Unfortunately, I think I'm now an adult

A selfie of Rachel smiling while holding a tiny black puppy. This photo is here on the off change you'd forgotten who is behind this blog lol  Welcome to the time of year when I am forced to watch the most amount of commercials of any point on the calendar.  Mostly because, when our Rays baseball team doesn't screw it up, there's an overlap of 3 pro seasons plus college football. Other than sports, pretty much everything my household watches is on a streaming service where there either aren't any commercials at all, or the algorithm chooses them based on what we've been talking about around our google devices or phones (all hail the self-selected wire tap!) so we don't always get to know about every movie being released, every drug coming to market, or every product designed to save us from our own ineptitude. Sadly, watching more network sports means commercials, and living in Florida in an election year means those commercials are less informative and more pol...

Ahh, General Convention. That triennial behemoth of Episco-nerds gathered together, mostly to argue (lol jkjkjkjk...but only kinda). The Young Adult Festival meets with Presiding Bishop Curry (Photo cred: Episcopal Young Adult Ministries ) Let me start by saying I had a great time, overall, despite some serious pain due to fibromyalgia and migraines. I got to catch up with some absolutely excellent folks that I love and adore.  I was able to meet a whole bunch of new people who have now been added to that list for the next time.  And I count myself as lucky that recovery time for this ended up being a 1:1 endeavor (i.e. a one week event, and it took 1 week home before I was functional again. If this seems ridiculous to you...welcome to life with Fibro, because that's actually a 50% improvement from my average). All in all, I enjoyed it enough to go back. Which is good, because there were enough things that frustrated me that signifies I'm probably going to HAVE to go b...

One year ago today, I arrived in Brazil. I was hauling way too much stuff, probably, and felt both tired and terrified, definitely. The suitcases before Brazil There are so many good things that have happened because of my presence in Brazil, and I mean to say that I have been the surprising recipient of most of those, not that I made such an impact myself. I did not go to save or rescue anyone, because that wasn't my job in the first place. In fact, it never has been, because I would be at a grand total of 0 if it had. The act of saving and rescuing in the Christian tradition is something I depend on God for, and while I do as I feel called in order to help, I recognize that, ultimately, God has the power to do it with or without me, and that my actions are never the true tipping point. Brazil is an amazing place, where I learned and loved and received so much friendship and lessons on what a response to the Gospel looks like.  Not to mention I found it to be beautiful. Howe...

So, back to the USA.  And after less than one week home, I had convention for the diocese of Southwest Florida.  Here's the link to find my talk: http://episcopalswfl.org/dfc/newsdetail_2/3181691 I can be found a bit faster with these guides: Morning Session Time marker 02:32:25 If you are a member of the diocese in Southwest Florida and would like to talk to me further about speaking at your parish or group event, please use the "Get in Touch" option on this page. If you are not located in Southwest Florida, but still wish to get in touch and talk further, I am also happy to consider doing Skype or Live broadcasts with groups further away. Otherwise, I do promise to post more blog updates and such after this, because there is, of course, much to tell, but I think I need to do it on a week without a convention, a farewell dinner (for someone else this time), Wednesday night church service, 2 appointments, some errands, 6 doctor visits, making a skirt, and a bir...

Hi! My name is Rachel, and I am currently at the Rio2016 Olympics! I am an American, for more generations than I even likely know about, but I am not a tourist in Brazil.  I have been living here since November of last year, and while that doesn't make me an expert, it does make my perspective very different from those folks who just landed in the past few days or weeks. I also, as would normally be expected, have more social media contacts back in the states than I do in my new home, and this means that I often tend to get the US perspective through all that people say, comment, post, and share in addition to the reality I experience for myself here.  So the following is my commentary on some specific things (or singular examples of a vast number of things) that I have seen since these Olympic Games have started from many different friends, media, and extended network contacts. THIS ARTICLE  or one of so very many like it, talking about how horrible everything is here ...

So I guess normally the title phrase would have the word Diamonds, but I've never actually had any of those in my life.  But as a military brat, there's always a chance that baby's first word will actually be an acronym, and even though my life is no longer that of a child (*insert semi sad face because taxes...grrrr) or of a military affiliate, there are still a lot of important acronyms in it. Obviously, YASC is a popular one. I added into my autocorrect ages ago because of how often I use it. And during my experience with YASC, I've learned another acronym. ABCD (Asset Based Community Developement) is a model implemented around the world by Episcopal Relief and Development  and encouraged to be the primary option for community development programs involving YASCers as well.  Part of our training and preparation for our missions this year included training on ABCD.  There are several mentions of it on blogs of other YASCers whose placement heavily includes ABCD....