Good News!!!

So, I've got two pieces of news:

1. Last Friday (Feb. 1st) I went before a really big, scary committee for my denomination. Six people questioned me for an hour on everything from church history, to polity, to personal finance, to counseling, etc... This is one of the big committees I have to see on my way to becoming a minister, and they could have given me a red light, which means I would be stopped dead in my tracks and wouldn't be able to continue on. However...I passed. They green-lighted me to continue my pursuit of being an ordained minister--I'm now a "Candidate"!!!!!

2. After a nation-wide search in a very competitive market, I got a church internship for next year!! I'm going to be the 2008-2009 Intern Minister at a church in Kansas!!! I'll be at the hospital in San Francisco until September 12th, and then I basically turn right around and drive to Kansas with my two cats in the backseat of my car!

I'm the first intern the church has had in 25 years, and they have already been really welcoming. They even sent me a "Welcome to Kansas" package that contained things like a University of Kansas baseball cap, chocolate covered sunflower seeds (it's the sunflower state), and a pet tornado (a little cylinder full of liquid that you can spin and a funnel cloud forms inside). A bunch of people applied for the one intern position, in part because the church is getting a national reputation as one of the fastest growing churches in the denomination (right now they're a mid-sized congregation, about 325 adult members).

Even though I won't be geographically close to my Midwestern friends and family in Kansas, I'm a lot closer, and I've become more and more aware of the distance since moving out here. I love my friends and colleagues out here, and I have really grown to love the Bay Area, but it's time for a change.

I'm nervous about all the changes coming up, but I'm also excited for them. This is what I've been training to do for so many years, and it's amazing to feel it coming into fruition. Woo hoo!

Love,
Anne

P.S. I heartily apologize for the overuse of exclamation points!