Serving the Nations in Kentucky

Today’s the last full day I will spend in the Santa Barbara area until I come back for graduation, or possibly for InterVarsity’s Senior Banquet.  Both of those are in June.  Today, my family and I went to my church in Isla Vista.  Then, we sorted out which of my things I needed for camp this week and which I didn’t, my dad took off for home, and my mom, sister, and I had lunch together downtown.  Per my request, they left me at the Borders there, where I spent the afternoon buying and reading books.

Then, I took the bus back up to Isla Vista to wait for the members of my carpool to get here. On the bus ride, I noticed the state of my mind.

During the first week of my freshman year, I remember feeling like I was a small child in an adult-sized animal mascot costume. The costume represented the role of “college student;” the point of the metaphor was that I felt like that role was too big for me to manage properly, and I wasn’t ready to fulfill it yet.

Today, I felt completely different.  Instead of feeling like a child in an oversized costume, I now feel like a butterfly only just coming out of its chrysalis.  I noticed today that I was remarkably ready to accept that the phase called college was behind me, that I was finished with it and off to live a completely different kind of life. 

To all my friends, family, ministry partners, fellow podcasters and podcast enthusiasts, and anyone else who might be reading this, welcome! I’m very happy that you’re reading my blog.

So why am I starting a new blog here, when I already have several in various other places around the Web? There are two reasons. The first is that this blog can be far more interactive than any of the ones I already have. Here at WordPress, anyone can leave a comment on any of my posts - you don’t have to have a WordPress account. I considered blogging about my time in Kentucky using my LiveJournal, but that site does require you to have an account in order to comment, and I wanted to make it easy for everyone to comment on my posts. I’d like the communication to be two-way on my blog from now on. (The archives of my UBlog from March 28, 2007 through March 21, 2008 will remain available on my family’s website, and I may refer back to them from time to time on this blog.)

This blog will have two purposes. The first is to keep friends, family, ministry partners, and anyone else who’s curious about it informed of what I’m doing in Kentucky, and in any other ministry I might be a part of in the future. Starting on April 9, 2008, I will be participating in the Episcopal Church’s Short-term Internship Program in Louisville, Kentucky. I will serve for two months as an intern at Kentucky Refugee Ministries, which is dedicated to helping refugees from Africa, the Caribbean, and other places around the world get settled into their new lives in the United States. Some of my responsibilities as an intern may include arranging appointments between refugee families and social service agencies, finding churches to sponsor the refugees, and working in the office.

The second purpose is to publish any novels I might decide to podcast in the future. I hear WordPress and a plugin for it, PodPress, are the easiest way to do this. As I told Ryah at The World Fantasy 2008 Podcast, my goal is to have one of my novels, Bridging the Spheres, completed by the end of this year. Ideally, I would like to release it as a podcast the year after that. I plan to rely on placing entries in categories to make this blog useful for both purposes. I don’t know how well that’s going to work, but I am hopeful.

My next post here will probably be about my fundraising progress. If you use PayPal, please feel free to donate a few dollars to support my ministry in Kentucky. My e-mail address consists of my last name, followed by the number 1138, and is @yahoo.com.

Thanks for reading,

Amy Bowen