Spreading My Wings

This week I have been able to spread my wings a little further. This week the receptionist, who I have worked with a lot this summer, has been at a camp and has not been in the office. Since she has not been in I have been doing a lot of what she normally does. I have answered phones and done all of the other tasks that goes along with running the reception desks. Those tasks include greeting people when they come into the office, directing them to the office of the person they are looking for and taking donations that people drop off. I also worked with a volunteer one day and gave her assignments and showed her what she needed to do. I have also taken several people down to our warehouse and let them in so that they could drop off items that they were donating like food and clothes. It has also been up to be to put postage on all outgoing mail. It has been nice to get some more responsibilities and put some of what I have learned to practice.
In addition to doing that all I have been working on three different large projects. For two days this week I worked on correspondence. The kids in Haiti write letters to the people who sponsor them. I had to read each letter to make sure they were appropriate and I printed labels and mailed them to their sponsor. There were a couple hundred letters. These letters were so much more solemn than ones in the past. So many kids mentioned wanting prayers that God would provided them a house because theirs was destroyed in the earthquake and they were currently living in a tent. Some mentioned losing a family member and one girl said she was now an orphan. Yet they had hope in God and they trusted in him for their needs.
The second project I have been working on was processing new sponsor gifts. This is something that I have worked on for a few weeks now and it continues because we are at the peak of the Christmas gift deadline. The third project that I am working is getting three mass mailing going out. The first is getting the annual report out to supporters, the second is a brochure on a golf scramble fundraiser, and the third is a postcard about a sponsorship drive, to get more kids sponsored.
It has been a busy week and I know that tomorrow will be the same. Unfortunately with so much work in the office and many of the staff out with other obligation it brings stress. There has been quite a bit of conflict in the office this week due to stressed nerves and miscommunication. These kinds of conflicts have surprised me because even though I never expected anyone to be perfect I did not expect to see as much as I have seen. When you are working in a Christian organization it is hard to remember that we are not perfect. We all still have things that we struggle with. I think that this something that everyone in ministry must learn.