Bureau of KSBW. Yep, on air interview in front of the hotel. CRAZY!

It's midnight here, bed is calling. Tomorrow is going to be a busy but good day. Pictures will have to wait til later but WOW what a night!

A letter

So a letter arrived at my house recently. It said something like "Hey Brittany, you've done some cool stuff and we want you and three of your closest friends to come to DC in June." It went on to say "Your way is paid, but your three friends have to foot their own bill." Cool.

There was more to the letter, including the words "Business attire" and "Gala" and "one minute speech" and other words that made me cringe just a little.

But the thing that really made me take a double take was a list of names under the title "Board of Selectors"...names like:

Hank Aaron
Corbin Bernsen
Ellen Burstyn
Laura W. Bush
Lee Ault Carter
Cris Collinsworth
Kirk Douglas
Michael Douglas
Whoopi Goldberg
Teresa Heinz Kerry
Hon. Trent Lott
Scott McClelland
Elliott Roosevelt, III
Neil Simon
Lesly Stahl
Kathleen Kennedy Townsend
Cicely Tyson
Chris Wallace
and those are just the ones I recognized off the bat. There are more. Yikes, yikes, yikes.

Me thinks I'm gonna need to go shopping for some fancy dud's cuz my jeans and t-shirts just aren't gonna be okay for this event.

Wow

That's all I can really say right now is Wow.

I'm in Mississippi. The Jefferson Award Ceremony for my region was tonight...2000 miles away from where I am. Three fantastically wonderful friends went to the Ceremony in my place. They sent pics and texts and called and were wonderfully wowed by it all. And then there was nothing. No calls, no pics, no texts. The team here in Mississippi with me wanted to know...what's going on!

So I sent a text. "Debbie wants to see more pictures". And I got this text. "You won! You are going to DC!". NO.WAY! "Don't joke with me about this" was my response. And then the phone rang and there was much noise and hoopla and shouts and acclamations and some pretty silly happy dancing...and that was all in Mississippi. I melted into the floor when it finally sunk in...you think I'm joking...no joke. On the floor.

After a tumultuous 24 hour period in which I've had fun, frustration, dilemma's and more, to be told that the things that we are doing in Mississippi is worthy of being honored...it just is too much. I think my soul is overflowing...I know my head is racing so fast that I can barely think...it's just so cool, such an honor and completely overwhelming. Not just for me. Papa Bear could barely speak when I told him. He handed the phone to Yo Momma and couldn't get back on...that probably speaks more than any "I'm proud of you" he could say.

I'm blessed.

This is scary

I got this video in an email today. Do we really think that kids don't watch EVERYTHING we do? (And to self-disclose, I like country music, that's not the part that freaks me out!)

Not a typical Monday

This morning I woke up late. Well, later than I have been which I will completely credit to the time change cuz my body thought it was one time and it was really another which meant I slept to the usual time but it wasn't the usual time. Confused? Yep, so's my brain.

Anyway, even though I had slept later I really wasn't ready to tackle the day yet, so I snuggled under the covers and turned on West Wing content to just relax. That's when I heard the car coming up the driveway. Actually, I heard the unmistakable sound of a car's tail pipe scraping the bottom of the driveway as the rest of the car headed up. Being the early hour (for me) that it was, I wasn't looking forward to having to answer the door but nothing happened. No knock, no sound of feet traipsing across the porch, nothing. Figured it must have been the electric company reading the meter and resumed my West Wing enjoyment.

It wasn't until after I was up and getting ready for the day that I received a text message, "Your Katrina house is on your deck." I raced to the door, flung it open and joyously took in the site of this:

This is a Katrina Cottage Bank...you can see the slot in the roof line where change can be put. Last Thursday at our Youth Ministry Team meeting I had shared the idea of building a Katrina cottage bank (idea ripped shamelessly from the PC(USA)'s One Great Hour of Sharing) in which people could put their change as a fundraising venture for our Mississippi Trip's. The youth will be coming up with a calendar, like the one from One Great Hour of Sharing, that highlights something we take for granted here that the people in Pearlington have to live with everyday. An example is taking a shower with water that doesn't smell like sulfur. Anyway, that was Thursday night and fabulously talented friend N created and built this fabulous bank, delivering it to my house this morning. What joy!

The morning also brought a letter from a local TV station that went like this:

Dear Brittany,

I am pleased to inform you that because of your outstanding community volunteer service, you were nominated for the 2009 Jefferson Awards presented by us.

What?! Oh my goodness. It doesn't matter that other people were chosen as the finalists, just the fact that someone thinks that the efforts that are being made for Mississippi are honorable is enough, enough, enough! It was not a typical Monday...thanks be to God!