New BVSer

Hello, I am the new housemate. I am Denise from Germany, near Frankfurt, I am 19 years old and I like sports, crafts and music.  

On September 24, 2011 I came to America for orientation in New Windsor, MD. I really enjoyed orientation, but it was hard to find a good project. Since October 15, 2011 I have been living in the community house and working at the Church of the Brethren with Becky, Rachel, Cat and Carol. My position is “Administrative Assistant for Youth/Young Adult Ministries and Congregational Life Teams.” My job is to do mailings, help Cat, Rachel and Carol with their work, do some finance things (accounting), make reservations for the workcamps, and I am responsible for the applications for the workcamps. Hopefully I will go to three workcamps next year.

In my first week at the office I got a lot of information about what I should do. So I learned a lot about my work, the office, the community house and other important things. I really like my community house and how it is organized.

In my first weeks in the community house, we relaxed in the evening and watched DVDs. For the past 3 weeks, we have done a lot of things after work, so we were very busy. But we did nice things, for example we went out for dinner, we went to common meal, we made tiles, David Doudt lead devotions, we watched a football game, we played Wii, we did a lot for Halloween. Also, I had to do some important things, for example find out where I can get my driver’s license again (I got mine in Germany, but I have to do it again), if there is a cheaper contract for my cell phone, etc.

But now I will tell you, what happened this week:

This past weekend, Don, Cat and I went to Geneva, where we went into a spice house and bought really good spices, looked for Christmas Antiques and we ate Sushi. It was my first time eating sushi and I really liked it. Also we went by a store couple of times and it smelled very good, so we decided to go in and see what they had--they had popcorn with different toppings. Of course we bought one pack with caramel. It was a nice day, but sadly Rachel stayed at home, because she didn’t feel very well. On Tuesday, we (Cat, Rachel and I) helped Don with moving into his new apartment. It is sad, that he will not live in the community house any more, but the positive side is, that he lives about 5 blocks away but we all can still do something together.

On Friday, we went to the theater. It was my first time in an American movie theater.

Indiana Jones and the Halloween of Doom

Happy belated Halloween everyone!

I hope you all had a splendidly scare-tacular Halloween weekend! We had two parties to attend. One where we were guests, and one that we hosted ourselves.


For our first Halloween party we all decided to go as different people. Our costumes weren’t coordinated, but we looked good! :-D Good times were had by all in Goodwill and Spirit Halloween as we searched high and low for our costume pieces!


Carol as Wanda (from “Where’s Waldo)…
Cat as a hippy…
Denise in a Hawaiin theme…
Jeremy as Elwood Blues…
and Rachel (me) as a 50’s housewife (everyone thought I was June Cleaver, haha)…

 Our costumes for our own Halloween party and the theme, “Indiana Jones and the Party of Doom,” was recently decided upon our watching “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom” as a house on VHS. While we were enjoying our time, watching Dr. Jones, Willie, and Short Round, we started jokingly saying we were certain characters in the movie. Voila, our costumes were born. Let me take you through the line-up.


Carol as Marion Ravenwood (she’s the female lead from “Raiders” but we let it slide because Willie from “Temple” is very—blonde)…

Cat as Short Round…

Denise as the Maharaja…

Don as Indiana Jones…

Jeremy as Mola Ram…

and Rachel (me) as a combination between a Thuggee Guard and a Thuggee Acolyte…

Then most of us dressed up for work on Monday (on the actual day of Halloween!)

Tell us what you did/who you were for Halloween! :-D

It's the Great Pumpkin...

Greetings Friends!

I know that each of you have been on the edge of your seat waiting for another great blog from the Elgin BVS House. Well here is my confession, I have been really busy and totally forgot that last week was my turn to blog, and well we don't believe in okay blogs, so I have been trying to come up with something extra special for our wonderful fans, I hope that you enjoy. Love, Carol.

So in the wonderful theme of pumpkins I am no going to tell you a story.
Once upon a time there were 6 BVSers that lived in the Elgin BVS community house. Three of them decided to go out on adventure. They went to a huge garden where pumpkins were growing. The one young man, instantly got to work finding just the right pumpkin. While the other three took their time examining each and every pumpkin. In the time that it took the young man to find three pumpkins the oldest girl still hadn't found a single one that was up to her standards. She then decided to sit amongst the pumpkins until one spoke to her, and asked her to take it home. But still she had no pumpkin to take home. It was quickly getting late and she knew that it would be getting dark and she would no longer be able to see the pumpkins. But what should she do? She knew that soon the Great Pumpkin would arrive...



As a tribute to my favorite Halloween story, here are some of the best quotes from The Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown.

Linus - "What did you get from that house Charlie Brown?"
Charlie Brown - "a rock"


Linus - "What is that?"
Charlie Brown - "I had a little trouble with the scissors..."
Linus - "Well, that's nothing compared to the fury of a woman who has been cheated out of trick-or-treats."


Lucy - "'Alright alright! Let's bob for apples! This is the way you do it.'"
Schroeder -"'Yeah Lucy! You should be good at this! You got the perfect mouth for it!'"


Linus - "I've learned there are three things you don't discuss with people: religion, politics and the Great Pumpkin."

Our house these last couple of weeks have been filled with people coming in and out so things have been a little crazy. We have had some friends from Cat and Rachel's orientation come through as well as a friend from my orientation. When we have visitors in the house we usually try and do at least one fun thing with them, just our way to welcome them. So when Mike was here Jeremy and I decided that we needed to welcome fall with pumpkins. So that is exactly what we did, we went to the pumpkin patch (which was really just a vegetable stand at the side of the road). We also wanted to help Denise experience her first Halloween in the United States, so we also made her come along to the pumpkin patch. The four of us had a great time walking around and picking the perfect pumpkin (which takes some of us a little longer than others, right Jeremy?).

In closing here is a reminder from Linus. "Never jump into a pile of leaves with a wet sucker."