Thank you!

We had a very fun and successful party! I had a wonderful time, and from what I hear, the rest of you did, too. We raised almost exactly $500 after the party expenses. Thank you to all who donated in non-monetary ways, as well. Alicia and Jen woman-ing the bar, the roommates contributing our house liquor, David bringing Rock Band, and Jeremy making sure the dip was filled and the Taquito’s were cooked. Thank you to all who made the trek up to Dublin just to hang out and support me!

This weekend was filled with Christmas-y things. Brad and I traveled down to his home town and met up with friends for ‘buddy dinner’. We Christmas shopped all day today with some of his family. It was a very good weekend. I’m trying to soak it all in, all the love and all the laughs. I know I’m going to be very busy while in Canada, but I’m sure going to miss all I’m leaving behind here.

I hope your weekend was as happy as mine was.

Merry Christmas!

Cindy

Crazy October

Hello,

My goodness, it has been a crazy month! My roommates and I decided to move out of our humongous house and into a townhouse down the street. We have shed about 3,000 sf so naturally quite a bit of purging has happened. I considered being a monk for a while, but so much of what I own (about 6 big plastic storage bins) is art supplies. And can one contemplate life in a monk like state without art? Work in the city as really been picking up, which is great, but all this has left me little time to focus on the impending EMI adventure.

While I wasn’t watching so many of you have found room in your lives to include me. I have received a nice size envelope from CGCC of all the response cards they have been collecting for me. Thank you for all your well wishes and prayers! I am so happy to report that support rising is just under 1/3 of what I will need. Reading through the list of supporters is almost overwhelming for me. I am so excited that you are behind me.

Please continue to pray for me. Continued support is always appreciated. I am looking for ideas on additional fund raising efforts. If you have any please comment. And perhaps most scary of all, shots of all kinds are coming up!

Thank you again,
In Him,
Cindy

Hello World!

....

Hello,

I hope this letter finds you well and happy. I am writing to share with you an amazing journey I am about to undertake. As you may know, I recently graduated from San Jose State University with my degree in Design. Since then, I have been working at Brereton Architects in San Francisco, an architecture firm which specializes in tenant improvements. I started there during my senior year at SJSU as an intern, and I am now one of their junior designers. I enjoy contributing to this wonderful, close-knit team. Together we develop and redesign office spaces all over the West coast.

Since graduating from college I’ve had the nagging feeling that this life I am leading is just practice for something else, something more important, more significant. Last summer, I moved back to the Livermore valley, my childhood home, looking to avoid the loneliness of living in the overcrowded city, although I continued to commute to San Francisco. And, still the nagging feeling remains, even as I live quite happily on a hill in Dublin. So, I started talking to people.

I talked with my dad, my Sunday School teacher, my coworkers, and finally I spoke with an old high school friend at my church, Cedar Grove Community Church (CGCC) in Livermore. She suggested I look into Engineering Ministries International (EMI, EMIworld.org ), with whom her fiancé was doing his civil engineering internship in Costa Rica. Six months after that conversation, and after much prayer, debate, and many essay rewrites, I applied for a four month internship in EMI’s Calgary, Canada office. In May, I received the good news that I’d been selected to be one of only a few interns admitted to their Spring 2010 semester!

EMI is a non-profit organization made up of architects, engineers, and other design professionals who donate their time and expertise to help people around the world step out of poverty. They help by designing and overseeing the building of projects such as orphanages, schools, medical clinics, and community centers across the globe, from Myanmar to El Salvador to Tanzania, where skilled design services are not widely available.

The thing that excites me most about this organization in particular is that my exact skills will be used to help people directly. In the past, I have been given opportunities to use the money I earn to donate to causes, or to donate my unskilled time to charitable organizations, and I have done both things with joy in my heart. But I had never come across an organization that would allow me to serve by using the professional skills I have learned and love and use daily. EMI provides me with the unique opportunity to be the one sent, to do something that I love, and at the same time to contribute directly to the betterment of the world.

I would like to invite you to join me on this journey though financial support and prayer. My current prayer requests include the team I will be working with, that we would be able to come together effectively and for the place and people we will be working with on our project. The EMI project I work on will likely be in Tanzania or The Democratic Republic of Congo. Finally, prayer for the financial support I need to make this journey possible is greatly appreciated. I would be very blessed if you would consider supporting me in this way, as well. I have set up a website where you can read my blog, view pictures, post your prayers, and see how far we are to reaching the financial goal of $7,000 for the entire trip. In these two ways, I feel we will be taking the journey together.

You can send support funds by using the address in the left bar to CGCC, or with your credit card though EMI's website using the link and ID number in the left bar. Both ways are tax deductible. Join the mailing list or subscribe to this blog's RSS feed, also in the left bar, to receive updates as I upload to this site in the days leading up to and though out the trip. If you would like to discuss more about my trip with me or have questions, I would be happy to talk with you.
Thank you so much for your support.


In Him,

Cindy Carole Gavel
2797 East Sugar Hill Terrace
Dublin, CA 94568

Cell: 415.359.7755
Cindy[at]Cindy-InTheWorld[dot]com
Cindy-InTheWorld.com