Mowing Internship Summer 2009

I am convinced that my real internship this summer is mowing lawns. I mowed 5 out the past 7 days. Monday and Tuesday after working at HOPE during the day, I mowed at night. Wednesday night I had the evening off. Then all day Thursday and Friday I was out mowing a Keystone community. Today, is my normal mowing day and I mowed three houses throughout the county. I am pretty stoked that I have a 7 day break until I start mowing again next weekend. Even though I am sick of mowing, it has been a pretty cool experience. After working Monday through Thursday in the office, I am ready to be doing something outside. After I mow all day on the weekend, I am ready to get back into the office on Monday morning. I've been driving a couple different work trucks and learned how to back a trailer. When I decided to come out to Pennsylvania, I accepted the fact that I wouldn't have a car out here. It has been a nice surprise to have the work trucks to drive.


Interning at HOPE has been really cool because there are so many like minded people working towards the same goal. HOPE International is a microfinance organization that provides small loans to people in developing countries around the world. HOPE strives to go to the hard places that other organizations have often stayed away from. The loans are given to people as a hand up and not a hand out. That meaning that there is interest on the loan and it isn't a gift. Many times the only option for a loan in these countries is from a loan shark who charges exorbidant amounts of interest. HOPE's micro loans give people an opportunity to expand their small business and pull their family away from the cliffes of poverty. They may be able to eat 2 meals a day instead of just one, add more nutritious food to the family's diet, send the kids to school, pay for needed medical care, etc...

How does my work in Pennsylvania help those overseas in the countries HOPE works in? Here is a breakdown of what I do at HOPE... I work for HOPE's founder Jeff Rutt. He founded HOPE in the late 1990s after his church had been sending containers of supplies to Ukraine and he realized this really wasn't helping. The people in Ukraine were becoming dependant on these containers sent from the US. Jeff found that it was important to let people pull themselves out of poverty. He realized that people already had the survival skills, they really just needed capital and so he began giving out loans through HOPE International. Before Jeff founded HOPE, he started Keystone Custom Homes (I think its pretty obvious that they build custom homes). He later then started another nonprofit that stems from HOPE called Homes for Hope. Homes for Hope finds builders, contractors, and tradesmen that all come together to build a home. Once the home is sold, the profit that the builder usually pockets is given to HOPE International. I split my time between those three organizations: HOPE International, Keystone Custom Homes, and Homes for Hope. My typical days have a couple meetings and maybe a bible study. The days fly by because there is so much going on between these three organizations. I enjoy being really busy with many different projects and so I think this is a great internship for me. Many projects with HOPE and Homes for Hope involve helping Jeff raise money. Raising money from donors can take many different forms. I may be helping find sponsors for the HOPE golf tournament, go out to lunch with Jeff and a potential donor, or work on ways to save HOPE money. I am basically a liaison between Jeff and HOPE, making sure that all of his projects are completed. I have only been here 3 weeks (next week will be the start of the 4th) and work has already gotten intensely busy but I am loving the fast paced environment and having some involvement in HOPE's great cause.

If I was asked a couple years ago what I would be doing after graduation, I don't think I could have predicted this. It has been an interesting experience graduating from college, volunteering my time at a Christian non-profit, and mowing lawns on the side to make a little money. This scenario would have sounded absurd to me three years ago. In my last few years in college, I realized how much I loved learning and I think that is why I am having a blast thus far this summer. There are things from my last internship in commercial real estate that really help me in this internship, but other projects I have are completely random and force me to teach myself new concepts. I had never mowed lawns growing up (I know that is embarrassing) but have loved having the opportunity to learn how to operate the commercial mowers and back the trailer. My Toyota Tacoma work truck is a manual transmission and that has been great being able to drive stick again for the first time really since high school.

The first 3 or 4 weeks of summer out here have been pretty eventful. I hope that each week will bring something new to learn or some exciting adventure. This summer has already been a growing experience both spirtually and personally.

The beginning of Week Three

Here is a mind dump of my random thoughts from the past week or two...

The first couple weeks have flown by. I thought that this was going to be a summer with an abundance of free time and boredom. So far I have been pretty wrong about that. I work at HOPE International Monday thru Thursday. Friday is my day off before I mow lawns on Saturdays. So far I haven't taken a Friday off. I spent the first Friday working with a Keystone employee at one of the Keystone communities. Keystone Custom Homes is home/community builder and was founded by my boss Jeff Rutt (he also founded HOPE International). I am technically a Keystone employee also because of the mowing that I do on the weekends. This past Friday, I went to a Homes for Hope breakfast. Homes for Hope is a separate nonprofit that brings together builders and sub-contractors from around the nation to build homes. These homes are then sold to the public and the profit is given to HOPE International. This is not like Habitat for Humanity because these homes are built just like any other home and if someone looked at the home it would look like any other house on the block. The builders volunteer their labor and greatly discount the materials they use on the house. So if the total cost for building the house was $150,000 and the house sold for $300,000, then HOPE would get a $150,000 check. That can provide a lot of loans overseas. I've gone to two Homes for Hope events now and it has been great talking with people about what HOPE does and learning how to interact with builders. A Home for Hope was completed in the end of April and it has been incredible seeing how generous builders/sub-contractors have been even amidst a challenging economic climate. Over the past 10 years, 64 homes have been built and over $10,000,000 dollars has been given to HOPE International.

My first couple weeks at HOPE have been great. Within the first 3 days, I felt very comfortable with everyone in the organization. Each week we have devotionals and time to grow together as a team. The HOPE staff has been a blessing and really involved the interns even outside of work. Every week some employee has had a barbecue at their house or we will go to the park to play volleyball or ultimate frisbee. They invite us to their churches with them and have us over on weekends to watch movies.

I share an office with Deirdre (Jeff's assistant) and I have had a blast just talking with her throughout the day. The days fly by so fast because each day there are a couple meetings for either HOPE, Keystone, or Homes for Hope. If there isn't a meeting, there is probably a devotional or special event. For example, today was the beginning of the HOPE International ping pong tournament during our lunch hour. By 3 in the afternoon, I am hoping the clock will slow down so I can get some work done. Tomorrow night, we have game night at a HOPE employee's house. Then on Thursday, we have a barbecue at another HOPE employees house and Deirdre is planning a day to take the interns into Amish country later in the summer.

I have an extremely busy week ahead of me. This weekend it poured rain as I was trying to mow lawns. Now that I am behind on my lawns, I have to mow lawns after I finish my work at HOPE. Tonight I left work at 4:30, picked up the the equipment/other work truck and mowed 2 lawns in Lancaster. Tomorrow night will be a longer night, but hopefully I will get most of my lawns done before dark.

This has been a pretty disjointed post, but that is more or less how I feel the past 3 weeks have gone. It has been great, no day is the same, and each day brings a new adventure. I am excited to see what tomorrow brings and how I will grow from these experiences. In the coming weeks, I will describe in greater detail the work HOPE does around the world and how I am involved in that work.

Week One

I started work on Tuesday June 10th, the day after I flew into Pennsylvania. Two weeks ago when I flew out to PA for orientation we learned all about HOPE and met all the staff that we would be working with this summer. Orientation gave me something to look forward to this summer. After each day of orientation we went to a different HOPE staff member's house for a barbeque. It is really cool how the interns are integrated into the culture of the organization from day 1. The first couple days of work this week were pretty difficult. I am interning for the founder of HOPE International, Jeff Rutt. He started a company called Keystone Custom Homes before he founded HOPE. Since I am his intern, I am sitting downstairs in the Keystone office even though the HOPE office is upstairs in this office building. It was a tough first couple days because I met all of the Keystone employees and I le what I would be doing this summer. It was a little overwhelming. On my third day of work, I went to a customer appreciation lunch that Homes for Hope was attending. Homes for Hope is a funding arm of HOPE International which has builders construct a house at cost and the profit from selling the house goes to HOPE. At this event, we were meeting builders and promoting Homes for Hope in an effort to find more builders who would like to become involved with Homes for Hope. This was a cool experience because it helped me practice how I would advocate HOPE to a random person. The first week of work was pretty tiring but I am excited to be working for HOPE and seeing where this summer takes me.

I am living in a house called the Millersville International House (MIH). Year round students from around the world live here as they attend Millersville University which is a couple miles down the road. It is a really cool place because there are people from all over South America, Africa, the Middle East, and Asia. 8 other interns are living here this summer also so we all car pool to work in the morning. When we come home from work, one of the international students has prepared dinner for us. It is a pretty comfortable setting and is a couple miles outside of Lancaster which is a really quaint town. I'll write more about MIH and Lancaster later.

As the weekend began, my part-time job also began. This summer I will be mowing lawns throughout Lancaster County to make some money. On Thursday I got the details for the job. Jeff came to me and said, "Do you know how to back a trailer?" I replied honestly, "uhh, no." Then he said, "Do you have any experience running machinery, besides an automobile." I replied honestly, "Uhh, no." He looked pretty nervous. I got a call a couple hours later from a Keystone employee who was going to show me how to use all the equipment. He said that it would probably be easiest if I spent the majority of Friday working with him so I could get used to usually all the equipment. On Thursday night I left the office with my work truck. Who knew that when I got out to Lancaster, I would have a car. I am driving a 2005 Toyota Tacoma Keystone work truck. I went out to the truck on Thursday night to head home and found that my work truck is a manual transmission. I hadn't driven a manual transmission more or less since high school and I was excited to get to drive it again. Friday morning I drove 30 minutes west of Millersville where I am living and met Bryan at a Keystone community where I learned how to drive the commercial riding mower and other equipment. He attempted to teach me how to back the trailer, but that was pretty tough. He left me with his cell number in case I got into trouble on Saturday, but also said, "Just make sure you don't have to back up wherever you go."

Saturday morning I thought I was getting an early jump by driving out to pick up the other work truck and load the mowers onto the trailer at 8:00AM. My first house was 45 minutes further west and of course I had to pull into the driveway and therefore back the trailer out of the first house. I mowed it pretty quick and didn't do too bad backing out. I was thinking, wow this isn't going to be such a bad summer job after all. Then I drove 30 minutes back East to the next house and this is where all hell broke loose. The grass was a foot long and a neighbor came up to me warning me that they had black snakes. She said, "Watch out cause my husband saw a 6-foot black snake hanging out of the tree." I said, "I didn't sign up for this." It took me 2 hours to mow this house because their lawn was over an acre big and it needed a lot of work. It was after 1 in the afternoon and I still had 3 more lawns to go. I drove 3o minutes north to the next lawn and this house was ghetto. It looked like the house was condemned, there was almost more dirt than grass. My spirits took another nose dive. It was now after 4 and I had to drive 30 minutes east back into Lancaster to mow 2 more lawns. The last 2 lawns in Lancaster were pretty small and I finished them pretty fast. By the time I took the equipment back to the storage facility 30 minutes west of my house, it was after 7. I got home around 7:30, making my day about a 12 hour day.

Wow this is going to be one heck of a summer!

Arriving in Philadelphia

Hey everyone (or anyone who wants to read about my summer). Sorry it has taken me so long to write about my experiences back in Pennsylvania. It has been a busy week and each day I have been putting off writing this post. I am sick today so it is a perfect time to write about the past 7-10 days.

I left home on Sunday, June 8th to fly out to Philadelphia. June 8th and 9th turned into the craziest travel day I've ever experienced. When my dad and I got to the airport, I was told that I wouldn't make it to Philadelphia. My first flight from Sacramento to Los Angeles was delayed so much that it made me miss my connecting flight from Los Angeles to Philadelphia. After changing all my flights, I eventually hopped on a commuter flight from Sac to San Francisco. It was my first time on one of the small commuter planes and that was an experience in itself. When I got to San Francisco I found that my new flight from SF to Philly was delayed until 12:30 AM. We boarded the plane and sat on the runway long enough for me to fall asleep. I woke up and we were in the air. Luckily, I slept most of this flight and landed in Philadelphia just after 8:30AM. First stop, Dunkin Doughnuts. By the time I got to the baggage claim, my bags were just coming out onto the carousel. Rewind back to Modesto on Sunday afternoon....It is 2:00 PM and I need to leave for the airport in 2 hours, not a single bag is packed. In my rush to the airport I forgot to look up directions from the Philly airport to Lancaster.

Fastforward....I've got my bags and I know that I need to take something called "SEPTA" to the central Philadelphia train station. I tried to hop on the first SEPTA bus that I saw but didn't have any cash. Strike 1. So I walked to two different terminals looking for an ATM and after about 30 minutes I had my cash and found the next SEPTA bus. I asked the bus driver if it was going to downtown Philadelphia and she said, "No, I think you need the next one." When the next bus showed up, I hopped on asked if it was the right bus and didn't get much of a response from the bus driver. Then, when I went to pay I asked the driver if he had change for a $10 and he laughed and said no. I replied with, "So you want me to pay $10 for this bus ride?" And he laughed and said "Yes." So I paid for 5 bus tickets on my first bus ride in PA. Cool. About 10 minutes into the ride I began to get a bad feeling in my stomach that I was on the wrong bus. I leaned over to someone near me and asked if I was on the wrong bus. Of course he said, ya you are going to complete opposite direction of the train station. I then proceeded to swallow my pride and walked up to talk to the friendly bus driver. He again laughed at me and told me to get off and walk across the street to another bus stop. I got off with my two large suitcases and backpack. My body is lacking sleep and common sense so I decided I needed to reevaluate my situation. So I interrupted my journey to the train station by walking into the Burger King next to where the bus dropped me off...

I proceeded to haul 2 suitcases and my backpack into the BK. I don't think I have ever felt so out of place. Everyone in BK was staring at me. I had a new strategy, get change for my $20 dollar bill so I didn't have to pay $20 for the next bus fare. I bought a coffee and some hash browns. Immediately after I bought the coffee I realized I couldn't carry it and my two suitcases. After a few sips and burning my tongue, I tossed the nasty coffee, hobbled out of BK with my luggage, and walked across a couple busy streets to the next bus station. To make sure I was at the right bus station I walked up to a lady and asked, "does this bus go to the main Philadelphia train station?" When she responded I realized she only had one tooth and couldn't talk too well. She kept trying to explain things to me but I didn't understand most of what she was saying. I hopped on the bus and asked the driver the same question, "will this bus get me to the train station?" He said, "Get off on 49th Street and take another bus to the 30th St Amtrak station." I then walked to the back of the bus, found a seat and blocked another seat with my suitcases. This bus packed out with people standing shoulder to shoulder in the aisles and I got a lot of dirty looks for taking up an extra seat. Once again, I have never felt so out of place or had so many people staring at me. There wasn't a bus stop map on the wall of the bus nor were there many street signs indicating where we were so I had no idea where the 49th Street stop was at. I stood up at one point and asked a lady who looked to me like she was a prostitute if this was the stop I needed and she surprised me. She said, "Follow me, I am going the same place you are going." She showed me the 49th St stop and where the next bus was to head to the train station. Once I was on that bus she told me how to go the rest of the way. After this lady left me, I couldn't stop thinking of the verse that says, "Do not judge, or you too will be judged." I felt pretty dumb for how I judged this lady who was sitting across the bus from me and she turned out to be the nicest person I'd met all day.

I got off this train and walked above ground to find the Amtrak station. My flight landed this morning at 8:30 AM and it took me two and half hours to get to the train station (it should take 20-30 minutes). Once I saw the station, a huge pressure was lifted off my back and I felt safe again. I walked into the station not caring if I had missed a train and knew that I finally knew where I was going. I got into the ticket line and found out that the next train to Lancaster was leaving in 10 minutes (they leave about every 2 hours) so I was right on time. I hopped on the train and met a guy who had been studying in Germany and talked with him for a while on the ride into Lancaster. When I got to Lancaster, I called Cameron another HOPE intern and she picked me up and took me to the Millersville International House where I will be living for the next few months. I got to the house around 1:00 PM, ate lunch at the house, unpacked a little, and fell asleep until dinner.