LOVE EACH ONE

Our Video

2011-06-18T22:52:00.000-04:00

In addition to this blog, we also documented our trip on camera. At our show, we premiered a short documentary made up of that footage and the different love answers we collected across the country. Now, it is available to you, via the interwebs! Enjoy!

If anyone is still interested in receiving a free DVD of the documentary and the full collection of love answers, send us an e-mail at loveeachone@gmail.com with your name and address and we would be more than happy to send it your way! :)

til next time,
jason

the show in photos :

2011-04-21T21:38:00.000-04:00

The Show

2011-04-17T10:35:00.006-04:00

it finally happened!

after a lot of waiting, planning, creating, and hoping we finally had our love each one show.

morning of we found out that the space we were planning to use would be covered by a tent, which was unexpected but we were like ok yeah, we can work with that.

then when we got there to set up we discovered it was full of tables and chairs that were packed in basically back to back. it didn't look like there was any space for us at all, unless we moved everything from underneath the tent.

so we set to work. we were literally setting up the space right down to the last second. honestly there were moments when i thought, "oh man, how is this going to work?" but we just kept going.

the most amazing thing through the whole process of getting ready for the show and then having it was our friends. they were all sooo willing to help us. they helped us print pages for books, glue the books together, spray paint tshirts, bake treats, move tables and chairs, frame love definitions, burn dvds and make cases for them, and advertise around campus and sarasota. there is absolutely no way we could have done this show without their help. we love you guys so much!

for those of you who weren't able to make it..... we wanted to let you know that we will have more photos online soon (i'm just sorting through everything), we will also be making a pdf version of the book available online, and IF YOU WOULD LIKE A FREE DVD OF THE DOCUMENTARY AND LOVE DEFINITIONS shoot us an email at loveeachone@gmail.com with your name and address and we would be more than happy to send one (or multiple if you like) your way!

and if you're wondering.... there is a future of love each one, it doesn't just end here. we've got a lot of ideas and hopes and we totally welcome yours too. IF YOU HAVE AN IDEA FOR THE FUTURE OF LOVE EACH ONE send us an email to the address above, we would love to hear your thoughts :)

more to come soon!

till then, happy sunday :)

<3ginger

LOVE EACH ONE SHOW

2011-04-06T09:43:00.000-04:00

LEO is a movement that dares others to live actions of love each day.
we believe every individual is important. we believe everyone deserves to be loved.

you followed us on our cross country adventure... now we invite you to join us for a night of story telling and memory sharing at our Leo show.

it is an outdoor installation
on fri April 15, 2011
from 7-11pm
in front of the Ulla Searing Student Center on Ringling College's campus in Sarasota, FL

featuring live music, free refreshments, film screenings, photography, a collection of love definitions, interactive artwork, and giveaways.

we (Jason, Stan, Emily, and Ginger) are so excited to share our experience with you in full!

its 2011 ! ! !

2011-02-25T15:44:00.001-05:00

Hello there!

I hope everyone has had a lovely love month :)

First of all i would like to appologize for there not being any updates for 6 months or so... there has been so much going on and we can't wait to share everything with you!

Second, I would like to thank everyone who has sent us love mail. you're all amazing! we are still accepting if anyone wants to send some of their thoughts on love our way

love each one, attn ginger

1130 greensboro ln, 646

sarasota, fl

34234

the biggest news is.... we've set a date for the LOVE EACH ONE SHOW !

on Friday, April 15, 2011

from 7 - 11 pm

at Ringling College of Art and Design in the student center plaza

in Sarasota, FL

we will have a one night only outdoor installation. we'll have love definitions, photos, and video, as well as interactive art work. It is our desire to have live music, free food, and gifts for everyone.

We have a lot of work to do to get ready for it... but we're super excited!

anyone and everyone is welcome to attend! April might just be the perfect month for you to take a sunny florida vactaion :) (in my minds eye i see all of our friends we met during the trip being here for it... that would be so much fun!)

keep your eyes and ears open for more news and stories :) :) :)

lovelove,

ginger

don't stop believin

2010-08-13T23:22:00.013-04:00

Just last week I was able to go visit 'ol Stanley in California. The weather was beautiful, our adventuring was filled with wonders, and overall we had a super duper time. Stan had been telling me on the bus earlier that there was a guy that sat at the corner of Haight and Ashbury who would write you a poem about anything for a few bucks. We happened to see him on the bus a few minutes later so Stan very loudly whispered/yelled "HEY! that's the guy that writes poems!!" the guy looked back, we looked away, and I pointed out that maybe Stanley should try to not loudly whisper when talking about the surrounding people ;) We soon exited the bus and putting that awkward moment behind us. However when we made it to Haight and Ashbury there he sat with his typewriter ready. I really wanted to ask for a poem ( ! ) Then I thought, LOVE EACH ONE! so I pulled out a business card and some money and we hurried over to him. I explained what Love Each One had done over the last few weeks and asked if he could write us a poem about what love is to him.

He thought for a bit, typed away, handed us the poem, we said our goodbyes and Stan and I continued our exploring.

Here are his thoughts..

send us a poem or letter telling us what you think love is.

Love Each One attn. Ginger

1130 Greensboro Lane/#646

Sarasota, FL, 34234

<33emilyy

2010-08-10T11:06:00.002-04:00

"Love is, as far as i can tell, the most mature response to any situation - the pinnacle of what it means to be truly human. Love is a wrench in the wheels of cause and effect, of reactionary living, of casual imitation. Yes, speed and events are all around us in the information age, but motion, true motion, is rare. Love is the movement. Keep moving, amigos."

Jon Foreman

remember!

2010-08-09T16:04:00.002-04:00

hey hey world!

so i have been working on loveeachone books that will be part of our show and because of that i have been reading through our blog posts and today i came across this quote we posted awhile back and just thought today was a good day to re-post it :)

"Too often we underestimate the power of a touch, a smile, a kind word, a listening ear, an honest compliment, or the smallest act of caring, all of which have the potential to turn a life around."

-Leo Buscaglia

re-reading our stories makes me miss traveling and the newness and excitement but i don't want those things to make me think less of the present.... loving in our everyday lives is just as important, probably even more, and honestly its harder.... we have to remember that these things:

a touch

a smile

a kind word

a listening ear

an act

are the very best ways to show love. all we have to do is remember to be aware of the people around us, wherever we are. :)

lovelove, gingaa

cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, and cloves

2010-08-05T13:23:00.003-04:00

A couple days ago I discovered a can of pumpkin in the back of our pantry and I have not been able to stop thinking about it. I’ll be sitting doing my homework, minding my own business, and then out of nowhere a picture of the can will dance into my minds eye and I begin to imagine all the things that it could become…. totally forgetting about The Birth of the Big, Beautiful Art Market as pumpkin pies and cookies and breads do a Be Our Guest impersonation in my mind….and then I’ll snap back and banish the spicey orange pureed vegetable from my thoughts.

Today though was different. It came into my mind and I could almost taste warm pumpkin bread fresh out of the oven on the tip of my tongue. That was it. "Today’s the day," i said to myself. So I went into the kitchen and pulled out all the ingredients and my mom wondered in and exclaimed in delight, “oh! You’re using my green mixing bowl! Ohh you knooow that bread is going to be amazing if you’re making it in that!” this is my mom’s very favorite bowl. It’s a green pottery bowl and there is no other one like it on the planet, and it is very lovely.

So I’m mixing and throwing in spices and vanilla and the air is thick with flour like fog from clapping my dusty hands. I pour half the batter into a pie pan, yeaah I just felt like pie shaped bread sounded fun :P , and then I pull another dish out to pour the rest of the batter into….

And then,

Craaaaack! Shatttter. Silence.

i dropped the green bowl. I slapped my forehead with my floury hand and with shoulders slumped walked into the living room where my mom and sister were sitting.

“mom?”

“was it the blue bowl?!” my sister asked.

“no….. it was the green one.”

My mom stood up and walked slowly into the kitchen.

I apologized repeatedly and told my mom how mad I was at myself because I knew it was her favorite. She was quiet at first but then she just smiled at me and hugged me and said it was ok. She said she was glad that it had perished doing what it was made to do. And then she got this really excited look on her face and said,

“hey! We should save the pieces and make it into something new! Give it a new purpose!”

so we set about gathering pieces and washing them and stacking them somewhere safe. My mom is very excited about her new project. She may even write a story about that little bowl.

This morning was a visual and tangible reminder that true love is unconditional, quick to forgive, and can always see the potential in you even when you appear to be useless to the rest of the world.

The only love that I now that will always always always respond in this extreme truth is the Love of God. He loves us so much that he sent his son to take the blame for all our failures so that even when we look like we have no potential we can be made new and given a new purpose!

He loves us so much that he doesn’t get mad at us when we break something, he just hugs us and says, “its ok, lets make something new now.” And then he sits down with you to enjoy a warm delicious piece of pumpkin bread. :)

hope you are enjoying the end of your summers.... wish i could share warm bread with you all over the internet! much love till next time,

ginger

2010-07-29T21:32:00.002-04:00

love is listening, WITHOUT interjecting, to someone vent about their day when you have other things to do.

~ginger

ps: don't forget to send us lovemail please!

love is everywhere

2010-07-18T02:53:00.002-04:00

ohhwow.

2010-07-15T21:25:00.002-04:00

so I think I just fixed the comment problem we've been having... better late than never :) but yay! comment awayyy :D

faith hope & love

2010-07-14T09:42:00.001-04:00

you can watch the whole hillsong show here: http://www.youtube.com/user/stephb280784#p/c/020983F44C2AEF05/0/GYRsUTvajtQ

Love is patient.

2010-07-12T16:18:00.003-04:00

Today is a rainy day. It's quite lovely. I was sad to see it stopped raining before I could get a nice rain dance in earlier. Now it's raining hard again but I think I'll just sit and listen to it along with Regina Spektor while I type.

While walking home and stepping over puddles I realized I've been home for a bit over a week now. And like Ginger said, it feel like forever. I think next week I will take a few days to visit friends nearby. The west coast is where I'd really like to go though, there's something about California I really enjoy. The people, the different cultures, the weather and landscape. I will be over there in August though, so I suppose I shouldn't complain.

Today I helped out at Rainbow Express, a camp that welcomes all children and focuses on being accommodating for children with special needs. Usually people are assigned two kids to watch, but I was a bit late signing up so I was there to fit in where ever I was needed. Towards the end of the day one of the volunteers had to leave so I took care of her kids for the last two hours. I must say, working with children with disabilities really shows you what it means for love to be patient. The little girl I was watching loved the word "no", throwing things, and taking others kids things. She was fun to be paired with though :) by the end she understood that she needed to say please when she wanted something and sat on my lap for the closing puppet show.

Love is such a beautiful thing. It's amazing to see how the attributes of love apply to everyone in every situation. Whether it's a R&B artist dining beside you or a child with down syndrome during a camp. To show love to each of them patience is required.

It's cool. I love Love. I love being able to put it into practice with all different kinds of people :)

<33emilyy

2010-07-10T19:41:00.001-04:00

i got this in a fortune cookie about a week before we began our loveeachone tour....

i recently found this photo on my cell phone so i thought i would share :)

ging

still lovin'

2010-07-09T17:30:00.006-04:00

hey! welcome to our blog :)

thanks for still checking us out even though we're no longer traveling... it really means a lot to us!

its me, ginger..... down in FL :)

this is FL love !

I have officially been home for 9 days now.... it feels like an eternity!

and i don't mean that in a bad way! its just that after moving moving moving all the time its kind of weird feeling to stay in one place.

sometimes i think that our tour was just a blur... like it didn't actually happen... but every single day i think about something that i learned over the period of 7 weeks we were traveling. there's no way it was a dream because i see the world in such a different way...... sometimes i'm tempted to ignore everything around me and just do what i wanna do (and honestly... there have been times already that i have) but i know i know I KNOW that is no way to live. People are the important part of life.

showing love definitely looks different here.... i've spent the last 9 days applying for jobs within biking distance of my apartment for next year, reading books, and being home with my family. it can be hard to love them sometimes.... there aren't a lot of places to go and be alone around here.... but they are really important! i've been thinking about how each person has a love language... a certain way that they receive love the most naturally.... it can be through touch, gifts, time, words.... i really want to discover the love languages of the people closest to me so that i can be loving them in a way that they best understand.

i've also been thinking about how being positive is so important. and believe me, i know this is not always easy.... but when we keep a positive and encouraging attitude even when those around us are not we show so much love! also..... patience.

sometimes.... i'm almost positive that love = patience. the end. you know?

so, thats what i'm doing... putting a positive attitude into practice... along with speaking encouraging words and being patient (no matter what).

and believing i will get a job no matter what the economy looks like!

<3ging

for the soldiers

2010-07-09T17:26:00.002-04:00

Because of You. celebrating the difference you make.

2010-07-07T13:28:00.006-04:00

Does one person matter? Do the countless little things you do each day -listening, caring, reaching out- really make a difference? The truth is, there are no little things. Every act of kindness, contribution or example quietly touches one heart, that in turn touches another. And when you care, people notice.

This book celebrates the difference you make, not just to those who know you best, but to the world around you. It's true. Because of you, our world is a better place.

- the introduction to the book "Because of You", where we've been finding many of our quotes :)

loving Love.

2010-07-05T22:04:00.007-04:00

A great life is the sum total of all the worthwhile things you've been doing one by one. -Richard Bach

I'm sorry it's taken so long for another post. The last leg of the trip has been fast paced and jam packed with things. After leaving New Jersey we shot down to Charlotte, NC - my home :) it was really wonderful being able to see my family. This last part of the trip I've been thinking a lot about how I show love to my family.

While we were here we wanted to conclude the packages for the soldiers that we started earlier. We went off to Wal-Mart believing it would be a quick trip that would basically take care of all the packages and were quickly proven wrong. A friend from school met us there and we suddenly realized that Wal-Mart doesn't always carry 30 sticks of Gillette Clinical Strength deodorant, 60 packs of clean wipes, and 30 packages of beef jerky. Which I have to say did surprise me. So while we were here we stopped by a few different stores, currently we only need a few more deodorants and some clean wipes (yayyy! :)

After we left NC we went straight down to spend the night in Orlando at our friend's, Annie, house :) Her family was lots of fun to stay with and it was fun to hear all their family stories and experiences they've had in Columbia (which is where her mom is from).

The following day we drove to Sarasota to drop off Ginger at her home. It was strange to be back in Sarasota (which is where our school is) and to suddenly see our school friends. It's strange to think that they've been on summer vacation for these last seven and a half weeks. I feel like everyone we left should have still been in school while we were traveling.

I don't know how to explain those last hours of driving together with Ginger and Jason. I just kept thinking... this is the end. Not the end of seeking after love, or encouraging others to love. But just the end of traveling all together. The conclusion of the Love Each One tour 2010. The last time we would all be together for awhile. The end of a season.

We left Gingy with her family and thanked them for a very yummy dinner. Then we headed back to Miami, to end where we started. We stayed at Stan's home for a day and where able to go back to 'His House', the orphanage we volunteered at our first day of Love Each One :) they had asked us to fix up a few old childrens chairs and table. We were only in Miami for a day so we didn't have the time to fix them, so we really wanted to figure something out for them. Once again, Jason and I were only in Miami for the day to get my car fixed up and we weren't sure if we could fix up the ol chairs before six. So we visited a few different stores until we were able to find some really cute childrens chairs at Toys R Us. We were able to find our way back to 'His House' to say hello to our old friend Carmen and drop off the chairs/tables. It was really great being able to see her and share with her (and her family/friends that were with her) all the amazing things that have happened while on the trip and all the things we've been able to learn :)

One thing we prayed before going on this trip and during it was that we would always be in the right place at the right time talking to the right people. I cannot express to you how faithful God has been. Everything has worked out perfectly. Absolutely everything. And we've made some wonderful new friends. And run into some amazing strangers. Everyone we've been able to come in contact with, from our waitress in Las Vegas, to the homeless man in New York City, I believe they were exactly who we needed to talk to.

Being home these last few days has been wonderful. I love my family and I really feel like I've grown in how I love people, from strangers to those close to me. I can't wait to keep learning about love. To keep giving it to people.

I know love is a decision. I know it isn't always comfortable. And I know the power of love. The strength that love carries with it when used sincerely. The ability it has to break down barriers. To overcome fear, to eliminate anger. To reach out to a stranger. To make someone's day better. To change the course of someone's life.

Love holds an amazing power.

Love never fails.

nyc

2010-06-28T23:58:00.019-04:00

very belated, i know. and i'm sorry.

friday afternoon we took a train from Princeton, NJ into New York City with our friend Meg. It emptied us out into the center of everything - it felt like there were billions of people and they were all going somewhere. my first reaction is, "ah! crowded, crazy, confusion, too much!"

after getting mildly lost we found our way to 1st and 20th and met up with one of Meg's fiends, Nick. He was a really cool guy, very genuine and accepting. He took us on a mini tour of the area and showed us a cool pizza place for lunch and a dessert bar later for something sweet. There are so many things in nyc; so many places to shop, to eat, to chill, to work.

he took us to his favorite park, Union Square. This is where i really started to appreciate nyc. Here i began to see it as more than just a mass of people. There were people lounging on blankets in the grass, strolling through the farmers market, playing with their dogs and/or kids, reading books, enjoying the company of friends, strumming guitars. People watching was so much fun, i thought about all of my friends who love sketching and about how much fun they would have here. I looked at people and really saw them as individuals and thought about how they have hopes and dreams too and i enjoyed imagining what those might be.

we stopped to look at this big clock/countdown thing on the side of a large building and a man asked us if we knew what it was, we said we didn't and so he began telling us about it. We told him we weren't from around there and explained what we were doing with Love Each One and everything. we asked him if we could video tape him and ask him a question and he quickly agreed. His name was Ron, he was a tall slim black man who was very friendly and polite and he had a kind smile. He was originally from Charlotte, NC. he had fun talking to Emily about that. He said that love is a choice. Its a decision to respond in loving way when people are treating you badly. He said that he used to live a tit for tat lifestyle but now he's learned how important it is to turn the other cheek, to respond in love despite the circumstances.

As we walked away from him, Emily and i were approached by two girls who wanted to tell us about a salon that was offering this amazing deal for a haircut, manicure, massage, and more and after expressing how much we wished we could take part we told them we were only there for the day and explained what we were doing and asked if they would mind sharing their thoughts on love with us really quick. They both said that love is in the small things - like holding the door open for someone or smiling at the people you pass by. They said that in a city as big as new york those are the things that really stand out, just acknowledging people is love.

As we continued through the park we happened upon a performance by a group of very fit black guys who were break dancing and bringing in quite the crowd. The leader of the group, who was wearing a leopard print do-rag, started yelling for people to gather closer, he said, " heeey! whiiite people! come clooooser! we will noooot hurt youuu. there are toooo many of youuu!" he was funny. he jumped over 6 girls who were kneeling in a row. once the act was over we ran over to meet him and see if he would answer our question. He said that love is in the breath. as long as we're breathing we're loving.

We also got to ask Nick what he thought love was and after he talked about his lovely girlfriend Justine, he said that we were the best example of love he had seen in awhile. He talked about how he walks down all the same streets everyday and see's all those people that we had talked with but he just walks by without engaging. He said that we really inspired him to go about his daily life differently.

i feel like a big thing we were hearing in nyc was just to live love; to breath love, respond in love, see love in simple acts. its cool because i feel like that fits new york city. its a crowded extravagant place and so the love light that really shines is a small, daily love. love that is enduring and constant.

it feels like a perfect reminder for the end of this tour. we dont want everything we've learned to just fade away, we still want to focus on loving each person we encounter, only now it will be a much more simple, daily sort of love.

currently we are in Matthews, NC staying with emily's family. we've been working on the packages for the soldiers, yes, we were supposed to have done those a month ago... but we're doing them now. we also got to hang out with a friend from school and one of his good friends and talk to them about love. they introduced us to a lovely place called Amelies french bakery. emily will tell you more about all things charlotte/matthews tomorrow (hopefully!) though.

goodnight for now! :)

tomorrow we drive to orlando!

~ ginger

listening

2010-06-25T00:43:00.021-04:00

Deep breath. Hmmm. I am currently sitting in the waiting room at the ferry dock, we are waiting to board and head back to the mainland. I have so many thoughts and my fingers feel almost frozen on the keys because of mind overload. There are so many things to say I can’t think of just where to start or how to start it.

Hmm, ok. Well, we have exactly one week left on this adventure. I feel like when we arrived in ohio half a week ago I was just wishing that it was over right then… seeing Jason around his family made me miss mine a lot and I also was missing having time to myself. But as we’ve been learning love is a lot about choosing others over yourself and though it can be uncomfortable, it is worth it. We have had such great conversations.

One of jason’s relatives shared a story of how she paid for someone’s meal at subway the other day and a friends family in Pennsylvania talked about how they had volunteered at a drug rehab home in philly. As we travel people are always asking us to share our stories and so its really nice to hear from others as well.

Stopping in Connecticut to surprise our friend Adam was lots of fun.

We got to meet a good friend of his, Karen, who shared stories of her past 4 months in Italy. Something that she was saying really stood out to her there was that the people did not multitask. If you were conversing with them they were totally focused on talking with and listening to you. Not half listening while doing a million other things like we have a tendency to do. I thought that was really cool. That’s something that always stands out to me; good listeners are almost like sparkling lights. I know, I talk about sparkly lights a lot :)

(that yellow speck is a firefly in adam's front yard btw....)

Anyways, from Connecticut we left with a number of love notes to share at our show and started making our way to the island of Nantucket.

It is an interesting place, very quaint and historic looking. During the summer months it is bustling with tourists and people who have summer homes here.

It’s a wealthy community and at first I felt like, “what are we doing here? These people don’t need any help.” But I quickly remembered that its not about financial or physical need, its about heart need. I say, “not here” pointing to my head, my mind, “but here” pointing to my heart.

We decided to rent a car and we met a somewhat cynical guy at the car and bike rental shop who didn’t seem to like us much and didn’t think we should be helping out in a place were so many people are not “in need” and we talked to him about why that’s not the point and though it was hard to tell if he received any of that I think explaining it all to him helped reaffirm it in our own hearts.

Next we headed over to a nursing home and as Emily said they were very eager to let us help right there on the spot. When I walked in the door I automatically felt nervous and kind of uncomfortable and honestly I didn’t really want to be there… there’s a lot of sadness in those places. But I know that love is a decision, so I pushed down my feelings and I ended up sitting with an older gentleman named Sam. He shared story after story with me; how his niece and her daughter had come by just the other day to plant flowers with him; how he had worked making boats with his dad when he was younger; he had also worked in a galley kitchen and waited tables on a big boat; he once snuck a little duckling into the nursing home inside his jacket because he wanted to give his friend some food and water.

he loves painting and drawing pictures for people and encouraging and helping people… he’s younger than many of the residents and so a bit more capable.

My job was to sit and attentively listen. It was fun and so much easier than I thought and he was a really neat guy, I know he had even more stories to share. We ended up having dinner with him there and so Em and Jason were able to hear some of his stories. Even though the place is uncomfortable and full of strangers they need to receive and give love just as much as anyone else. Sam has so much courage and hope and he is such a positive influence on the place, I’m thankful that we could help brighten his day as he brightens the days of so many of the residents.

After we left there we went to see a friend from school, Michelle, and meet some of her friends. It was really great!

They were so excited to talk to us about love and so we got a lot of video responses and some songs and promises of artwork to be sent to us. Her friends were made up of local Nantucket islanders, a bunch of kids who were born and raised on the island and come from all walks of life. They were very open and accepting of us and eager to listen to our stories as they shared their own. Something that one guy, James, said that stood out to me was that love comes in the little things. The things all around us like butterflies. Everyday pieces of life.

Later that night we went to our hostel to get some sleep, because we had been up since 5am, and we ended up staying up late talking with two of the managers of the place, Jamie and David. I feel like we frequently end up staying up much too late simply because we meet so many cool people. They were excited to hear our stories and said they would mention us on their facebook page and send us their love notes. I think David may even write a best selling book on his thoughts on love.

They also let us write the question “What is Love?” on their chalkboard and the next morning we had a few cool responses.

I am so excited about our show and sharing everything we’ve gathered with all of you! We also would like to have a live feed from our show on here so if you can’t make it you can at least check it out from wherever you are… we’ll get all that kind of stuff figured out eventually.

Well anyways, those are some thoughts from the past couple days….. sorry for the length! I guess to sum everything up…. I’ve been learning that love is a decision: sometimes I don’t feel like it, sometimes I would rather go sit in a coffee shop by myself and read or journal than help someone or listen to them (and alone time is good too! Don’t get me wrong!) but people need love and we can all give it, a lot of times its as simple as providing a listening ear and our full attention.

As i post this we have arrived in Jackson, New Jersey where we are staying with ou friend Meg :) tomorrow we will be spending the day in new york city. we'll post again soon!

Have a wonderful wonderful last weekend of june!

<3ginger

ps. we found annie!

(sounds like a band right? :) )

baby don't hurt me, don't hurt me no more

2010-06-24T00:36:00.008-04:00

"What people need is a good listening to."

- Mary Lou Casey

Today was full of a lot of listening.

Forgive me if this post is brief, we wanted to let you guys know how awesome our day was! but the next post will have much more of our thoughts, conversations, and pictures from the day.

We made it over to Nantucket this morning and were able to connect with a local nursing home. I thought it was so cool cause we just walked in and said we'd like to volunteer and they said what are you doing right now? So we were able to sit outside with some of the residents and talk with them one-on-one until dinner. One of our new friends, Sam, invited us to eat dinner with him :) and we got to hear lots of fun stories about his life and see his artwork. Afterwards we met up with our friend from school, Michelle. Her friends were really cool to meet and get to know. We got a lot of different opinions on love and more love stories recorded. When we made it back to the hostel tonight we ran into some of employees and were able to hear many more stories of love.

This trip has really shown me how important listening is.

Wether it's a grandmother who keeps asking me the same questions over and over or two silly friends we just met who are trying to discuss the different ways to view love (through a not super confusing example of being on top of a mountain, that seemed confusing to others:P).

All those people deserve my attention.

My time.

All those people matter.

Check back tomorrow for more lovely things :)

In the morning we are off the New Jersey!!

<33emilyy

what do YOU think love is?

2010-06-22T22:11:00.020-04:00

this is where you come in!

maybe you know us, heard of us, or just stumbled upon our blog either way you are important to this project.

we want to know what you think love is.

so this is what we're asking for!

-a letter or video of you telling us what love is

-is there a time you've seen an act of love, whether it was something small or something big, anything thats stood out to you?

-how has your idea of love changed during your lifetime?

please send all video responses to loveeachone@gmail.com and any letters to:

Love Each One attn. Ginger

1130 Greensboro Lane/#646

Sarasota, FL, 34234

another rather long... full of thoughts post :)

2010-06-22T20:33:00.014-04:00

This morning we left Pennsylvania with the intention of sleeping in Nantucket tonight. However traffic quickly demolished the possibility of making the 8 o' clock ferry. So it was time to replan.

We knew our lovely friend Adam lived in Connecticut, about halfway to the Nan-t. So without a warning we were going to arrive at his house to see what good we could do. On the way there we made a quick stop for gas and a bathroom in New Jersey. I know I've been in New Jersey before, but it was just because I was staying at a hotel in NJ with my school then busing over to NYC. So when we turned off a random 'middle-of-nowhere' looking exit I wasn't expecting much. However I quickly realized that we had stumbled upon a rather busy bit of city. Lots and lots of different kinds of people lined the streets and shops. So many many people. I just kept looking out the window at all the different faces, ethnicities, body shapes, hair do's and clothing styles. Every kind of person seemed to be in that city. And it felt extremely overwhelming.

I kept thinking about how all of those people are just people. Yes they're all different but they live so similarly. They all have families and dreams. They probably work to make money in hopes of reaching their dreams. They probably desire to feel attractive and be confident. They all probably seek after someone's approval, even if it's just their own. They desire to feel important. To feel worth something. To be loved.

So I concluded that everyone seeks after a lot of the same things. But most of the time, even with all those similarities, people never reach out to the people they walk beside on the street. And that seems kind of weird... but oddly true. Especially in crowded areas. Like parts of NJ and NY.

Anyways, we stopped at Wendy's for a bathroom break and were confronted with multiple cleanliness issues and unhappy people. It left me feeling frustrated, unwelcome and anxious to leave. I felt like we were in a dirty city, full of people who were only focused on themselves with no desire to help others. I realized through all those feelings we haven't really been in a city city, so I suppose it's an atmosphere we haven't tackled yet. After we left though we went through the drive-thru and payed for a few people's meals :) I think the cashier thought we were sorta crazy. But I'm glad we were able to shine a little light while we passed through.

I think often times when we are in dark places, where love is not being shown to us, we often just want to escape. To get back to somewhere comfortable. But the only way to solve the problem is by confronting the issue. By directly, purposefully and unconditionally loving those that don't act in love and don't deserve our love. By changing people hearts with the light we have in us. That is how the dark places can be demolished. That is how love will win out.

<33emilyy

People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.

-Maya Angelou

Cincinnati. Home of the Bengals, chili, the Reds, King’s Island, and me.

2010-06-22T02:27:00.005-04:00

No two parts of this trip have been the same. For me to say this last stop was different for me than our past stops, albeit true, implies that there is a routine, or a “norm” for how the rest of the trip has been. However, in reality, the only “norm” is that there is no “norm.” Every time we stop, every person we meet, every act of love we choose to make, has been unique. Every experience just deepens a foundation in us of loving others and enhances our understanding of what love is.

But for me, this last stop was different.

Late Thursday night/early Friday morning we rolled into Cincinnati, OH, where I was born and raised. Over the past week my anticipation of going home has been growing more and more. I’m not one to get home sick, and it actually takes a good amount of effort on my part to keep in touch with people who aren’t staring me in the face. I’m just naturally an “out of side, out of mind” kind of guy. Not cause I don’t care, but I tend to end up focusing a lot of my energy and attention on the people I’m currently with and the situations I’m currently in. But as we got closer and closer to Cincinnati, it took everything I had to keep my face from breaking out into a big goofy grin. Needless to say, it was good to be home for a few days.

There have been countless times throughout this whole trip where it just seems like we’ve been at the right place at the right time. The timing of things has just been perfect in so many situations; everything from being able to help our new friend enter rehab in Knoxville to getting to see the Goonies in a movie theater in Wichita. Everywhere we go things fall into place, and Cincinnati was no exception.

I spent a good amount of time in Cincinnati visiting family. For one thing, my great aunt Sybil was in town this past weekend from Grand Rapids, Michigan. It’s always great to see her because she is so full of life and energy. She really encourages me. It was a pleasant surprise that she just happened to be there at the same time I was.

On Friday, Sybil, my mom, my sister, and I went and visited my grandmother in the nursing home. Even though she doesn’t always know what’s going on, I think she really enjoyed us stopping by. And it was really good to get a chance to visit her.

From the nursing home we met up with my dad, and traveled over to the hospital. Just that morning (again, talk about timing!), my cousin Beth and her husband Michael had their first child, a healthy young lad by the name of Jacob Eli. He was a beautiful little baby, and I’m very happy for them. To my surprise, Jacob and I coincidentally have the same intials: JEH.

On Saturday, my mom and I visited my Scoutmaster from Boy Scouts at a physical therapy center. He had recently had a stroke, and was now in the process of speech therapy, etc. In just a couple days he was going to be moving to live with his sister in Delaware, so she could help take care of him. Again, the timing was just right that I was able to see him before he left.

Finally, on Sunday we all drove down to Jeffersonville, Indiana for a big birthday bash for my grandfather. We rented out a hall, had a DJ, food, cake and tons of family and friends showed up. It was great to see him, and to get to talk to people about what we’ve been doing. I could tell he really appreciated all the love everyone showed him by taking the time to come.

And that’s what this trip to Cincinnati has really taught me about love: that love, while many things, is also time. A lot of the things we’ve done for people have been acts of love using the money we’ve been given. This trip has changed the way we see things. We’re constantly looking for opportunities to help someone, pay for someone’s food, or gas, etc. But time invested can be just as important.

These were the highlights of my visit to Cincinnati, because they pushed me to show love in a different way. I don’t like hospitals, or nursing homes, or physical therapy centers. They make me really uncomfortable and sad. I admire the people who are able to work at those kinds of places, because I don’t think I could. Visiting my grandmother is always bittersweet. I love getting a chance to visit with her, but I hate seeing people suffer the loss of their physical and mental strength. But that’s what love is. It’s stepping outside of your comfort zone, its sometimes doing things you don’t want to do, going places you don’t want to go, so that you can invest in another person’s life. I enjoyed getting to see all these people that I love during our stop, but I know that for them all, it meant the world that I took the time to stop by.

Choosing to invest your time and energy into another person goes a long way. It’s amazing how people just open up if you’re willing to listen. Sometimes a quick family visit doesn’t mean much to us, but you’d be surprised how much it can mean to them.

We came to the conclusion that the true test of what we’ve learned on this trip will be how we choose to act in a few weeks when we’re all back home. For some reason the hardest people to love sometimes are the people we actually care about the most. We tend to treat those we love worse than we do complete strangers. Maybe its because we know that they love us and we unintentionally take advantage of that. Maybe we just don’t realize sometimes what we have. I really don’t know why it happens. And as far as I’m concerned, it doesn’t matter. What matters for me is that I am choosing to make a conscious effort not to let that happen anymore. Choosing to walk in love isn’t always easy, but the point is it’s a choice.

I recently memorized the love Scriptures in 1 Corinthians 13. Meditating on them has been really helpful for me. It’s been a great reminder of what love looks like and how I should be acting. For those of you that don’t know what it says after “Love is patient, love is kind,” I leave you with this:

Love does not envy.

Love does not boast.

It is not arrogant.

It is not rude.

It does not insist on its own way.

It is not irritable.

It is not resentful.

It does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth.

Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

Cheers!

Jason

morning quote:

2010-06-21T08:42:00.003-04:00

"to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived; that is to have succeeded."
- ralph waldo emerson

chocolate mocha chip

2010-06-20T03:11:00.006-04:00

its been a couple days since we posted last... sorry about that! its so interesting how different each of our stops have been.... currently we are in cincinnati, ohio staying with jason's family... i love how being with someone's family helps you understand that person so much more :) its been really nice talking with his parents and his great aunt and siblings and friends.... we continue to find that showing love most frequently comes through listening.

tonight a couple of fun things stand out in my mind.... we were at walgreens and emily and i were waiting for jason and his sister kelsey to finnish up so we were up at the front and we started talking with the woman at the cash register.... she was really friendly and very interesting and as we told her about what we we doing and about our school and everything she very quickly opened up and told us all about her kids and her life... its so cool how when you take the time to listen people will really open up and share their lives and their stories with you. peoples hearts come out with their words.

just before we ended up at walgreens we had gone to get ice cream. we walked into graeters literally as they were turning off the "Open" sign. but the kids at the counter were very happy to serve us (even though we took forever trying to decide what to get! we taste tested at least 4 different flavors!). after we all had our ice cream and we were eating and talking i overheard them disappointedly counting the tip money and i thought, "oh! hey! do we have cash! we should give them our business cards and a big tip!" because they were super helpful and patient and friendly and they totally deserved a good tip. we gathered up some tip money and just as they were asking us to leave so they could lock up we went up to them to hand them the money and when the guy saw the amount he got so excited and started hugging us and stuff..... it was so much fun! i was so glad that we were able to share some love with them simply through smiles and a nice tip :)

tomorrow we are going to jason's grandfathers birthday party where we will be surrounded by a whole bunch of people... so that should give us lots of opportunities to ask peoples opinions/thoughts on love. its going to be a good day!

btw, if you haven't seen toy story 3 yet.... go see it!

good night and sweet dreams :) <3ginger

Thinking of you

2010-06-20T02:31:00.009-04:00

dear friends, we miss you and we hope you're having lovely summers.... if we haven't found you along our travels yet then we will later! <3

fireflies and free coffee

2010-06-18T05:59:00.005-04:00

I have been driving a lot these last 2 days. I sort of fall into this solo zone while I’m driving… I’m listening to the music and intently focusing on the road. Early evening I was driving through Missouri and I’m staring straight ahead just watching the broken white line pass beneath us and the monotony of the green on both sides and I suddenly see this yellow speck… and then another… and another….

Eyes wide, I gasp, “ohhh!’

Emily, who is in the front seat beside me, is always very safety conscious so she responds with, “what is it?!”

“A lightning bug! There are lightning bugs, err fireflies? yeah fireflies, here! Oh I love fireflies! Look there’s another one! And another! Oh they are so cool! Why are they not everywhere?!” I ramble on in excitement.

Emily just shakes her head at me.

But I really do love those things, they are so interesting to me. I love the way they just surprise you. Appearing almost out of nowhere with such a small light, when the rest of the world is dark. And even though its small you can’t miss it. And when they are in groups they are even more exiting! I was thinking about how we are like fireflies in the world. With each act of love our light blinks. Together we sparkle more, and I don’t know about you but I find sparkly lights to be quite attractive :)

Earlier today we stopped at a starbucks to grab a frap for em and we spontaneously decided to pay for the girls in front of us… its always fun to ask people if we can pay for them. They always react in shock and surprise and then we go on to explain what we’re doing and the girls got really excited… it makes me even more excited about it! I hope they enjoyed their coffee and maybe we were able to inspire them to pass on the love.

Later Jason and I decided to stop at another starbucks, because we were on driving duty for the last leg of the trip to Cincinnati. We walk in and order and this really gentle and friendly older woman begins making our drinks. We start to hand her our money and she smiled and shook her head saying, “this ones on me.” We thanked her and headed back to the car talking about how it’s funny to be on the other side of generosity. Jason was saying how he just doesn’t really expect it and almost isn’t sure how to react. It makes you feel special and singled out. To be completely honest… as I was driving I wondered if maybe we would get free starbucks today… the other day I received a fortune cookie and my fortune read,

“you will receive unexpected support over the next week. Accept it graciously.”

I’m not one to believe every fortune…. But I thought that was kind of cool :)

I can’t wait to see whats coming in these next couple days!

~ginger~

traveling....

2010-06-18T05:52:00.016-04:00

Fresh

2010-06-17T03:29:00.005-04:00

As emily said this morning, salt lake city was a really fun different sort of stop. It’s the first time we were able to work with kids, and that was a blast! Kids are just so refreshing… they say things so simply and aren’t afraid to ask blunt questions.

I drew pictures with a little 3 year old girl named alice… she was very sweet and kind of shy and quiet but she liked drawing the stems onto all of the flowers I drew and drawing swirlies around the sunshine… I asked her what love was and she just smiled and kept drawing… and it showed me that just the act of spending time with her was love. I also talked with a 9 year old girl named Yesandra, it was a little bit easier to tell her about our love project. She wanted to know all about my family and my home. She shared that love is helping people who are hurt. Another 9 year old girl, Elizabeth simply drew a heart.

These kids were so interested just in talking and listening to us. One thing I noticed was their attention to family… asking about ours and telling us about theirs. The leader of the playroom was handing out popsicles and all the kids were grabbing at least 2 or 3 extras so they could take them to their mom and dad and little siblings. I know I haven’t always been the best at loving my family. It’s easy to neglect them when there are so many things going on, but they are the ones that are there for me no matter what.

Regardless of your family situation, loving those who are closest to you is the biggest display of compassion, self-sacrifice, and understanding (because its definitely the hardest). Maybe your family isn’t showing love to you or to each other… and that does hurt, but maybe the best way to change that is to be an example of unconditional love yourself. Two ways to do that are; being quick to listen and slow to become angry, and being patient. I’m learning just how important those things are.

Today we drove about 650 – 700 miles…. About 11 hours of driving. Tonight we are in Nebraska. And it is time for sleep!

:) ginger

btw... here are some oldies but goodies that came from my disposable :)

today today I live for one thing...

2010-06-16T13:34:00.006-04:00

Yesterday we were able to connect with the Road Home (http://www.theroadhome.org/) in Salt Lake City. They are doing some great stuff here! Their mission is to help homeless families and individuals to get off the streets and back into the community. We had discussed fixing dinner for them, but after we talked with the volunteer coordinator we found out it was too short notice. However we could still volunteer to help out in the Playroom later that night :) Since the dinner didn't work out we wanted to help in another way. So we found out that the Road Home asks for birthday bags to help the parents of kids who are celebrating birthdays. I think we all really loved the idea so we set out to Super Target to stock up.

The birthday bags were asked to be made up of things like cake mix, icing, brownies, disposable pans, candles, party favors, and gift cards. We compiled them all together this morning and will be dropping them off in just a few minutes :)

In the Playroom last night we were able to talk and play with a lot of different kids :D and they were superrrr cute. Some friends in the area came with us and at first seemed a bit overwhelmed. The room was full of very loud, very active kids ranging from ages 3 to 11. I think one of my favorite things to see was Jason and Avner awkwardly standing by themselves and talking when this little girl suddenly ran up and grabbed Jason's hand. She just stood there smiling at him, not saying anything. Haha the look on the boys faces was a mix of embarrassment, uncertainty, and obvious amusement. In the end everyone became more comfortable and we had some fun conversations with the kids. We also were sure to bring along some paper and crayons and ask the kids what love was to them. We got all kind of responses, from some very silly/joking ones, to some really beautiful genuine ones. Ging took a group picture of those we'll put up later. I'm so glad we'll have them for the art show :D

We'll now it's on the road again! Colorado here we come

<33emilyy>

another good morning quote :)

2010-06-15T12:36:00.002-04:00

"Too often we underestimate the power of a touch, a smile, a kind word, a listening ear, an honest compliment, or the smallest act of caring, all of which have the potential to turn a life around"

-Leo Buscaglia

goodnighttt

2010-06-15T03:17:00.005-04:00

Today we arrived in Salt Lake City just in time for dinner :)

Tomorrow we are going to be helping out at a local shelter that looks amazing! We will be making a lovely hand crafted dinner to hand out and do some crafts with local kids

We'll let you know how everything goes tomorrow, I'm quite excited :D

a quote to consider...

"People who matter most are most aware that everyone else matters, too" - Malcolm Forbes

blogger problems !

2010-06-14T02:48:00.004-04:00

It has come to our attention that a lot of people have been trying to post comments on our blog but it hasn't been working. We're not sure if it's a browser problem or something with blogger. It works on Ginger's old version of Safari, but not on Jason's iphone Safari.. so we're going to see if there's something we can do to fix it for everyone.

In the meantime if you have anything you would like to say but can't, please feel free to email us at loveeachone@gmail.com ! as long as you tell us which post it's for we can post it for you. we want to hear your thoughts and make them available for others to hear as well :)

the mission statement

2010-06-14T00:22:00.013-04:00

Things have been a bit busy these last few days, the group has been adjusting since leaving Stan in Cali for his internship, posts have been put up on late nights, and internet has been hard to find. So I'd like to use todays post to restate what our mission is for this tour. The purpose behind everywhere we go, the people we stay with, and the different ways we reach out.

We want to love individuals where they are.

We want to know what individuals think love is.

We want to show love to individuals.

We want to encourage individuals to show love to others where they are.

This trip has taught me a lot about love. What's made each day of this trip different than the way I usually live is I've been much more conscious of how I act in love. And like our posts have stated we've discovered love is a decision and not always an easy or comfortable one. Though that statement is simple, it means a very different thing when it's attached to an action. I think it's something I've always known, but it appears much more real to me when I'm trying to work up the courage to ask a few older gentlemen sitting on their front lawn, or a boy sitting deep in thought by his bike what love is to them.

This last week has been a bit different than the beginning of the trip. I think in our heads we were all aiming to show love to the homeless or the lower class communities. But that alone is not what this trip is about. It's about loving every individual. Louisiana showed us that.

These last few weeks we've been able to stay with friends which has been cool. It's been a different season of the trip. It's shown me a few different things. The first being that one of the greatest ways of showing love to people isn't with money, it's with time and a listening ear. It's awesome to see how many people just want to talk. They just want to share stories and have an experience with you. Wether it's a discussion about love over coffee or lounging on sofas while sharing beliefs and future plans. Those moments have been some of the most rewarding. Those moments I've known, I am in the right place.

The second reveal has been the realization that often times it's easier to show love to a stranger than it is to someone you know. Sometimes I'd rather go give away a meal to someone than have to sit down with the team and discuss why we're not getting along. It's more fun. Less awkward. But in order to genuinely show love to strangers I believe we must be well rooted in loving the people that are closest to us.

Last night we stayed with one of Ginger's sister's friend Evan in Tacoma, Washington. It's been so awesome to see how much love strangers have been willing to show us. Evan took us out and showed us the town :) We visited a nearby park and explored. We toured the city and were given in-depth information on the city. I've decided Washington is one of my favorite states to look at.

In every city we go we don't always volunteer at an organization, or give away lots of money, or meet tons of people. But we always invest time into someone. Even if it's just one person. Because that is what our mission is. To let that one person know that they are important to us. They are loved.

<33emilyy

free flow thoughts

2010-06-12T05:18:00.033-04:00

so, as jason described in yesterdays post, thursday we left redding, california and our lovely new friends there to head up to portland, OR. it was sad to leave, but the drive up was incredible! northern california and southern oregon are full of beautiful mountains, forests, and rivers. it never ceases to amaze me how beautiful nature is and how different each place looks from the one before. i even got to choose the music so we were listening to a lot of chill music that i havent been able to listen to while driving (because it usually puts everyone to sleep because we have in the past had a tendency to not leave till like 5pm) so we listened to some alexi murdoch, brooke waggoner, fleet foxes, fiction family, sigur ros, and coldplay. i love music and i feel like driving music should fit the location and my mood, you know like a soundtrack..... and i just felt like those artists were so right at that moment. anyways.... heres N. Cali....

...... and here we're driving into S. Oregon.... ..... and here we enter into Portland, OR.... where it rains 9 months of the year and is known for its coffee shops, breweries, and hippies..... we are staying with our good friend meggie. her sister owns her own coffee shop in town, her mom is the pastry chef, and meggie is working as a barista there over the summer... i think its so cool that it is a sort of family run business. and its a really lovely little coffee shop.... very comfortable and open and has lots of natural lighting through the big front windows, its really family friendly - they even have a play room for kids! and the food was excellent! i had a dirty chai latte and a piece of pumpkin loaf and it was sooo good. i really really like coffee shops :) we hung out there for a good while, talking with meggie and friends and just enjoying spending time together we went geocaching next and just wondered around and also got to talk with some different people and hear their thoughts on love. i'm getting so excited about our show and being able to share all of these really wonderful thoughts on love that people have relayed to us! people are so inspiring and encouraging.... i feel like often we individually are too hard on ourselves and feel as though we have nothing to offer or maybe because we aren't experts on something we have no advice to add. Frequently when we've asked people what they think love is they shy up and say "ohh i don't know, i'm not the right person to ask," but they usually go ahead and right something down or tell us something while we're recording and i am always encouraged by what they have to say. I can't wait to share them! each new one expands my thoughts on love. at the end of this adventure i'll share mine... its gets longer every day.

I've been thinking a lot about the future and my purpose and my dreams the last couple days, and thinking about how love is the key to everything and how love should be the leading force behind all of my dreams....

i was reading a friends blog the other day and they had a quote up that said,

" don't ask what the world needs, ask yourself what makes you come alive, then go and do that. because what the world needs is for people to come alive." - J. Eldridge

it really got me thinking about self confidence and identity. things that most people struggle with through adolescence and even as adults.... second guessing whats in our hearts. i saw this poster up on the side of a building today....

and i was just thinking about how when you're in love you're sort of living a dream.... you hearts alive and you're not worried about what other people think of it. and to live your dream (your destiny, your purpose, your passion) you have to live in love... in love with where you are, who you're with, what you're doing.... love drives out all fear of failure.

i'm not sure if any of that made sense.... i'm sitting here just typing off the top of my head and its 2:30 in the morning and we are getting up early and going to the market tomorrow..... sorry if that was all over the place! O_O anyways..... we headed into downtown portland just as the sun was hanging itself low in the sky making the shadows stretch far across the ground.... its my favorite time of day because the lighting is just amazing, everything is warm and the long shadows create a beautiful contrast. looking at the world at this time everything just seems more friendly and easy going. we found a park and played on the swings and the slide for a little bit :) and we walked and ended up at Powells Bookstore.... which is an amazing place. its so huge. i didn't make it any further than the paper sculpture and cooking sections :) meggie found a cool devotional book and a couple others, and em and jason spent some time in the childrens books section :) then we wandered the steets in search of some fooood and we ended up at pita pit.... it was really good. i love how fresh everything is. i do not know why we don't have these in sarasota...

Our portland project is comprised of these disposable camera that we are leaving at meggie's sisters coffee shop, Posies Cafe..... they will be sitting on the counter along with our business cards with the instructions:

-take a camera

-take a picture of yourself

-take a picture of something/somewhere/someone that you love

-return to Posies Cafe we figured if this sort of thing would work anywhere... portland would be the place :)

its been really really lovely to spend time with meggie and explore portland.... and do you know, it didn't even rain today.... i guess we brought a little bit of the california sunshine with us :)

tomorrow: Tacoma, Washington

until then, good night and good sleep :)

ginger

Painting the town Red(ding)!

2010-06-11T06:42:00.012-04:00

Well...I guess it's high time that I posted something on here, since it's been a little while.

I guess picking up where Emily left off, we finally made it to Redding!

Redding wasn't originally on the docket of places to stop, but we sure are glad we made a point of stopping there. Way back when we were in Nashville (a whole 2 weeks ago!), you might recall us telling a story about how we met these cool guys while at dinner and ended up hanging out with them later that night. Well one of them, Blake, had a bunch of friends out in Redding that he said we should hook up with when we passed through. I love new friends, so it sounded like a great plan.

To sum it up, Redding was awesome. We visited Bethel, a church/Bible school, spent the afternoon longboarding/geocaching at a park, and then met up with Blake's friend (our new friend) Lori for dinner at Chipotle. Post Chippy, we met up with a ton of other new friends and burned the midnight oil chatting it up. It seems we have a new place on our list of "places we need to revisit".

(Sun Dial Bridge at our new favorite longboarding spot)

I love how when we choose to step out of our comfort zones, make decisions grounded in love, things work out so perfectly. By choosing to reach out to these 4 trendy guys at the Silly Goose in Nashville, that led us to new connections (and more importantly friends) in Redding. By Stan choosing to trade bunks with the Irish guy at the hostel in Flagstaff, that led us to hooking up with our 2 German friends and having a place to camp the following night at the Grand Canyon. I don't mean to imply that we choose to walk in love in anticipation of receiving some sort of karmatic reward, nor can one expect that every single time you hold a door for someone or pay for their gas. But in such a love starved world, when you choose to act in love, it becomes contagious. Love is a doorway to many wonderful and amazing things. But more of my thoughts on love later.

We left our dear new Redding friends this morning and drove 7 hours to Portland, Oregon where we are staying with the wonderfully hospitable Meggie Burke. My 2 favorite things of this trip: meeting new friends, and getting to see all our old ones. I like people. :)

Who knows what tomorrow holds, but I know that it will involve coffee shops, acts of love, and rainy Portland, which is good enough for me!

P.S. In Redding, we kept seeing these weird lizard/snake things.

Thanks to 2 seconds of google research I found out they're called Southern Alligator Lizards. Ginger saw one (and snapped the photo above) and I saw one (almost ran it over with my longboard). Their tails can sometimes be up to twice the length of their bodies, which appeared to be the case with the one I saw. Pretty crazy. Here's a couple google images for your viewing pleasure:

Cheers! Jason :)

the beauty of living in the moment

2010-06-09T01:58:00.008-04:00

so we took off today

with all intention of making it to Redding.

However

our once again unexpected friend, Traffic, caused us to move slower than... me :P

We made it across the bridge after what seemed like forever, where moooore traffic awaited us, Gingy was ready for a second bathroom break and I was feeling rather hungry.

(this picture does not display the traffic we ran into today, clearlyy)

Conveniently the next exit was to Stan and Mikey's new place :D

so we pulled off and discovered they had just sat down for dinner at the "Can't Fail Cafe" and decided to join them. In the end we just decided to push everything back a day and stay here so we can get an early start tomorrow.

right now the boys are watching the movie Sunset Boulevard, Ginger's sippin tea and I'm going to be eating ramen.

tomorrow we'll cover more ground. Today was very nice even if we didn't make it to Redding. We ate lunch with Stevie and Lindsey, got some free food, and lots of lovin hugs :) met Mike R over dinner, helped the boys get much needed supplies from Target,

and enjoyed their company for a bit longer (as you can see from Jason's face.. :P)

We've been in the San Fran-ish area for five nights now. It feels like forever. It's been really nice to see friends and share stories and things we've learned. I feel a bit repetitive cause the basic thing we've learned is very simple. Love is not a feeling, it's a decision. It's a simply message that takes a lot of very conscious effort to exercise in one's life.

I think a lot of things are decisions. More things than a lot of people realize. You have to decided to be happy, or to eat healthy, or to get sleep, or to learn how to do something. I admit that I feel like I've been lazy in the past. The commitment required in doing something, or learning something seemed a bit too boring/routine to me, so I avoided it. But at the same time I realize I admire the people that can say they're going to learn French, then turn around and learn French. Their self discipline is so attractive. So that is a new goal for this summer as well. I will grow to be more self-disciplined. It goes hand-in-hand with walking in love :)

We haven't done a lot of random acts of love recently. We did pay a toll for a few people, which was funn! but not much else. This stop is different. It's been more about individuals we know, rather than individuals we just haven't had to pleasure of meeting yet. Both are fun to love on and spend time with <3

To end my post I leave you with an LA sunset from a fire escape off the Dream Center.

happy dreams

<33emilyy

san francisco

2010-06-08T18:50:00.019-04:00

this part of the trip has been full of things.... its been lovely to see ringling friends and sad to say goodbye.... here is san fran in photos:

(emily says she sees the word 'love' in this lettuce... :P)

goodbye san francisco :)

on the road to redding this evening!

vegas pictures!

2010-06-07T06:00:00.011-04:00

night out on the town.....

there are sooo many wedding chapels in vegas.... even drive through ones

we didn't get to see any weddings happen, but we did get to talk to a girl who worked in one of the chapels and she told us how it all worked.... its very interesting.... she was really fun to talk to though, she was studying interior design so she spoke our art language :) we drove by all of the well known casinos.... they are so huge, its such an interesting sight to see... we ate at the hard rock cafe and there were all these quotes about love on the walls more exploring heres the inside of the bellagio ..... i just thought this was pretty :)

its the most toned down of the casinos.... we waited by the bellagio fountain for like 40 minutes and they never started.... we were kind of disappointed... but i guess there's always oceans 11 :)

vegas isn't really our kind of place.... but we love the people just not everything that goes on there. good people watching.... so many people!

thinkthinkthink

2010-06-06T07:20:00.015-04:00

The last few days have been good. They’ve been a bit different feeling than the others. After volunteering at the Dream Center we headed to Disneyland for the day.

Three of us earlier this year were able to get a free Disney ticket from the “Give A Day, Get A Day” program, so we split the cost of one ticket for the fourth person and decided to go.

We’d been planning for a while on buying a families Disney ticket but we weren’t quite sure how we would present the proposition. How many people could we pay for? What if they wanted a hopper? What if they already had a free ticket for volunteering? All these things had crossed our minds but didn’t really hit us until we were standing outside the Disneyland gates. After 10-15 minutes of staring at families waking by and debating who we should talk to we decided to ask one of the cashiers about paying anonymously. Just pay for the next four one-day passes and let them hand the family our business card. I mean it’s Disneyland right? I was suuuure someone had done something like this before.

Nope.

They couldn’t do that.

So we began wandering, doing our best to ease drop as people were buying their tickets. After more endless minutes of people watching and listening I wandered back over to see that part of the group had found the perfect Disney family for us :) Jason was speaking with the lady buying tickets for her group of four. As Jason ran through Love Each One’s purpose he quickly pushed the ladies credit card away from the cashier and concluded with “…so we’d like to buy your Disney tickets.” The lady stepped backwards and one of the boys in the group suddenly snapped to attention, “Hold up! Rewind! What??” The other boy asked, “Wait, what do we have to do?” When they realized we just wanted to do it for them they where thrilled! And even took a picture with us :)

So it was cool. Very cool. Just being able to pay for them. They were so surprised. Not only them, but the cashier. Why is doing something nice for someone foreign to us?

Friday we had a slow day of packing and beach walking before we took off to San Fran. However once we hit the interstate we began moving roughly one mile every ten minutes.

For some reason I just never think of traffic. I guess I’ve never lived in a city where traffic could hold you up for longer than ten minutes. So we pulled off and decided to preoccupy ourselves until six-ish when the traffic should be gone. The boys went to see the movie Babies and Ging and I went shopping. We hit the interstate again around seven and where able to get to get to the lovely Lindsey O’s house a bit late that night.

But these few days of events have made me think. We’ve been doing normal things. Things I would do if I was back home with my family or out with friends. And it’s made loving individuals feel harder. Or maybe not harder… just more uncomfortable. Going to the mall I realize I don’t make a lot of eye contact with other shoppers. I stay out of their way and they stay out of mine. If that balance is broken by an accidental shoulder bump usually an apology is exchanged. Usually. But beyond that, we don’t communicate.

But why is that? The days that we’ve gone out specifically thinking “okay, how can we show love to people”? I feel more confident in my expressions of love. I don’t want to go on this tour very purposely loving people then go back to my normal way of living after week seven. This trip shouldn’t be separate from my life. I don’t want to allow myself to fall into old ways of thinking. I wont let it happen. I want to go home and keep loving people that I see in Panera. Or at Target. Or just in my house. I want to be loving everywhere I go.

Speaking of thinking, tonight I was thinking a lot. Just about loving people that can be hard to love. About loving people who aren’t showing you love back. After mulling over these thoughts I felt exhausted. I felt worn out just thinking about loving these people that frustrate me. Loving these people that maybe don’t listen or respect me. And my inside felt like yelling and crying and shutting down. And though my head was telling me lies, my heart knew the decision I’ve made.

Jesus has loved me always. Despite all the terrible things I’ve done and all the times I didn’t listen. He doesn’t keep record of any wrongs. And he never tries to make me feel guilty. So I choose to love others the way He loves me. And without His help, I wouldn’t be able to love people that way I know I can. Loving people is hard. It can be very hard. And it doesn’t have anything to do with feelings. Nothing. It has everything to do with your decision. Your self-control. They way you decided to act or react. I know I’ve messed up. I’ve let my feelings control my tone or my body language before. But I am becoming much more aware of the decision I must make to love. I encourage you to do the same.

<3emilyy

what day is it?

2010-06-03T03:53:00.017-04:00

i believe i am becoming mildly addicted to the life of a gypsy. its so wonderful to just go... figure out where you're sleeping whenever.... meet all kinds of lovely people.... it feels like the end of summer camp every time we leave a city. i think about the friends i've made at our various stops every day :)

one of the things i've learned through our gypsy lifestyle is to live in the moment. don't wish things away. see beauty in everything. i've always leaned in this direction... but now i believe i may have fallen all the way in.

we were in albuquerque a little while ago... i can't remember what day that was. the sunset was absolutely amazing. i could not take my eyes away from it, i just wanted to stare at it.

i fell in love with the deep blues that changed as quickly as the ocean tide. the flaming orange sun was like the crescendo of a deeeep soul filled melody, the kind that makes your belly drop and your mind fall into a state of enchantment as you wait expectantly for each new note. the purple and pink were the harmony that blended the shifting blues and oranges. there was a foggy texture in the air and the sky seemed almost tangible.

i was so caught up in the moment of it all as we stood outside of walmart i nearly forgot why we were even there and that i really needed to use the bathroom and that someone might want to park in the spot next to us. by the time we left walmart it was dark and my eyes were sad that the splendor had passed on. but for that moment i had been struck, there was nothing else.

i want to be so moment focused that when i am talking with people my full attention is on them. i'm not thinking about how my left foot huts and i want to sit down or how my stomach has been growling for the last 20 minutes or how i would rather talk to the person across the room. you are important, what you're saying is important, i am fully listening to you, i am not distracted. people are beautiful.

we are in lovely los angeles california now!

yesterday we were in burbank where we visited disney friends and ate at a reallyy cool place called barnies beanery.... where we got to play guitar hero! i really like that game :) only it makes my eyes water really bad from staring at the tv so intently.

then we stayed with an old ringling friend and it was fun to reconnect :) wednesday morning we woke up and headed over to the Los Angeles Dream Center, dreamcenter.org

they own an awesome building, it used to be a hospital, that houses all of their different outreach programs and everything. we worked with a program called hope for homeless youth, our leader Clint led us to hollywood blvd where we were supposed to be reaching out at this youth center and passing out lunches and praying with people....

it turned out that we weren't going to be allowed into that facility so we ended up splitting into groups. the whole was made up of the 4 of us and 5 members of this awesome family from denmark. jason, daniella (one of the daughters in the family), and i were a group. we headed down hollywood blvd and at first it was pretty darn intimidating... no one seemed to want any food or prayer but we kept walking... we ended up getting to talk to a number of people and give them some lunch including this one guy, SG, who was a writer.... i noticed him first by the large cardboard sign he had prop-ed up next to him.....

that was really cool..... i told him about what we were doing and gave him a card and he agreed to write down his definition of love. i also met a woman named cornbread and she was wearing all these different rings on her hands.... she told me where she had gotten each of them from, they were each a story about a certain person in her life.

the family from denmark we were working with, the Anderssons, were so much fun! after we finished up at the dream center we invited them out to dinner with us. it was really cool talking with them and hearing about denmark! they said we are welcome to visit them any time.... we just might take them up on that offer... love.each.one 2: europe ;)

all in all it was a wonderful day to practice living in the moment :) and as usual i am up much much too late... in just a little bit we will be on our way to disneyland!

goodnight and peaceful sleeping from la :)

~gingaa

moving on

2010-06-02T03:27:00.007-04:00

please note: we will have more pictures up later! when we aren't running out the door

Yesterday we left Vegas. I can't say we were sad to see it go. I think Vegas was... more than we all expected. It was sad to see that money and women can consume peoples lives. I think we all agree we prefer the Vegas in Oceans 11 over the real thing.

Though I have to say Vegas did teach us that the Nevada sun can cook a hot dog pretty well :)

We arrived in LA yesterday just in time to say hello to a few of Stan's friends at Disney and look around :)

We got to eat dinner at a cool little place in Burbank and enjoyed a grilled veggie sandwich while playing some Guitar Hero. I explained to the waitress what it is we're doing and asked her if she could write down what love is to her. It's funny how differently people respond to that question :P Some people will stare at you like "How could I possibly answer a question that huge??" others will frown and laugh off the question, as if the love they once knew has caused them pain. But our waitress just paused briefly to hear the question and began writing. She smiled and handed me her answer before walking away. "Love is patient" it said. I've been thinking a lot about how love is patient. Patience is something I once very openly lacked. But I realize it's something I want. It's something I have chosen to chase after. To act in even when I don't want to. Because ultimately everything is a decision. Patience. Love.

Right now we are running off to go help at the Dream Center. It should be fun :) We'll do our best to post about it later tonight.

<33emilyy

HAPPY MEMORIAL DAY :)

2010-05-31T20:06:00.004-04:00

This day we are reminded that the greatest love is to lay down your life for another. We are thankful to all people who are risking their lives to protect ours.

Today we are spending some of our time in Las Vegas making care packages to send to our troops overseas. We will be working with anysoldier.com This site posts the needs and locations of soldiers overseas that we can support and send letters and packages to. Our soldiers are serving us everyday so that we can live the lives we live. Too often we forget all about them. At least I know I do.

Going on the site and viewing all the men and women who have died in service really hit home with me today. I didn't realize the sacrifice that was being made. It's heart wrenching. These guys are my age. I guess I just don't think about it. I know I don't keep up on the news enough.

They've given so much. They sacrifice their lives everyday. I think we should all find ways to give back.

Here is a video that talks about how to create care packages if you are interested in joining us with this cause.

We will update later with pictures of the packages and letters we write, plus more about our adventures in Las Vegas! <3 Stan

ROUTE 66 & the CANYON

2010-05-31T19:45:00.010-04:00

Hello!

Stanley here.

We've been doing some of our traveling along Route 66. Its been gorgeous. :)

Historic Route 66 is no longer displayed on most road maps but it used to be America's main street. If you were going across the country for the family Road trip, this was it. The road was bustling 40 years ago. Gas Stations, diners, motels, small town culture, friendly faces, and beautiful countryside. It was America.

Unfortunately today, Route 66 has been forgotten. People flock to the bigger interstates. It makes sense. That's progress. Right? New roads go up and people travel whatever route will be the quickest, the most convenient. Route 66 has mostly died. It only lives as a novelty sentiment. It's now abandoned building, empty motels, and rusting gas stations.

I think its a sad reflection on our culture. We often go for whatever is most convenient. What is the fastest route? What will get me where I need to be the easiest? Our country has chosen the Interstate 40 lifestyle. I think we need to go back to the Route 66 pace.

Things move so quickly in our society that we often forget to take the time to meet people. Take time to start up a conversation with someone. Invest into them. I want to be more interested in others than I am in myself. This trip is helping me to see people as more important. It's helping me to make the little sacrifices. I want to love my family more. I want to let people cut me off on the high way and not get upset.

Route 66 was so much fun. We took some time to enjoy the beauty of the old buildings. I love the bright colors against the bleak landscape. We ate at a diner at the midpoint of 66, 1139 miles from LA, and 1139 miles from chicago.

The best part of this trip has been meeting people. People are so precious. Everyone has something beautiful to offer and to learn from. I think everyone wants a friend. They want to be listened to and loved. We met some people at the hostel who's reservation got all mixed up. They had one bed at the hostel we were staying at when they were supposed to have two. It was gonna split them up, so I offered to let the guy have my bed and I went to stay at another place. Suddenly we had some new friends. People notice when you make sacrifices for them. I didn't feel like doing it, but once I did it felt so good.

On top of that, at the other hostel I made some new friends, Timo and Phillip. They are from Germany and were also traveling the US. They offered to let us stay at their campsite in the Grand Canyon. On memorial weekend it is impossible to get a campsite there. It was great! We saw a gorgeous sunset and then shared stories and laughs around the campfire. It was so cool how it all worked out. Giving up my bed ended up getting us two new friends and a great night of camping. Its sort of a what comes around goes around story. :)

Sometimes spreading love is just making new friends and taking the time to listen to people. I know it doesn't seem significant, but our world needs more of it.

PS- here is an extra photo of me and jason I found as we were modeling our love.each.one.shirts. :) very funny

<3 Stan

on the road againn :)

2010-05-29T16:26:00.015-04:00

Yesterday we drove from Albuquerque, NM to Flagstaff, AZ.

Arizona's landscape is so beautiful! It changed so much in the five hours we drove through it.

We stopped at a little tourist stop to check out the petrified wood and fossil-y things. We where able to talk with the store owner, Ken, which was cool, and asked him what love was. At first he looked at us for a moment, then shrugged and said "Well..I don't know what love is." It is a big question. I think the fact that the question itself is only three words has made me think that it's a simple question. But the realty of it is its not. Ken turned and wrote down his answer and handed it to me. I said thanks and was about to put it away when he said "Aren't you going to read it?" with a smile.

I looked down and read out loud "Love is traveling the Unites States with three friends."

Its such a fun answer. And I think for each of us it's been true. This trip with my three friends has taught me more about love than any other time in my life. Learning to love each other all the time, learning to love when I don't feel like being loving.

After a few more hours of driving we arrived at our hostel in Flagstaff. Let me tell you...I love hostels. So many cool people. Cool buildings. Cool environment.

We immediately met some other travelers, Jordan and Sophie. It was really nice getting to hang out and talk with them about their lives, where they're going, where they've been. After Jason introduced them to the world of geocaching (check out www.geocaching.com to learn more about it) we decided to go looking for a few in the area. Stan found both! (it was his first time being the first to find them :P ). After we grabbed some awesome food at the Pita Pit and caught the end of and outdoor screening of UP :) The rest of the night was full of silly pool games, meeting more people, and a planning for the next few days.

It was really awesome meeting so many people. We met an Irish couple, a girl from Germany, and a bunch of other cool travelers. Learning about individuals has been really beautiful, hearing about people's goals in life, what they enjoy doing, where they want to go.

People are so important. I want to be sure after all this traveling is over I continue to keep loving people in my everyday life.

Something we've been reading over and thinking about:

Love is patient and kind.

Love is not jealous or boastful or proud or rude.

Love does not demand its own way.

It is not irritable, and it keeps no record of being wronged.

It does not rejoice about injustice but rejoices whenever the truth wins out.

Love never gives up, never loses faith, is always hopeful, and endures through every circumstance.

Love never fails.

1 Corinthians 13:4-8 (NLT&NIV)

<33emilyy

travelin travelin

2010-05-28T12:14:00.016-04:00

We arrived in Amarillo, Texas late on Tuesday night. The night ended with a beautiful lightning storm that consumed the whole sky. There was no thunder, just a continuous stream of lightning bolts. Ginger pulled out the video camera to try and capture a bit of it. The second it turned on the sky began to light up even more, Ginger turned to me with a smirk and said "Looks like God's showing off."

After a good nights sleep we made our way to Albuquerque, New Mexico. Jordan (who is represented by the octopus) told us about his church here, so as we arrived we scooted on over to see Calvary's wednesday night service.

The worship was sweeet and it was nice to dig into the Word of God. After we spoke with pastor about volunteer opportunities in the community and were given a nice little list of places that would love help. The night I enjoyed some soup and salad. The boys enjoyed discovering that the car we parked in front of had a red octopus sitting in their front dash.

In fact I think it made their night. We almost lost Jordan because they thought it would be so funny just to leave him on the window, staring into the eyes of the pretty red octopus.

Ultimately we all agreed we couldn't do that to Jordan, so the boys settled with leaving a note on the window of the red octopus' car letting the owner know that we also had a octopus.

That night we all discussed a lot of things. It was good. This trip has really opened our eyes to what t truly means to walk in love. How difficult it can be, how necessary it is. Walking in love is so very important. It's a decision. It's a life style. It's the way we are called to live.

So that's what we must do.

Keep growing, loving, and learning.

On Thursday we looked up the different organizations that we could volunteer at. We found this two places, one called Joy Junction that cares for and feeds homeless families in the area. The other was a shelter for women, the Barrett House. Both had a list of supplies they needed, so we put some pen to paper and headed down to Walmart to do some shopping.

We got lots and lots of food and hygiene products along with a few cleaning supplies. The only tricky part was filling our already full car with all of these things. But we managed to move things and people around enough to fit everyone in semi-comfortable.

The highlight of that trip was that Stan's entire right leg fell asleep before we got to Joy Junction. So when we got out he was dancing around like a crazy person, trying not to fall over, and fake crying rather loudly. I don't think I've laughed that hard in awhile :)

At Joy Junction we swept, mopped, and took out trash. We didn't get to interact with a lot of people, but it was nice to just be able to be there.

I think the fact that we were serving on our own free will was astonishing to many of guests and other volunteers.

After dropping off the other supplies at the Barrett House, we made our way down Route 66 to find somewhere to eat. Instead we found the coooolest hostile! so we totally had to stop.

They were full for the night, but we were able to talk with the people who worked there. They were really cool to talk with and it was awesome talking to them about love. Our tummies kept rumbling to be heading down to this cute little Route 66 diner for some shakes.

We're very thankful for the the support we've been given <3

Today we move on to the Grand Canyon! We're still figuring out details on camping and hostels but I know it will all be worked out. We hope to volunteer at an Indian reservation somewhere, but I'm not sure if we're going to be able to.

I can't wait to meet more people and keep learning to walk in love :)

<3emilyy>

introductions are in order....

2010-05-26T04:56:00.005-04:00

dear jordan,

we hope you don't think we are crazy.... but, we decided to name our new purple octopus friend after you :)

we rescued him from the steak and shake parking lot and we've adopted him into the love each one family.... so world, meet jordan!

he really enjoyed the car ride today....

~loveeachone

tooday

2010-05-26T04:41:00.010-04:00

first: we love you emily b! thanks for letting us stay with you!

today we got to go see the goonies in the movie theatre and that was pretty sweeet...... we have been talking about how we want to see an old movie in the theatre and stan hadn't seen the goonies soo jason randomly looked it up and poof! there it was. the goonies showing in a movie theatre in wichita, KS. so we obviously had to go see it :)

next we got on the road headed for amarillo, tx..... which is the halfway point on our way to albuquerque, nm. the kansas country side is beautiful at all times of day!

it was a lovely drive :)

we even got to drive through a lightning storm tonight!

~ginger (i obviously stay up waaay too late....)

la vie en noir et blanche

2010-05-25T03:53:00.008-04:00

more photos to come later :)

keep scrolling down to read our stories!

small world?

2010-05-25T03:13:00.007-04:00

recently heard about some really awesome people who are doing a project similar to ours... only they are over in europe! you can read about their adventures here:

http://vivalaeurope.blogspot.com/2010_01_01_archive.html

its really beautiful that this message we're sharing is on the hearts of so many people already... i'm so blessed to have been given the opportunity to go on this crazy adventure and i want to encourage all of you who are at home this summer to step out and walk in love right where you are! there are so many individuals around you, you can even start with your family. ~ginger

response

2010-05-25T03:05:00.004-04:00

hello hello

we love hearing your responses/thoughts/questions/comments/anything! so please email us if you have something to share :)

here is something i received just the other day... thought you might like to read it :)

" I hope you're having a good summer and a good time with your project!! I guess I just wanted to tell you how it really inspired me right now...I was feeling really horrible and insecure about myself after starting a new job..I couldn't sleep cause my mind was still racing, so I got on facebook and saw there was a message about Love Each One, and I read the blog. It was like exactly what I needed..I was so worried about me, whether I'm going to fit in or not at work, why some of my friends haven't texted me back, whatever (see I can't even stop saying "I") and it just made me realize that I should stop worrying about myself and just have love. (Cus that's all you need, right? :) I mean it sounds corny but it's so true! That when I'm worrying about being shy around people I've just met I just need to smile. Or when I'm feeling like nobody cares I just need to put out twice as much caring for others. That it could always be worse and I could always have much much worse things to worry about...... I think it's reallly important for people to continue to show their love, even when things like frustration, anger, insecurities ( :D), etc get in the way..It's so hard to do sometimes but it's something I'm working on getting better at. And also trying to remember that when other people don't seem so friendly or loving that I need to consider that they may be having a bad day too or just broke up with their bf/gf or whatever the case may be. That it's really not anything personal or against you. I think people are quick to assume that (or I am anyways!) "

~ginger

WE HAVE SHIRTS :)

2010-05-25T01:48:00.004-04:00

And here is Jason modeling one.........

Bubble Wrap and Gumbo

2010-05-25T00:03:00.008-04:00

This post should have been posted a few days ago. My bad. :) Anyhow, When we arrived in Shreveport Louisiana last week we didn't know what to expect. None of us had ever been there.

Our host was a super cool friend of ours, Adam, who works for moonbot studios. Moonbot is an awesome world of art, storytelling, and wild imagination. Adam had mentioned to us that the studio was helping put on an Art show for the 50th anniversary of Bubble Wrap, and that they could use our help if we wanted to help. But I didn't think that was good enough.

As we drove around the town I had my eyes peeled for where we should help. I was looking for lower income situations. Were there any shelters? soup kitchens? orphanages? a red cross? I felt like that's what we should be looking for. Its kind of the vibe for where we had volunteered in our previous stops. There were such options we could have found, but as we sought out possibilities like these we had to rethink what we were all about on this trip. We felt like we were looking for needs that fit a certain mold. But needs exist beyond the places we feel they are obvious, like homeless shelters. Even the person who has a wonderful job and nice roof over his head has problems. That person still has dreams, and fears, and needs. Some needs seem insignificant, but that's an idea we want to disprove. Every way you can help someone is important because that person is important.

Its a lesson I'm still learning. We decided that helping with an art show was important because the people who were putting it on were important. And we had a blast. It was great. It was one of the weirdest things I have ever helped with. The show was celebrating bubble wrap and using it in very odd ways to create art, from bubble wrap clothing, to a giant blow up teddy bear. We helped take this living room set and wrap every piece of it in bubble wrap. We were able to meet and talk with some really awesome artists out there. We got to help them with what they needed and even share some good louisiana cooking with them. I wouldn't have had the day any other way.

So we didn't volunteer at some humanitarian organization, but we didn't need to. We are learning that you often don't have to go super far to look for needs, because they present themselves to us right where we are.

<3 Stan

ps. kelly street is for you kelly! :)

hospital visits

2010-05-24T22:52:00.014-04:00

Today was a very lovely day.

Last night was a night of Wichita, Kansas' very own chicken fried chicken, the LOST finale, and amazing chocolate cake stuff.

Emily B's G-mama had to take a trip the the hospital yesterday (she's doing well now though! :) so today we decided to bring her flowers. The local shelters weren't going to let us volunteer without training and forms. So we decided to take a lot of flowers to

the hospital with us :D

We wrote little mini letters and stuck business cards in the flowers. After having a lovely discussion with Emily's Gma we ended up leaving most of the flowers at the Guest Services desk to pass out to different guests.

I think one of my favorite things about our travels has been sharing our vision with others. It's awesome to see how excited other people are about what we're doing. We got to talk with Amy and Bob in the hospital and it just made me realize how much I love meeting people. Everyone is so unique. Its fascinating and beautiful.

At one point today I felt like we weren't doing enough. Like OHman we need to do something else! what can we do what can we do!? but I quickly realized that those thoughts are not at all in line with our vision for this trip. This trip is about the individual. Showing love to a person. Stressing the importance of small acts. Encouraging others to do the same.

I like the way Stan said it once: We want to value people. We want people to value people.

word.

<3emilyy

(thanks to Ging we have bunches of pretty pictures to show too :)

quote for today

2010-05-24T13:36:00.003-04:00

"Being part of The Love Revolution is going to cost us something, but it doesn’t always mean our money…we have to be willing to give ourselves as a sacrifice. And that means loving people on the job, in the neighborhood, in your home and loving the poor, lost, and needy enough to put your time and effort into it. We’re going to have to stop complaining because of all the petty inconveniences that come our way and start really loving people."

- Joyce Meyer

from the article, Love: Join the Revolution

read the rest of this article here.... :)

http://www.joycemeyer.org/OurMinistries/EverydayAnswers/Articles/art64.htm?&MSHiC=65001&L=10&W=LOVED%20LOVELY%20LOVENO%20LOVER%20LOVES%20love%20revolution%20&Pre=%3CFONT%20STYLE%3D%22color%3A%20%23000000%3B%20background-color%3A%20%23FFFF00%22%3E&Post=%3C/FONT%3E

i love free wifi

2010-05-24T00:34:00.018-04:00

I know I sound like a broken record, but the last couple days have been crazy. We are living so moment-by-moment that I often forget what day it is! I feel like I began this trip without being fully prepared, honestly though I’m not sure one could ever fully prepare themselves for an adventure such as this. We set out with the heart of our mission being to love on individuals, to show that our world is not made up of a sea of faces, that each morning as we’re driving to school or to work or daycare or whatever the people all around us are living their own stories and experiencing feelings of excitement, joy, fear, hurt, and every other emotions that we ourselves feel on a daily basis. I myself am not the center of the universe… I’m not the leading role. Everyone is special. Everyone has their story to share. Its beautiful and difficult and exciting and surprising to be sharing in other peoples stories.

As we listen to people’s opinions on what love is the most frequent underlying answer, no matter the presentation, has been self-sacrifice. I feel like that’s what I’ve been learning as we travel. There are 4 of us and we are almost always together, we spend hours in the car together, we volunteer together, we eat together – and this is a beautiful thing – but none of us is perfect, I am very quick to admit there are things about me that are not lovely :) we see every side of one another. I’m learning to show love the most to Emily, Stan, and Jason. Because if I can’t be love to them there’s no way I can be love to strangers. Its hard, but I will be successful! Everywhere we go though people talk to us about being love to one another and encouraging one another and pointing out good things about one another. Being peaceful, patient, kind, gentle, and graceful. It’s been so helpful to have it pounded into our heads and hearts from every direction.

I guess to give a bit of a trip/travel update from my viewpoint…. Lets go back a little bit…Its Sunday in Knoxville and we’re leaving tomorrow. We’ve been planning on heading over to New Orleans but last minute find out that our housing plans aren’t going to work out. During the drive up to Knoxville on friday we had been listening to my dad on the radio and heard him mention that some of the Joy fm guys were planning on driving up to Nashville to deliver a bunch of tens that were donated by radio listeners for the homeless people that used to live in tent city. Savetentcity.com . but I didn’t really think much of it at the time. Fast forward back to Sunday in Knox, we’re having a group meeting and talking about New Orleans and somehow the information we had heard on the radio comes up and we decide to call my dad up and ask him about what they were doing in Nashville. We all felt like it could be a really awesome opportunity to help people out because of the flood and all the damage it caused so we changed our plans and found friends in Nashville to crash with.

We arrived in the Nash on Monday afternoon and hooked up with Otter Creek Church, who the Joy fm was working with, and agreed to help out the next day (Tuesday) and sort tent sizes and pass out tents and sleeping bags to homeless people. We spent the rest of the afternoon/evening getting to know the guys that we’re staying with (they have an awesome house! I love that it had so many musical instruments… it inspired me to start practicing guitar again when I go home… but that’s a whole story in itself… anyways), having dinner at SATCO, and meting new friends and asking them their thoughts on love :)

Tuesday morning we got up and helped out with the tents… it was a pretty crazy day for the church staff/members and we ended up sot of being put in charge of the whole process, which we weren’t expecting but it was totally cool, and we got to meet a number of awesome people; Bill and Kris from the Joy fm (Jason has a major friend crush on Kris :P ), Brian the creator of savetentcity.com and his crazy cool 10 year old son Anthony, Otter Creek Church members, and a missionary named Joseph who works with Youth With a Mission teaching classes about discovering your calling and purpose at different Universities of the Nations around the world. I believe Emily wrote a lot about our visit with him in her most recent post.

Next we headed to get dinner. My sister, Grace, attends Belmont University here in Nashville and she highly recommended a café called Silly Goose for some good fresh food (yay!). It was a little bit more expensive than we really wanted but we decided to go ahead and try it out anyways.

[quick side note: a silly goose is carrot apple ginger juice, which basically = me (by which i mean those are some of my favorite things) I thought that was awesome].

So, sitting at a table near us were these super trendy Nashville guys

(honestly I think everyone in nashville is trendy… we felt mildly out of place :P stevie lewis you must visit Nashville! :D )

when their food arrived they stopped to pray for it and we all got really excited! We immediately started trying to figure out a way to go talk to them… we thought about walking by their table and dropping a business card on the floor and then picking it up and being like, “ohh is this yours?!” ooor maybe praying really loudly for our food and looking over to see if they noticed…. In the middle of all of this conversation Jason got up and walked over to their table and said, “Maybe this is awkward but…” blah blah and gave our Love Each One schpeel. AND THEN they invited us to a party. Crazy right? But they did. We later went back to the house and we invited our new friend Jordan, who was sort of living with the guys we were staying with, along too.

The 5 of us headed over around 10 something ish. As we got out of the car and headed towards the door I had butterflies in my stomach… I was always really shy and its only been in the past 2 years that I’ve become more bold and confident. I feel like though if I had been by myself I might have just turned around and run home before I got to the front door, as silly and sad as that is. I’m very thankful that everyone was with me and that we went in because it was wonderful. We made some very good friends and had some good good heart to heart to heart time :) I love Nashville! I’m hoping to drive back up in august with my sister when she goes back to school.

Anyways, Wednesday we drove over to Shreveport, LA to check out Moonbot Studios and continue to show some love. It was really cool touring the studio, I had never done that before… it’s a whole new world to me. We stayed with friend/ringling grad/moonbot-er Adam and that was really fun, it was cool how excited he was to hang out with us and show us around the city. We also got to help set up a gallery show in which all of the work was made using bubble wrap which was cool, its different from any of the other volunteery things we’ve done.

As I sit here writing we are in Tulsa, Ok at the Coffee House on Cherry Street. I just finished drinking an amazing chai/chocolate/coffee drink that is currently nameless and was created by Nick who is an awesome barista who goes to Rhema. Thank you Nick and Jessica for serving us and hanging out with us tonight!

Last night we went to Stan’s sister Victoria’s graduation and finished the night with a dance party. We decided we should have more dance parties in our future.

as I post this we have just arrived in Wichita, KS where we are staying with our lovely friend Emily B :)

I’m sorry this post has been so very long… we will be updating much more frequently in the future so that we don’t have to throw so much stuff at you all at once!

Good night!

~ginger

ps: Jordan – we’ve got a seat with your name on it in our car if you feel like taking a break from work at any point :D

Quote of the day

2010-05-23T14:08:00.001-04:00

"I'm only one, but still I am one. I cannot do everything, but I can do something, and because I cannot do everything, I will not refuse to do that something I can do." - Helen Keller

brrlatte and new friends

2010-05-23T00:55:00.010-04:00

It’s hard to believe this trip has only been about a week and a half. I feel like I’ve been through so much mentally, physically and spiritually. One of our biggest challenges has been finding WiFi for us to all get hooked up to for updates, as you may have noticed. It’s okay though, now you just have more to read about :)

As you heard Knoxville was great. The people were awesome, the different things we were able to be apart of were great. It felt weird to move along so suddenly. But we did, we scooted on over to Nashville. Ginger has been telling me how absolutely amazing Nashville is for the past two years. I usually would nod and say, “yesyes Ginger we’ll have to go sometime” without much thought. But now. Now I understand :)

Like Jason’s earlier post said our first day we found a church that was doing flood relief work for Tent City. For those who may not know Nashville went through a serious flood a few weeks ago. A lot of houses and businesses were damaged, valuables ruined, and some lives lost. Tent City was a piece of land filled with tents housing much of the homeless in the city. The flood destroyed it and has left a lot of people misplaced. So this church was passing out tents to anyone that needed them. We worked with some great people and though the day didn’t pan out quite the way we had thought it would we have a lot of fun and were glad to have been there.

In between all the tent shenanigans we met this really cool missionary Joseph. He’s traveled all around the world and taught classes for YWAM ( Youth With A Mission - http://www.ywam.org/ ). He said two sentences that are awesome! But grrrr Ginger and Jason don’t remember them but Stan wrote them down. So he’ll post them later. But our conversation with him was just really encouraging. He talked about stirring each other up. How people are like a pot of soup. You stir a pot of soup because all the good stuff is at the bottom. It’s important to encourage people because you want to stir up all the good things in them. Let them know what they’re good at. Tell them what they do well so they can keep on keeping on. ‘Let us think of ways to motivate one another to acts of love and good works. And let us not neglect our meeting together, as some people do, but encourage one another, especially now that the day of his return is drawing near’ from Hebrews ten was what Joseph referenced. I want to be better at stirring people up.

That Tuesday is Nashville was a very encouraging day. While trying to figure out dinner plans Ginger pointed out a restaurant her sister recommended called Silly Goose. Though the not super cheap menu was a bit intimidating and we didn’t look quite as trendy as the other guests we decided to go in. In the end I think it was the perfect leading :) We ended up meeting some of the trendy guests and were invited to meet up with them later. I never would have guessed you could make good friends in half a day… but I know now it’s possible :) All the guys we met were super welcoming. They let us into their home and fed us and shared stories with us. It was a really great night that concluded beautifully with some heart to heart to heart and prayer. I look forward to my next trip to Nashville.

The whole trip has made me realize how much fun it is talking to the people around you. And how awkward it can be :P But a lot of great things have come from just talking to someone random. Though Love Each One does make it a little easier to talk to people. The business card makes us look official and our cause gives us something to talk about. I think we’re all considering carrying around the business cards for the rest of our lives just to make it easier to talk to random people. But I’d like to be able to just break past that weird awkward wall that seems to be the social norm. To just be able to talk someone because I want to talk with them.

Currently we're in Tulsa, Oklahoma, enjoying good food and a few new friends. I love meeting people and making friends :) It seems like at every stop we end up saying aww lets stay here so we can hang out with our new friends. But it's okay, having friends all over the country is cool. I hope to be able to travel around the country at a later date and be able to call up these new friends and get to know them better.

The trip has been great. It’s been a challenge. Overall it’s been a lot of learning and thinking. I’ve enjoyed ever minute of it and look forward to everything that’s in store for us.

I thank the Lord that we are always in the right place at the right time and talk to the right people.

Hooray for adventures :)

and a shout out to Jordan! we miss ya! just keep on loving where you are anddd maybe we'll see you in a few weeks :D ... ?

Days...5-8? I think? Lol

2010-05-21T00:56:00.002-04:00

Hello everyone!

Fear not, we are still alive! Lol between busy days and sparse Internet availability, our posting hasn't been as frequent as hoped. But here's a quick update of our ventures from my phone! :)

After leaving Knoxville, we drove over to Nashville to help with flood relief. We ended up hooking up with a local church and made plans to help sort sleeping bags and tents for the homeless who lost all they had in the flood. We hooked up with Kris and Bill from the joy fm in Sarasota who drove a bunch of tents and sleeping bag donations up from Florida.

Afterwards we hung out with a missionary we met for a couple hours, which was really cool.

At dinner we met these trendy Nashville guys, who invited us to a party later that night. We went, and had a lot of fun hanging out with the local crowd. We made some great friends, and it was sad to leave Nashville.

We then moved on to Shreveport yesterday. Today we went and checked out moonbot (awesome!) and then helped them put together an art exhibit on the 50th year anniversary of bubble wrap. It was a lot of fun hanging out with everyone here. After dinner, we went to William Joyces house and got to hang out with him and a few of the other moonbots.

Tomorrow morning we have to get up and leave by 7 to head off to Tulsa, Oklahoma for stans sister's graduation

So these are the highlights of what we've been up to. I obviously left a lot of details out, but we just wanted to give you guys a quick recap of the past few days.

Over the next few days Internet should be more readily available, which means more posts! Woot woot!

Thanks for all the prayers and support as we've travelled along. We've been very blessed so far by all the friends we've made and experiences we've encountered. I'm heading to bed now, but look forward to further posts over the next few days!

Cheers! :) Jason

ON THE ROAD

2010-05-17T23:53:00.002-04:00

We're in nashville!!

Sunday Morning Love Addiction

2010-05-17T23:50:00.000-04:00

Sunday morning we went to church at the True Purpose Thrift Store. They added a bunch of folding chairs to the furniture section, and turned it into a makeshift church where we all sat in a big circle. The service was one of the coolest ones I've ever been to. Pastor Jeremy led for the most part, but was constantly opening up the floor to anyone who had something on their heart, something they needed prayer for, etc. Lot's of people were prayed for, lots of things were shared, and God's presence was strongly there through the whole thing.

You could tell that the guys in the program used to be living in a very different kind of lifestyle. There was a "rough around the edges" feel to them. But you could also tell that that wasn't who they were anymore. They were cleaned up, and had a gentleness and peacefulness that you could clearly see. That is why Tommy, the older man who was sitting behind us when we came in, stood out. He had all of the former, without the latter. Facial hair scruff, bloodshot eyes. He looked like he had just walked in off the street.

At the end of the service, Pastor Jeremy was asking if anyone had anything else they need prayers for, or if there was anyone present who had not ever asked Jesus into their hearts as their personal Lord and Savior. That's when Tommy spoke up.

Tommy had been addicted to drugs and alcohol since he was 13. A period of almost 30 years. He'd been in and out of jail, living on the streets, all alone. He had no family, both his parents were dead. He told us how he woke up in the middle of the night the night before, face wet from apparently crying in his sleep. He lied there in bed, sobbing, realizing that something in his life needed to change.

When he got out of bed in the morning (this same Sunday morning), he couldn't get a friend of his (who runs a local homeless shelter) out of his head. Everything he did, everywhere he went...there was his friends face. So he finally went to see his friend. Tommy told him that he was seeing him everywhere, that he couldn't get him out of his head, and that he wanted to change. He wanted to break this three decade addiction that had been running his life. His friend pointed him to True Purpose, and told him he should come to the church service.

And so Tommy spoke up, and told us all of this. He then went on to say that he was ready to ask Jesus into his heart. He knew he couldn't do it on his own any longer, but was ready to change with the help of God. He went up front, and Pastor Jeremy walked him through the steps. Everyone clapped and applauded, and many tears were shed by all.

It takes $200 to enter the program at True Purpose. This gets them into the program, and then they work at the thrift store, cut lawns, etc to help pay through the rest of it. We had decided yesterday as a group that we wanted to donate $200 to True Purpose for the next person who wanted to enter the program, but didn't have the money to afford it. After Tommy got up and shared his story, and accepted Jesus into his heart, we all knew immediately what we needed to do with the money.

After the service, we went up to Tommy to congratulate him, hug him, and encourage him. And then we told him that we just gave Pastor Jeremy a check for $200 for him to enter into the program. If we thought he was crying before, that was nothing.

He collapsed into his chair and just started weeping into his hands, overcome with joy and disbelief. Emotions overwhelmed all of us, and we just all stood there together crying and smiling. He was so grateful, both to us and to God. He told us that he had told God that he was ready to turn over a new leaf, if God would only provide the means.

I can very honestly say, that that was the coolest, most important thing I feel that I have ever done in my entire life. For just $200, we completely changed this man's life. That night Tommy ate a warm meal, and slept in a bed. He is on a path of new beginnings in his life, for the first time in 30 years, all because of an act of love.

The crazy thing is, we weren't even supposed to go to Tennessee. It was a last minute change. But I know now that we were and are exactly where we're supposed to be doing exactly what we we're supposed to be doing. I'm so thankful that we were able to be used in such an amazing way, touching a life that I know will go on to touch many others. That is an experience that will be with me for the rest of my life.

:) Jason

looking back...

2010-05-16T16:13:00.008-04:00

" LOVE MUST BE OUR REGULATING IDEAL. " - martin luther king jr.

" There are three words in the Greek language for love, one is the word eros. This is a beautiful type of love, it is an aesthetic love. Plato talks about it a great deal in his Dialogue, the yearning of the soul for the realm of the divine. It has come to us to be a sort of romantic love, and so in a sense we have read about it and experienced it. We've read about it in all the beauties of literature. I guess in a sense Edgar Allan Poe was talking about eros when he talked about his beautiful Annabel Lee with the love surrounded by the halo of eternity. In a sense Shakespeare was talking about eros when he said ` Love is not love which alters when it alteration finds, or bends with the remover to remove: O, no! it is an ever-fixed mark that looks on tempests and is never shaken; it is the star to every wandering bark. . . .´ (You know, I remember that because I used to quote it to this little lady when we were courting; that's eros.)

The Greek language talks about Philia which was another level of love. It is an intimate affection between personal friends, it is a reciprocal love. On this level you love because you are loved. It is friendship.

Then the Greek language came out with another word which is called the agape. Agape is more than romantic love, agape is more than friendship. Agape is understanding, creative, redemptive, goodwill to all men. It is an overflowing love which seeks nothing in return. Theologians would say that it is the love of God operating in the human heart. So that when one rises to love on this level, he loves men not because he likes them, not because their ways appeal to him, but he loves every man because God loves him. And he rises to the point of loving the person who does an evil deed while hating the deed that the person does. I think this is what Jesus meant when he said ` love your enemies.´

I'm very happy that he didn't say like your enemies, because it is very difficult to like someone bombing your home; it is pretty difficult to like somebody threatening your children; it is difficult to like congressmen who spend all of their time trying to defeat civil rights. But Jesus says love them, and love is greater than like. Love is understanding, redemptive, creative, goodwill for all men. "

- Martin Luther King Jr. Love, Law, and Civil Disobedience

i thought this was really cool :)

~ginger

A.BEAUTIFUL.MESSAGE

2010-05-16T15:55:00.004-04:00

TRUE PURPOSE THRIFT

2010-05-16T15:25:00.003-04:00

My Aunt put us up here in Knoxville. The top of a mountain is a much different place than the suburbs of Miami. It's beautiful.

Outside of banana pudding and eclair pie, Tennessee has been amazing because of this place. True Purpose Recovery is a group that is helping men clean up their lives after the disasters that come with drug and alcohol addiction. Their hearts are so tender. They are thankful. They had to be some of the most genuine people I have ever met in my life. Alot of these guys are coming from tough situations and life threatening addictions. You would expect them to be calloused and hopeless. On the contrary, they seemed to be some of the most pure examples of unconditional love I have ever met in my life.

The thrift store helps fund the recovery program. In the program, all the guys live, eat and work together. They generate the money through the store and jobs, like mowing lawns, and spend the rest of their time learning how to live a more controlled life and growing spiritually.

The guys we got to work with were awesome. Their stories left me in tears. We hope to have footage up soon. We asked one of them what love is. The answer was so genuine. He was one of the most loving people I have met. He told us his story, which included almost losing his life to drugs, doing prison time, and getting shot in both of his legs in a drug deal gone wrong. He described it as a miracle that he was alive and walking today.

He's been through so much and because of it, he was so thankful. He went on about how great it is just to be alive. He looks forward to finishing the recovery program and being the dad he has always wanted to be for his baby boy. He said that just being alive was reason to be happy. He said that even a smile can be loving someone. That day, I saw him greet everyone that came into the store so lovingly. He really cared about people. He said if his smile and his reaching out to the customer could brighten their day, that's all he wanted.

As we left the store, they were so kind to us. They told us that coming their and helping without expecting a thing really touched them. I think they changed me more.

:)

2010-05-16T15:21:00.003-04:00

this is for a special friend :)

<3333

GETTING DOWN TO BUSINESS

2010-05-16T14:57:00.002-04:00

The trip has been amazing. It's only been a few days and i feel like my life has been changed. All the places we've gone to are places I've been before. Its interesting how the mindset we go to a place with changes what happens there. I'm walking the same streets but seeing them in different ways.

Our mindset has been love. Looking for people to help. The people that we've encountered here in Tennessee are changing the way I think.

As we drive along the highway I see every car and I'm trying to think about how that car isn't just a car cluttering the highway. It's a person. It's a mother. It's a son. It's a person with fears, and hopes, and needs, and dreams. Maybe something I do can help them reach their dreams. Maybe something I do can lead them to a Love that could calm their fear.

By the end of this trip I want to stop using the word I. It seems that 90% of my thoughts are about myself. I want to make it the other way around.

In LOVE EACH ONE news, here are our business cards!! :) They are much better than writing the blog name down on scraps of papers like we have had to. The cards feel so nice in the hand. They represent a dream coming into reality. They make me feel like this trip is bigger than us. We are handing them out where ever we can. Every act of love is accompanied by them.

I can't wait to see what the next few days hold. :) <3 Stan

hippies, fruit, and scooby doo

2010-05-15T23:45:00.004-04:00

its 11:45 and it feels late to me. this is very strange considering my usual "late" is more like... 4am. so many things have been happening, it feels like its been a week or more instead of just 4 days! we've done some really cool things and met some really cool people. hmmm highlights for me:

at His House orphanage on wednesday as we were leaving Carmen, the head of donations there, she said "ok, now go out and win the world." that really stuck in my mind.... the thought of going out and winning the world to love. soon after that we got our bussiness cards... and holding one of those in my hand and feeling the smooth glossiness and reading our mission statement on the back made everything feel so much more real! its crazy that we're doing this! it feels so hippy (which of course i'm totally cool with :P)

another highlight was meeting this boy named caleb today. we clicked automatically. he's 3 years old and he loves scooby doo. we chased each other around the house and hid from ghosts, found burried treasure, and rescued daphne. he took to calling me shaggy.... :P

this morning i read john 15 in my bible (As reccommended to our group by a good friend) which talks about God being a vine and us being branches, a verse that stuck out a lot to me was 4, which says, "remain in me, and i will remain in you. no branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me." that really spoke to my spirit because i know i havent been reading my bible enough or meditating enough on God's word. Love is a fruit, and i can't be love; live in walk in act in love, unless i'm remaining in God which means reading his word and spending time talking to him about whats going on and listening to what he says to me.

This trip is going to be so full of growing and stretching! i could say many more things but as i said 25 minutes ago... i'm pretty sleepy :) goodnight mountains, goodnight banana pudding, and goodnight you.

~gingaa

day 3&4!!

2010-05-15T20:49:00.004-04:00

these last few days have been filled with a lot of learning

Friday we drove 14ish hours to get here to Knoxville, TN and it is beauuutiful! I forgot that real green does not exsit in Florida. the trees and mountains and flowers here are lovely to see :)

today we helped out at True Purpose Recovery Super Thrift Store. True Purpose Recovery is a Christian organization that works with men overcoming different addictions. in the program they study the Bible, work to organize and run a thrift store, and work different construction jobs to make money while in the program. they are doing some great things and helping a lot of guys get free from things that once held them down. Jason and Stan were able to talk with some of the guys there and hear their story. it sounded pretty cool :)

tomorrow we're going to explore the city a bit more and then move over to Nashville monday. I think theres going to be some great opportunities to help there with the flood relief that's going on.

like I said these last few days have been a big learning experience. I've really be reevaluating how I act towards people in my daily life and how I can better show love always.

<3 emilyy

day 1 & 2 !!

2010-05-13T21:39:00.005-04:00

it has officially started :DDD !!!! it's been a great first few days and it's been super awesome to see our vision for this trip become a reality. it's hard to believe it's been two-ish years since Ginger and I first started talking about traveling around the country talking to people about love and showing love to others.

and now it's happening :)

yesterday we stuck up our first LoveEachOne poster at Starbucks! and prepared for the journey ahead. today we were in Miami, Florida working with an orphanage called His House. they do some great work here and are currently preparing to house orphans coming from Haiti. we borrowed a uhaul and a truck to move some donations that they weren't able to take and moved other various things for around the orphanage. we really enjoyed meeting and working with the staff there :) todays been a good day. tomorrow we are off early early to get to Tennessee !!

i am so thankful for this day the Lord has made and all the things and people that we have yet to meet and talk to. but i gotta runnn... grab some milk to drink with the lovely birthday cake provided for Jason's birthday today.

happyhappybirthday mista j :)

<3 emilyy

we're cominggg!

2010-04-23T02:37:00.000-04:00

The tour will be launching May 12th

get ready world :)

every one counts

2010-01-27T11:29:00.000-05:00