The harm of words is sometimes we don't quite know what they really mean...

Insane Drummer · 05-28-2003, 01:48 PM

um yeah... smods.. sigh.

Nate · 05-31-2003, 05:05 PM

Yay... I'm a smod and I've been awake for over 36 hours!! Yay!!! And I'm really not even all that tired.

Well... it all started Thursday actually, even though I did get to sleep a little Thursday night.

Our youth group is doing a "silent auction" and the youth minister recruited me and my girlfriend to go out to all the local businesses and ask for donations of gift certificates or promo items or basically anything that we could auction off. So, Catherine and I took a stack of about 9 donation request letters or so and headed off thinking, "Oh! This will be fun... we've only got 9 letters after all and we really don't know where all to go."

Well, it quickly turned very interesting and very time-consuming. In about an hour and a half we had pretty much run out of letters; and we actually had a few donations.

So, we went back to the church 'cause the pastor was still there... and we made 35 copies of the one letter that we had left. Then we headed back out to the businesses in the area.

That took about 4 more hours. When all was said and done, we had spent a total of 6 hours canvassing the city; we gave out nearly 40 letters and received the following donations:

5 free value meals at Chick-Fil-A
4 free adult buffets at CiCi's Pizza
3 5$-off coupons at AppleBee's
A Jerry Seinfield poster from VideoBlast
An alarm clock from Old Navy
A picture frame from Old Navy
A CD case from Old Navy
3 gift certificate booklets from LaserTag, each of which contained 3 free-game certificates

Also, numerous other businesses committed to giving us a donation.

So... on Friday morning, Catherine and I once again set out to hunt down the people who had made committments but couldn't give us the donation on Thursday for one reason or another.

Our first stop worked out great. We went to Starbucks and recieved a free 1 lb. bag of whole bean coffee.

It only took us about 3 or 4 hours on Friday to do what we needed to get done. Here's the list of the donations we received on Friday:

1 Lb. bag of coffee from Starbucks
1 Lb. bag of coffee from Kitchens
A huge cookie cake (to be given a week before the auction) from Great American Cookie Co.
2 free adult buffets at Piccadilly Cafeteria

Furthermore, a few other places said they would definitely have stuff available for us in a few days. One place called WingZone said they'd give us about $50 worth of gift certificates, but the guy who was supposed to bring them for us never showed up on Friday... so we're waiting for them to call us back. A movie theater by the mall said that if we came back Saturday morning we'd be able to pick up a donation from them. Etc, etc.

About 40% of the places we visited seemed hopeful. So, we just need to wait now.

Anyways... Friday night was a lock-in at church for the youth group... and since Catherine and I are kind of helping out with the youth group (mostly hanging out, actually... but) we went and took part in it. Yeah. No sleep at all last night. Bleh.

Well, after the lock-in (on Saturday morning) the youth group and children's ministry had a huge garage sale to raise money for summer activities and such. So... all Friday night, we had to sort and price all of the donations that the church members had given to be sold at the garage sale. That took a pretty long time... at least 3 or 4 hours, I would say.

Saturday morning rolled around... still no sleep. We set up for the garage sale, and people started rolling in around 6:30 to check it out. By 12:00, we had raised over $600 for the youth and children. Plus...the local newspaper didn't run the ad that we had ordered to promote the sale... so they're going to run it for us this coming weekend, so we'll keep all the leftover stuff (hopefully get a few new donations too) and have another garage sale on this coming Friday. Yay.

Anyways, while the sales were slowing, I headed over to the movie theater to see about getting a donation from them. Well, I had to wait awhile... but I did get it. The manager gave us 10 free movie passes good for any movie any time. How cool is that?

So... we have a nice chunk of cash for the youth and children and a pretty big pile of donations for the upcoming 'silent auction'. So, that was all a pretty big success. I was happy.

But now I'm tired. It's 5:00 now on Saturday afternoon... and I haven't slept since Thursday night. I've been up far too long. Bleh.

I think I'm about to call Catherine and see if she's awake yet; she went home to take a nap right after the lock-in and didn't stay for the garage sale.

That's been my weekend!

In His love,
Nate

Nate · 06-12-2003, 10:15 PM

bleh.

yeah... that's it for now.

Kati · 06-13-2003, 10:44 AM

Bad day, Nate?

Nate · 06-13-2003, 02:34 PM

Yeah, I guess. I don't know. Bleh.

In His love,
Nate

KATSRUS5 · 06-17-2003, 02:09 PM

i didnt get to do this yesterday so im gonna do it today ... HAPPY ONE YEAR!!!!! ... can you believe weve been goin out that long ... sure dont seem like it ... but it kinda does ... hehehe

Jay42 · 06-17-2003, 07:07 PM

Congrats you two!
Y'all definitely win my vote for cutest couple on CGR!

KATSRUS5 · 06-17-2003, 10:44 PM

awwwwwwww ... gee ... thankies ... *blushin* ...

Nate · 06-17-2003, 10:50 PM

Hehe.

Thanks, Jay. It's nice to know that we're "cute", it makes me feel very secure about my masculinity. Yesh.

Anyways, I'm feeling better now.... but I'm tired, so I'm not going to write anything else right now.

In His love,
Nate

KATSRUS5 · 06-17-2003, 11:03 PM

nighty night sweetheart

Nate · 06-17-2003, 11:09 PM

Good night.

In His love,
Nate

KATSRUS5 · 06-19-2003, 12:57 PM

hey you ... what are you doin ... sorry i woke ya up this mornin ... call me ...

Nate · 06-21-2003, 03:15 PM

Hello everybody.

Sorry I haven't been keeping up to date.

Anyways... last week (June 6-13th, I think) was VBS at my church. Me and my brothers (and my girlfriend and another youth dude from the church) were in charge of music. It was great fun, but I was really tired after the week was through. We had lots of jumping and spinning around motions for every single song.... and we had four different groups of kids each day.... so that's a LOT of jumping and spinning.

Well, this past week was fun. Our family is fostering/housing/adopting (I don't know what to call it

) a youth from our church. So, we had to clean up the whole house so that when the social worker from the state came to do a house inspection she would approve of what she saw. Well, that was this Wednesday (the 18th)... and yesterday (Friday the 20th) she came and brought the guy over. So, he's with us now... which is great!! I think this is going to work out pretty well... but it will be a bit of work... but that's all good.

Today I got Downhere's new CD... it's pretty cool, I'm listening to it right now. I'm not sure if I like it quite as much as their national debut album... but it's still good.

Ok.. that's all for now.

In His love,
Nate