The day-to-day.

So, this is pretty much my base.

Monday - Grace (Pastor Patti day off)
9 am - Staff Meeting - me, Pastor Laaker and Benhi (Grace's secretary) gather in the library for devotions (text study and prayer) and going over schedules/tasks for the week.
10 am - Coffee Break with the Quilters and their husbands, who are working during our staff meeting and a little before and after. (The husbands do odd jobs around the church.)
3:30 pm - Get ready for After-School
4 - 5:30 After-School
5:30 - 6 - Clean-up

Tuesday - Grace
3:30 pm - get ready for After-School
4 - 5:30 After-School
5:30 - 6 - Clean-up

Wednesday - St. Luke's

Thursday - St. Luke's/Grace

3:30 pm - get ready for After-School
4 - 5:30 After-School
5:30 - 6 - Clean-up (sometimes on Thursdays this goes a little later, since I usually leave some stuff out during the week)

Fridays - St. Luke's (Pastor Laaker day off)
Saturday
Sunday


Your initial observations might be something along the lines of:
-there are many gaps in this schedule
-there are 7 days on this schedule

Good observations! You have come to the same conclusions I have - my job is very flexible, and every day could be a work day. This is why I have been talking a lot about self-care.

So, what do I do with all those gaps? Well, let me give you an example of what part of one of my weeks might look like.

Tuesday - Grace
somewhere between 9 and 10 am - drive to Grace, with no idea what my day is going to be like, forgetting my lunch.
10:14 am - Arrive at Grace. Drink some coffee and talk with Benhi about ideas for community outreach programs, current community outreach programs, and life, for approximately 68 minutes. This is called "relationship building" with your co-workers and counts as work time. Who knew???
11:22 am - Check email/calendar, write an announcement for the bulletin, make a phone call to someone else who works in community ministry or in a school or in some non-profit organization who it would probably be a good idea for me to be in touch with, maybe.
12:17 pm - Walk to the Pupuseria to get lunch. I have only been to the restaurant twice, but it is about a 6 minute walk away, and the waitress who has been there both times is awesome and  from El Salvador and there is a key-hanger wooden map of El Salvador on the wall like the one Emma and her mom have and we used it to show each other where we'd lived/visited. Oh yeah, and the pupusas are delicious, and pretty cheap, which especially at this moment in life is a good thing. Ryan, I think they might have the place by your house beat...
12:34 pm - Bring my lunch back to church and eat it.
1 - 3:30 pm - Re-organize cabinets downstairs with after-school crafts and games. Talk to Virginia, director of Latinas in Action, the exercise class that meets on Friday evenings at Grace, and Elyse, my community organizing mentor, on the phone for at least 15 minutes each. Spend some time journalling my ideas for community outreach programs/making contacts in the neighborhood.
3:34 - Quickly figure out what I'm going to do for snack, game and craft for After-School and get it together. Ideally, this will start happening earlier and earlier, but it doesn't really matter since the game plan changes depending on how many kids show up.
4 - 5:30 - After-School. A family with 3 kids across the street just moved to a different neighborhood, so now I've got a regular crowd of 1-4 kids. They come in and we eat a snack, run around for a while (they really have to do that), get some homework done if they've brought it/it's a good day and they can focus, and do some art (painting was fun the other week, and they liked bracelet-making too) or play a game like Bingo or Charades.
5:33 - Clean up.

Wednesday - St. Luke's
9 am - Text study with my two commanders and a fine group of 3 other pastors, so they get moral support as they prepare their sermons for the upcoming Sunday. I don't go every week, but I went pretty regularly my first month. Coffee and something sweet is generally consumed, and each pastor takes turns hosting it at their church.
11ish am - Get to St. Luke's office. Catch up with Rose, secretary, and Sarah, treasurer, who pays the bills etc. on Wednedays. (Her regular job is VNA nurse, and she's going to be offering a free pre-natal care class taught in Spanish at St. Luke's in December, which is really great, especially because of changes in Medicaid coverage for prenatal care. Read more here.)
around 12:30 pm - eat lunch from home, usually PB sandwich/apple/chips.
ongoing throughout day - talking with Pastor Patti about plans for beginning a weekly Community meal at St. Luke's, and learning about history of congregation.
2 pm - Omaha 360 at the Home for Boys, up in North O. Representatives from non-profits, churches, police, school, government come together to discuss violence/events of the past week, talk about what events extra police will be sent to (high school football games, concerts), share upcoming events, discuss role of media in covering violence, etc., etc. etc. Networking.
3:30 pm - Back to church, continue working on a poster for something. Through the end of October I was staying for confirmation - dinner at 6:30 pm, class at 7. I will probably continue to do that occasionally, but not every week.


I hope this helps give an idea of what my work life is like! I have been glad to get to know the people, buildings, neighborhoods, and partners of where I work. Now, I hope I can really branch out and get to know the people in the immediate neighborhoods of my churches - continuing to learn about how the congregations might best serve nearby schools, members of other nearby churches, and people who live right in the immediate neighborhoods of the church buildings. Some of this happens already, and some of it needs to happen more, and to do this, I am going to need to do a few cold calls, and it's going to be a little scary. But I think I have a good backbone of relationships and trust to support me as I go from here.

Have a happy Thanksgiving, everyone!