"It's like these people worship Ronald Reagan"

I talked a little about the program in last night's post, so today I'll let you all in on some of the daily goings-on concerning my job at the National Republican Senatorial Committee (or the NRSC for short).

Basically the purpose of our organization is to raise funds in order to support Republicans up for election or re-election in the Senate. Most of the people who work here are in their early twenties and have only been around for 6 months to a year. I work in Finance (which has relatively little to do with actual numbers) and most of my jobs center around "investigating" potential donors to our noble cause. They actually call it "prospecting", but its really just glorified internet stalking. Give me the last name, first initial and zip code of any Republican and I can have them on the phone in 10 minutes with their biography, donor history and most likely their picture in front of you. Occasionally people ask (rather accusatorily at times) "How did you get this number??", and I laugh and say, "It's called the internet."

This should be creeping you out. It creeps me out.

So we prospect, then we send them invitations to events, and usually they don't respond, so we call them and ask them personally to come to events, they tell us that if the immigration bill passes they'll never vote republican again and how their family has voted republican every major election since Abraham Lincoln and we assure them that we don't deal with policy, we're strictly fundraising and occasionally you actually get someone who wants to pay $1,000 for a ticket to an event, and at that point you jump up and down and savor the moment because you never know when it might happen again.

Kind of sounds like fundraising for Nav staff, except minus the whole immigration bill stuff.

There are 22 interns here, most of us split between research and finance. Tim works in research, and his job requires him to take field trips to the library of Congress about once a week. I wish someone would send me to the library of Congress. I haven't even been to the Capitol building yet. Its work work work from 9-6 M-F, and on the weekends the last thing you want to do is fight your way through the tourists. Tim arranged for a White House tour on Wednesday, though, and I'm really looking forward to that (even though its at 7:30 AM).

As far as my time, its split pretty evenly between work and the STP (summer training program) stuff. We have team dinners on Mondays, weekly seminars on Thursday evenings, usually hang out with team members on the weekends, church on Sunday and Bible Study afterwards.

We all live in the same building, in three-person one-bedroom apartments that have kitchens, living rooms, bathrooms and desk areas. At night we all iron our work clothes together and talk about random stuff. I've had some good conversations with people about gender roles in the church, dating, doctrine, leadership, and just about anything you can think of. Most of the guys on our team are really good leaders, and its cool to see them enjoying that role. I feel like I can have dinner with any or all of them and be completely comfortable. The girls are opening up more slowly, so its required more patience and more small talk. Christa and I have had good talks and have challenged each other in seeing different points of view.

One thing I didn't realize until I came here was how conservative (spiritually/religiously/doctrinally) I am. I am thankful to the Purdue Navs for encouraging and cultivating a discipline for time in the Word and the desire to seek ultimate truth. I've encountered a lot of post-modern subjectivism here, even in the ministry. It's made me evaluate why my beliefs are so polar in some areas and its caused me to have to be more loving of people who think differently than I do. It doesn't mean I'm changing my views on absolute truth, though - you know its going to take more than a few post-modernists to rock this boat :)

Some things God is teaching me:
-I can't plan for everything (duh), and sometimes what I didn't expect to learn is what God meant to teach me all along
-That He wants to take care of me and protect me, even and especially when I think I'm doing a great job of protecting myself (lie lie lie)
-That He wants to be my comfort, and that He truly cares for me when I hurt

So slowly but surely I'm becoming acclimated to my new environment. I can honestly say (4 weeks into the program), that I'm absolutely loving it here, that I feel that God is growing me in amazing ways, and that I feel that God is using me in the lives of others. And, my friends, there is no greater feeling than that.

As always, shoot me a line if you're not bust or give me a call - weekends are best. I love and miss you all!

Ephesians 1:15-19!

Jess