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Hi friends,

First, my deepest apologies for the many weeks it has been since my last post. It has been a busy time, and there are days when, after writing and editing all day in the office, I can't motivate myself to do any more writing once I get home. But thank you all for sticking with me, because I do love sharing my summer with you.

I realize that I just made it sound like I'm not enjoying what I do at HOPE, but in reality quite the opposite is true. I love what I do each day. When I began the internship, I was honestly unsure about whether I would enjoy being a marketing intern. I pictured myself cold calling media outlets, writing millions of press release, and facing huge amounts of pressure to come up with wacky public relations ideas. Important jobs, but not necessarily a role I could see myself enjoying as a career. But I enjoy how HOPE does marketing. One of my biggest summer projects has been helping to edit a poverty curriculum for small groups that HOPE is putting out in conjunction with one of our church partners. I learned so much about the Bible's perspective on poverty and got to write and edit pieces of the study. For our benefit art auction, my duties included helping design the program and printing out bid paddles. I'm helping compile a list of supporting churches so we can strengthen those relationships. I've interviewed some of our supporters for the annual report. Yes, I have written a press release, and wacky ideas are welcome, but I enjoy the variety of pieces that go into marketing at HOPE.

Partly because I've been learning so much through these various pieces, and partly because I absolutely love the people I work with, I've decided to extend my internship through the fall semester. This decision has involved some work trying to figure out what that means in regard to grad school, and some details are still up in the air, but a lot of pieces have worked out amazingly well. Sometimes I'm still unsure as to whether this was a good decision, but seeing God's faithfulness in working out details has been a good reminder to me that he is in control, and that as much as I like feeling in control, he does a much better job of it.

I've only written about work so far, but I've had some really fun times too: spending time with different friends from college, including a wonderful weekend up at Lake Maspenock in Massachusetts and getting together with some friends from my time in England; watching a late showing of Harry Potter with interns here; gathering with fellow interns for breakfast every Wednesday; getting to know my coworkers and housemates in Lancaster. Many of the interns are leaving this week, so it'll be a time of transition, and I'm sad to see them go. It has been great to get to know people this summer, and as bad as I am at keeping in contact some times, I hope these friendships keep growing stronger.

As always, thanks for your prayers. Let me know if I can pray for you!