Volunteer Management Class...Badges Rock Program

Hi All,

Hope everyone had a great weekend. The weather has been almost perfect here in Kansas City! Believe it or not another week has pasted and we are one week closer to the end of the year! This past weekend has flown bye. I had a fantastic run with a friend of mine this afternoon it was nice to catch up with her. Since we do not really see each other during the week our about weekly runs give us time to catch up. Today we went 6.5 miles. (it was super super windy outside I am not joking either, I come from the windy city so I know what wind is). Anyway, it was like a perfect temp outside to run.

Along the way one thing we discussed was what this type of tree that was budding was that has a "fishy" smell to them. Once I got back and googled "trees that smell bad" I came across it. It is called a Bradford Pear Tree http://mdc.mo.gov/discover-nature/field-guide/callery-pear-bradford-pear. There seems to be an abundance of these trees around this area. I am still not quite sure why so many of these trees would be planted around here with the smell they admit.

We had a fantastic Volunteer Management Project with the Girl Scouts that will be my next blog entry. It is a busy start to this week but later this week I will post about it. It was an amazing experience.

Below are a few pictures from the weekend. We did a secession on safety for the Girls. These are girls coming from the inner city troops. We has three groups of 60 girls. For this project we planned the program recruited the volunteers and executed the event.

Here are a few pictures below:

The Girl wanted to pin her SWATCH on me instead of pinning 

The Girls are working on making first aid kit to take home with them. They got a badge for going through this.

We made a poster for this activity which we are presenting at the Rockhurst Festival of Student Achievement this week. 

Hope every one has a good week. This weekend a staff member said, "Every girl has the right to safety". Just take a minute to think about it. 

Running and Spring!

               As you can see in my picture below signs of spring are starting to appear on Rockhurst’s campus (the little green things are tulips coming up). Which is exciting for multiple reasons one of those is that spring is a sign of warmer weather. I do not talk about running much in this blog considering how much I love running (I run about 6 days a week for about 4 or more miles per day). For me running is a great stress relief. I started running when I was in 6^th grade and joined the cross country team in 7^th grade. I love being able to run outside.  Going to Rockhurst puts runners like me in a great location because we have the trolley train and loose park so close to campus. The trolley trial is like .75 miles from campus and Loose Park is like 1.5 miles from campus. Running this time of year outside is so enjoyable you do not have to worry about being too hot or too cold.

                While I am on the topic of running my friend and I have taken it upon ourselves to restart running club. I was surprised when I came to Rockhurst my freshman year how many people liked to run. Running club existed for a while my freshman year but then the people running it just got too busy. We had decent attendance at running club my freshman year. So my friend Amy and I are restarting running club we already have over twenty people who have signed up which is really exciting!! We are going to start doing group runs next week. It was really encouraging that we already have people volunteering to lead the runs. As I am sure I have blogged about before there is a 5k on campus that a lot of students participate in. 

Also if you are ever just needing some encouragement and a friendly reminder of how good we have it watch this video. It is the Cancer floor of a children's hospital singing the song stronger. This past week I was talking with a friend about how fortunate we are in life. After that conversation I could not get this video out of my mind.                             

Quote for the Week  

"It is not that we think we are qualified to do anything on our own. Our qualification comes from God. 2 Corinthians 3:5" 

Happy Easter!!

Hi All,

Hope everyone is having a good Easter weekend! I was fortunate enough to be able to come home for Easter weekend. It has been fun to be able to be home with  my whole family. This is the first time we have all been home since Christmas break. My sister and I had different spring breaks so we did not get to see each other over spring break.

Easter Sunday has been a quiet day for us, we went to 9:30 mass this morning and it was really nice. Church was packed this morning, the choir sounded great and it was great to see family friends who were there. To make it even better the homily was great! The church was decorated so nicely.

Last night we went to the Easter Vigil. I have to admit it was long (at like 2.75 hours) but it is always so exciting to welcome new members into the church and just welcoming in Easter.

I grew up spending a lot of time at the church volunteering with different projects etc so it is fun going to church. It was also nice to see some of my friends who were back from college for the weekend.

On Thursday night we went to church to the Holy Thursday service. At our church everyone has the opportunity to wash their families feet at the mass not just wash some people's feet like at some churches. Then on Friday afternoon we went to the Junior High stations of the cross. They did a great job! My mom was in charge of coordinating the stations of the cross.

This week looks to be a busy week. This is the last 5 week stretch of classes then finals. The weekends get really busy as honors inductions come up and other things. More details to come in the following  blog entries. This week also my internship enters into full swing.

Hope you have a great week! Enjoy the Easter Sunday!

Exciting events and holy week

Hi All,

Today Palm Sunday marks the start of holy week.  This evening we had a nice student mass to observe the start of this holy week for Catholics all over the globe.

This past week was super crazy. Which started off with Lisa Ballantine, the founder of the organization called  FilterPure came to campus. On Monday night some of us that went to Haiti last year got to go out to dinner with her and that was great to her more about her organizations work and where she sees her organization going in the future. Then after a very delicious dinner at Brio (I must say there mini desserts are really good :) I had this strawberry cheesecake one) Lisa went to give a presentation to the student body at Rockhurst. We had about 60 people come to talk which was a really good turn out for an SAB (Student Activities Board) event! SAB was even nice even to provide snacks at the event. The talk was really well received  She spoke about following your passion and being open to where ever God might take you in life. She told the story of how she re engineered the filter design and has been able to distribute over 60,000 filters to date (pretty amazing if I must say so myself). If you want to learn more about the Rockhurst efforts with FilterPure I invite you to check out www.filterpurefilters.org/ru.htm. If you click on the FilterPure logo on that page you will be taken to their main site where you can learn more about FilterPure as well.

Lisa stayed through Tuesday when we had Karokee for a Cause which is sponsored by Voices for Justice. The event features various organization on campus singing, all for a good cause. This year Filter Pure was the beneficiary of the event. We raised like $900+ at that event. Considering the water filters produced by filter pure cost only $35 per one that is a lot of water filters that will be able to be distributed to the region in Haiti we are working in.

On Friday I got an internship offer for this summer which is super exciting I will post more details about that down the road.

Ohh by the way Rockhurst just got dumped in with snow. We got about 6 inches of snow over night. It is a little crazy to get a snow storm this last in the year. In Chicago it is normal but in Kansas City I do not think it is quite as normal.

Well I have to get up bright and early tomorrow morning as I register for classes for the fall semester tomorrow at 7am! Being in the honors program a perk is that honors students get to register for classes before all the other undergraduate students. :)

Hope you have a blessed holy week.

Two Popes in Prayer

Thought everyone might enjoy this.

Spring Break

Last minute trip to Phoenix

So my dad and I had decided to take a last minute trip to South Carolina over spring break because it was a good deal ($130 round trip it can't get much better than this). However, due to an impending snow storm that was coming into Chicago we were able to change our travel plans to going to Phoenix for no additional cost.

Our flight times were a little bit crazy we got into Phoenix at about one am in the morning after a layover in Dallas. It was certainly nice to get out of the snowy weather in Chicago. The weather in Phoenix while we were there was 80 and sunny all three days. It couldn't have been better. It was nice just to spend a lot of quality time with my Dad. He is so awesome. I had been to Phoenix a few times before but it is always a nice city to go back to.

We spent a day and drove two hours south of Phoenix to Tuscon. The University of AZ is located in Tuscon. They have a really nice campus. It felt strange to be on such a big college campus. All in all, I really like the smallness of the Rockhurst campus. It is nice knowing that you can get anywhere on campus in 5 minutes or less.

A lot of the time on trip was spent hiking, biking, playing tennis and just relaxing by the pool. All in all it was a really great trip. The only thing I was not crazy about was our 2:10am departing flight back to Chicago.

Here is a picture of me at a park outside of Tuscon, Az. This is a fantastic park. This picture is take at, at least 7000ft elevation.

Sorry for the Delay...The ups and downs

Hi All,

I want to first off apologize for the delay in posting. The week before spring break was crazy then spring break was crazy and wow already we are done with one week.We have one more full week this week and then a four day week and then we have a four day weekend for Easter. 

The week before spring break went really well. I we had a snow day on Tuesday which was nice then I just had two days of classes and my break started. My sister Hannah was really excited to see me when I got home. I hadn't seen her since I left at the end of winter break. That is the one disadvantage going to school so far from home. I guess though at the end of the day it makes the time we have together even more special.  With the spacing of the breaks it turns out I am able to be at home seeing my family every 8 weeks or less. I will always be a family boy. I got to be home for my sisters birthday which was really cool! 

I have to admit the week before spring break was not all perky. I got some tough news I did not get rehired for the Desk Manager. It was really tough for me. I have since gotten over it. A quote I keep going back to a lot lately is, "God will never give you more than you can handle. If it seems to be too much on your plate, remember, not everything comes easy in life but he's giving you this load because you're strong enough to handle it ". As one door closes another door opens. That is what I keep telling my self. The waiting to find out what that door that opens will be. I am really pleased with the people that got hired. 

I have an interview for an internship this summer next week. I am really excited for it. 

The snow just followed me home.  I ended up going to Phoenix for part of my spring break with my Dad. It was a great trip. That is another blog. Hopefully this weekend I will have time to write another blog post about it.

There are some exciting events coming up at Rockhurst in the coming week. I cant wait. It will give you something to look forward to! Anyway... if your reading this blog and wana know something about me?/ About RU? or have a topic you want me to blog about comment on this post! 

A tribute to our first Jesuit POPE!!