Strange Accents

I knew that spending a summer in Mississippi meant that I would be hearing a lot of southern accents but I was not aware of all the accents I would encounter. Aside from the residents of Jackson the residents of my house have very different ways of speaking. We realized this more fully on Sunday night when our group went to dinner with some people from a church we've been attending on Sunday nights (called the journey...really amazing).
In the house we have:
Chaeli -- Mississippian with a southern accent
Sarah -- from North Dakota and sounds Canadian some of the time (even if she won't fully admit it)
Jerica -- from Wisconsin, which is a dialect all of its own
.....and the rest of us are all from the midwest which really is no accent at all. It is great fun!
In other news, the last half of last week was quite the experience. Heather (the woman who runs the opportunity center) got married and left Chris and I and the security guards to run the place. It really was not difficult at all but did allow us more time to get to know a lot of the guys ( I say guys but there are girls too...we get about 160 people a day and from them about 10 will be women).
We've been learning a lot about empowering people in the internship and how everyone has something to give and by affirming that you affirm them. So, I have been trying to find little ways that I can do that around the center. One day last week some of the guys were playing cards, spades to be exact. I love playing cards but have never known how to play spades so I asked them to teach me. It was so fun! The partners changed as people filtered in and out so keeping track of the score was difficult (though it didn't really matter since they also loved to cheat) but, it was really fun. I was able to get to know them more individually, learn more names and stories, etc...I wound up playing for quite a few hours.
There were two main things that I really struggled with at the end of last week. The first one was a little girl named Roshelle. She is a beautiful 11 year old who comes in with her mother, grandmother, and older brother. She definently brightens up the place, is full of energy, and always has ideas of things to do which is really refreshing. Still, it is difficult for me to see the children coming in and out of the shelter.
The other thing that was challenging for me came out of a book we are reading called The Christian Life by Robert Lupton. He spends some time expanding the idea of "never do anything for someone they can do for themselves". It may sound harsh put like that but, it is really empowering and helps disolve the giver-reciever mentality of so many organizations and people with good intentions and hearts to serve that somehow miss something.
Once (sometimes twice) a day at the shelter we have 'snack time'. Most of the time the guys know when it is coming and Heather, I, Chris, or one of the guards will pass out snack. Since Heather was gone last week Chris and I were in charge of it. There was something about giving a snack to a man 40 years my senior that was certainly capable of doing it himself that bothered me. Who am I to control what he eats? He is perfectly capable of doing it himself. Many of the men in this shelter could pass out the snacks themselves, yet for some reason it falls to us. I feel that by doing this we keep the gap between giver-reciever and it makes it more difficult to just be in relationship. But, I have only been here 3 weeks so, maybe there is still more I do not know. :)

Peace!