I Am A Roadie

Last night was the last night of Schools For Schools and our goodbye dinner. This is just a taste of how much our staff loves us.



I will miss them all greatly.

Oh. Snap. So we've been in the office for a week, making S4S calls, booking for Spring tour, freaking out about how much money we need to raise for S4S, and freaking out about how awesome Spring tour is going to be. See a pattern? Amidst all this we wanted to even the playing field between our schools and the Roadies so we made hundreds of cookies, brownies, rice krispie treats, and cupcakes, tied ribbon around 300 roses, pulled out some wrapping paper, and warmed up our singing voices to get that money just like students we've been pestering for 11 weeks to do.

The result? This weekend we collectively made over $3,000. Yea, there are three zeros behind that 3. Let's be honest here, when we started on Friday night at December Nights in Balboa Park I didn't really think we'd hit $1000 but with a ton of hard work we made $1400 just that night. The next night we spilt up between Balboa and Ocean Beach and that's when we killed it. I was at Balboa both nights and let me just give you a taste of what we experienced Saturday night (my favorite part comes about 1:30 into it:



Yea, that's basically what being a roadies is all about. Sweet moves and pop songs covered acoustically. These next two weeks are going to be the hardest ever as we work to raise $640,000 more in 10 days. Want to help? Donate here to help our efforts and help Taylor stop dancing before his legs give out.

We’re baaaack! Hello San Diego. But first, our last week of tour was great. We were in Rhode Island, New Hampshire, and Vermont. We stayed with our friend Laura in her beautiful house in the woods and hung out on Thayer Street again. We had some great screenings at Providence College and Bennington and we got to participate in the Hometown Shakedown! Sean and I met with the staff member from New Hampshire senator Judd Gregg’s office and all 30 meetings across America resulted in John Kerry co-sponsoring the bill! Such a huge deal because he’s the majority leader of the Foreign Relations committee in the Senate. Yea!

Now we’re back in San Diego after 3 straight days of driving and a pit stop in Gallup, Mew Mexico when Deep South’s van died. Yea. We gutted the van in 15 minutes and drove 12 people, 12 peoples stuff, and 3 teams merch in two vans. What a trip. We pulled off at a Walmart parking lot in Yuma to sleep our last night. So funny.

So today for Thanksgiving 50 of us are going to a house in Point Loma for a family meal. Reunited and it feels so good.

Our screening at the University of Connecticut was one I was looking forward to more than most. I had about 6 screening requests come in from there while we were in the office and we'd never been there before. So this story actually begins 10 days before the screening when my contact there emails me and says she can't get a room so she's canceling. Super disappointed but still determined to get this screening I email a couple girls who sent in requests after tour started. One of those girls immediately calls me back promising me a great screening and free dinner, what more could a roadie want?

After dinner we get to the room and start to get everything in and set up. The room was big enough to seat about 50, good enough seeing as how we had a week to promote. 6:45 comes and the sound is practically at a whisper while the room starts to fill up and we have no idea how to fix any of it. But it's ok, that's why we have our own sound equipment. So after Amy parks the van and walks back in the cold I tell her she must trek the icy weather again to bring back our huge sound suitcase.

When she gets back it's about 7:15 and I'm stalling in front of a crowd of about a hundred in this tiny room. People were all over on the floor, standing up, I had to move our merch outside the room to make more room for people. So there are 100 people staring at me while I try to hook up speakers and I standup and project my head directly into the bar that is weighing down their projection screen. The room goes silent and all you can hear are worried "ooohhh's" and "uhhhh?'s" And right after we figure out that the cable we need is in the van we hook up the mic to the speakers and in walks the tech guy at 7:30 and goes into this secret room and turns the volume up like it was that easy the entire time.

When we finally start the movie and maneuver our way out of the room through the sea of people I feel my head and ask Amy to look at it. Amy's eyes widen as I reveal the horn that has begun to grow out of my forehead in the place where I hit it. Obviously in a situation like this our first impulse isn't to get ice, figure out how we're going to get a table for our merch, where we would even put a merch table, or how I'm going to get up in front of people with this bump and be taken seriously, but to update our twitters of course. And while I'm complaining about my head giving birth, Amy's laughing so hard she pees her pants, seriously. So her next instinct isn't to go change her pants but she walks round UConn in her pee pants looking for ice for my head.


Fast-forward, Amy changes her clothes, parts my hair over the tumor, I call the office and tell Jenna all about it, Amy calls Nathan Canning and tells him all about it, we wrap up a screening selling $500 of merch and 8 TRIs with no credit card machine or TRI cards (yes about 20 people actually let us write down their credit card information on ripped sheets of notebook paper) and Amy pees her pants again while I try to get book boxes out of the van and debate with myself if it's worth it as I consistently fall into the van, and eventually fail all together.

University of Connecticut was easily our shadiest, best promoted, most ridiculous, and one of our most fruitful screenings of tour. And the swelling on my head did go down if anyone wanted to know.

So Yesterday was the first day of my part of tour and the Invisible Children: From Darkness to Sight exhibit opening. Such a good day!

We started the day at Sanford Calhoun, last year's Schools For Schools winners. I was expecting it to not be a very good screening because we were only showing to 60 students in a classroom and it was always so hard to get a hold of anyone there. So we screen The Rescue and sell some merch and then everyone talks about fund raising ideas for S4S. Jason and Kate, the teachers, talk about sending a student to northern Uganda and the students ask if they'd started fundraising yet. To everyone's surprise Jason says "don't worry, we've got about 5 digits right now." Luckily, Sean was able to catch my face when I heard this news.


My excitement couldn't be killed the entire day because once we left Calhoun we headed back to Manhattan for the opening of IC's exhibit on Bleecker St. It was so good to see Ben Keesey, Jason, Laren, Marcus Price, and every friend we met in NYC for the past two weeks was there. It was like our friends were coming to visit us for a straight 3 hours. Then we went out for some delicious Pizza and cookies afterwards before staying with our friend Lindsay.


Such a great day and end to an awesome stay in the big apple. I would love to return in the next 6 months and actually do some touristy things though. Vacation!!!

So we’ve been in New York City for the past week and I absolutely love it. So all we’ve seen is Times Square but we’ve met some absolutely great people. We're off to the Halloween Parade tonight and I'm super excited. Next up is my part of tour, here's to hoping I can pull it off as well as the rest of my team has.

We're sitting in a coffee shop in New Haven, CT now. Everything bagels are my new favorite, I haven't put in my contacts for 3 days, and I've discovered my blessing from God: That I can sleep any time, anywhere, under any conditions. I love this weather. I love this life. I saw snow Friday in upstate New York, spent the weekend in Hackensack, NJ, met some sweet girls in Danbury, CT, and by next Saturday I'll be in New York City for the 2009 GuluWalk. And it's 53 degrees outside. Beautiful.

Since I last wrote we hit a streak of luck with our screenings and were able to make over $1,000 two screenings in a row! We had a really good time at some private schools and a university club gave us a box of goodies that included popcorn, pudding, and cereal. And I went to New York City for the first time in my life, I didn't get to see much, but hey, it's NYC none the less.

The biggest shock for us is that tour is halfway over. We've been doing this for five weeks! And we have to do it for 5 more weeks... wamp wamp. Everyone says it's going to go by so quickly and I feel like every time I blink it's Friday already. My part of tour starts Nov. 4th and once it's over we go home. I'm excited to meet the people I've been talking to since August but at the same time I'll be sad to leave tour because that means "real life" is just around the corner. But for now I'm soaking in ever floor I sleep on, every time I hear The Rescue, and everytime my teammate asks me "where are we going?"

So until next time, Here's a video that truly expresses what my life is like and what the words "deeper yes" mean to me.

I checked and it's pretty darn close. This week I discovered America's smallest state: Rhode Island. And let's be honest here, I absolutely love it. We met some amazing people who took us around town, we walked down Thayer Street at least 3 times this week, visited the 4-story carpeted mall, and listened excitedly to the most "New England" accents we've heard all month.

One of the greatest parts about Rhode Island were our screenings at Paul Mitchell The School in Cranston. Not only were the "future professionals" super sweet and loved our presentation but they did our hair for free! Sp, I'm now a red head. That's about it. More pictures soon. Bye!

How have two weeks gone by soooo fast? On the surface everyday seems the same but every memory is so different that I feel like we’ve been here for months. We’ve screened The Rescue at about 15 colleges and high schools in Massachusetts, Connecticut, and New Hampshire thus far and I’m sitting at another college promoting for our screening this evening.

Let’s be real here, when I say a lot has happened these past two weeks I’m not lying and any other Roadies reading this will know what I’m talking about. I’ve been angrier, happier, more excited, more satisfied, and more anxious than ever before in my life thinking about these screenings, our team, where we’ll sleep tonight, even how much I’m eating. Sometimes things are just out of my control and I’ve come to that conclusion quite quickly.

Last week we finally got our missing link back, Josiah Lamerson, from Uganda and the mood couldn’t have been tenser. We were still figuring out how to be Roadies, public speakers, techies, and salesmen all at the same time as well as practically married to strangers. But I think honesty and prayer have their way of penetrating even the thickest tension to find what’s beautiful underneath. We’re all so different and bring unique things to the table and that’s something that can be embraced and praised. I’ve laughed so hard this week that I can see the beauty of every one of my teammates.

Our highlights for the first two weeks of tour include amazing screening at MCLA, Clark University, and Rivier College. Our contacts there are amazing people who put amazing amounts of work into making their screenings the best. Love them. We also had a great weekend with a former roadie in New Haven who took us all over with his roommates to get falafel, thai food, goodwill, the bookstore, and just have fun. It was the first time since San Diego I was able to just let go and have fun. It was wonderful.

Lastly, and probably the coolest thing that’s happened so far is our trip Friday to the Paul Mitchell School in Danbury, CT to hear the dean of all the PM schools, Winn Claybaugh, give a motivational speech on how to better love people. It was phenomenal! If you ever get the chance to hear him speak please take it because I haven’t heard someone so passionate about loving people since I read about Jesus. He wrote a book called Be Nice (Or Else) which you may also enjoy reading if you’re the type of person who enjoys being nice.

And that’s tour so far! We’ve been struggling to make our goals at screenings but hopefully we’ll be higher on the board by my next update. Bye for now!

What a crazy week it’s been. I just took a road trip across the country with some of the greatest people ever. We went to LA, saw Vegas, the wind in Nebraska almost killed us, slept on the side of the road, woke a kid up in the back of his truck, saw the world’s largest truck stop, ate well, laughed a lot, and I’ve never seen more 5-Hour Energy Shots in my life.


I’m so blessed to have been able to experience this and I know from hear on out the work will be difficult, the nights will be long, and relationships short lived but my deeper yes is to keep Invisible Children rebuilding schools in northern Uganda, ending the war through Obama, and inspiring high schoolers to realize the world that lives outside themselves. So here goes everything…

Today’s the day! Today we launched Invisible Children’s Fall 2009 RESCUE & Recovery Tour. Launch day commenced with a white glove inspection of our house at 7:30 AM then with a tear-filled goodbye atop Mt Soledad with responses from our fellow roadies, Jed Jenkins, and Jason Russell. I don’t usually cry, but let’s be honest here, I was a mess.

And now we’re on the road via LA, Las Vegas, Denver, and Chicago to New England. I’ll be out of commission for a bit I’ll let you know all about our epic road trip next week. Love you!

When a screening is booked in the IC office we tend to celebrate. And when I say celebrate what I mean is everyone bangs on the table and a large gong is banged followed by applause and high fives. The record for most screenings booked in a day was previously 71, on monday we booked 117. I dare you to count how many are in this video alone.

Hi Friends!
Have these past two weeks flown by for you? I feel like this past week was a dream, especially this weekend. I write this with a feeling as if time is slipping out of my hands and I keep grasping for it but like silly putty it has no form to be held by.


















I guess our weekend really started Thursday. Invisible Children's media relations and legal go-to guy, Jedidiah Jenkins, gave us a riddle to solve that would reveal the location of our picnic dinner and fun time. We got dinner and ended up at Mount Soledad, a prominent landmark where we ate, played, and laughed with the view of all of San Diego. (Pictures on Facebook) Then Jed told us to follow him to the beach for a surprise. When we got there the entire IC staff was waiting preparing a bonfire! After we made s'mores Jason introduced us to his friend Tom Shadyac who talked to us about changing what we know as "the real world." It was a magnificent day and what made it even better was that our boss said we wouldn't need to be in the office until 9 the next morning (as opposed to our usual 7:30am.)

I set my alarm Friday morning for 7:30 and at 7 I woke to shouts at the front door telling me to wake up. The entire movement staff had brought us breakfast. We were, needless to say, a bit confused but excited for the 2 hours of fellowship time we got with each other and the staff. After breakfast we had "marriage counseling" for our teams. It consisted of the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator and learning our love languages as well as questions given to us by Margie. We got to the office around 3 that day and learned more about conflict resolution and "gender talk." After all this we were allowed to take the vans out for the night so about 10 of us went to Sunset Cliffs. We jumped off the cliff, watched the sun set, and got dinner on Ocean Beach. Another great day.

Saturday 11 of us piled onto the trolley at 8am to ride to the Mexican border and walk across it to a place called The Purple Palace where 100 orphans live with a wonderful couple. We had a ball with the kids and got tacos (3 for a dollar) after. We later went downtown to hang out and walked a good 20 blocks to get fro-yo from Yogurtland. Sunday we have down to a routine of church in the morning and barbacue-ing with the homeless community at Ocean Beach in the afternoon. And now I reflect on the week at Cosmos while listening to the Status livefeed.


It's been a jam-packed weekend but for those who work hard, we play hard. And with only 10 days until launch I am taking every second of play I can get.

So this week was Margie Dillenburg's birthday. Margie is the top dog in the movement department here at Invisible Children and she loves Michael Jackson. I like her. So for her birthday the Roadies did a little number for her that we like to call Thriller: Margie Style. We even made a song to go along with the music about how much we like her! And without further ado, here is what became of it:



Not bad huh? Yea, we're pretty legit here. Doesn't everyone celebrate their boss's birthday with choreographed song and dance?

And p.s. if you want to send me letters, postcards, or money go ahead and send them to:
Invisible Children
attn: Jennifer Nitsch
1620 5th Ave. Suite 400
San Diego, FL 92101

love you guys!

Hey everyone! It's been good first week at the office. We've been in training everyday literally from 9am with quizzing until 6pm with lecture. Today we had lecture until 8pm, it was so worth it to stay the extra 2 hours though. Jason Russell (one of the filmmakers) gave his testimony and introduced us to his wife and kids. It was amazing. Other than that we've been learning about the history of the war, how to book a screening, how to enter that screening into SalesForce (a crazy online database that has info on everyone who's ever done anything with IC), and even a session on the importance of intentional relationships with each other and our contacts. It's been a lot of information, lots of studying, and many pop quizzes.

We had this past weekend off though! Saturday we were allowed to take the vans to Pacific Beach where we hung out by the water and at outside Starbucks. It was a good time to really start to get to know everyone on a deeper level. On sunday my teammate Sean's sister and her husband and little boy Evan came by and took our team to Old Town San Diego, which is basically a touristy knock-off of Mexico but was great because we had some great team bonding time, something our regional manager Joleah is adamant about.

And tomorrow the real fun begins. We finally pick up the phone and start booking. We want to have upwards of 100 screenings in our region and about 30 have been booked already. My personal goal is to bang the gong 25 times (everytime a screening is booked a large gong is banged) Our region is split into 4 sections and we're each in charge of 17 days. My teammates have up to 4 cities in New York or Massachusetts while my section of tour is the broadest covering 5 states.

Long Island, NY: Nov 5-11
Hartford, CT: Nov 12-15
Providence, RI: Nov 16-18
Concord, NH: Nov 19
Burlington, VT: Nov 20-21

I have the last part of tour. Prior to my section we're in western Mass. Sept 13-16, Boston until Oct 10th, Albany Oct 11-13, and New York City through Nov 3rd. We get to spend Halloween in NYC which is exciting because I anticipate the city will be great on such a vibrant "holiday."

Hope you're all doing well wherever you are and I urge you to keep praying for our class, my team, and the staff at Invisible Children for the impossible feats we're going to try to accomplish on this tour and for the near future of the organization. And I'll let you in on a little secret... Obama.

Goodnight!

My First 24 Hours As A Roadie

So here I am in San Diego, well La Mesa right now. I can't believe this is happening, Sunday I was hanging out in Orlando with my closest friends and today I'm sitting outside a coffee shop down the street from the roadie house with about 10 other people that I've just met but already fallen in love with, not to mention the 20 back at the house and the 30 I haven't even met yet.

My flight was good, I'm so glad I got to share it with Lauranne, I would have been super lonely and nervous alone. When we stepped off the plane in san diego we found angela at the IC van and our adventure began as we picked up 7 more and the 10 of us drove 30 minutes to our house. I knew immediately that I liked them all, every time we found a roadie everyone ran out of the van, hugged them, and took their bags from them.

When we got back to the house I looked in all the girl rooms for my bed, because they we're all labeled with notes from the interns. I finally realized that all the teammates were on the same bunk beds and when I found Amy's I found mine however it was not mine. The note on the bed said "Welcome Home Jessica" and inside said "New England is going to love you." I laughed so hard especially at our house rules meeting that night when Jenny asked if we had any mix ups with beds and everyone looked at me. So now people introduce me as "Jennifer, not Jessica." haha.

I love my teammates and the rest of the roadies, its kind of surreal how well we all know each other just from facebook profiles and ichat. I will update you all more when we start at the office tomorrow but know that I am safe and loving my free time here in the city.

bye!

Lauranne in her awesomeness made this after our party last night. Enjoy!



My favorite part was putting our teammates on the wall in the donation room, so they got to be a part of the party too! Thanks to our friends we raised $200 dollars. I still have a ways to go but God usually provides at the last minute through ways I would never expect so I'm not worried... yet.

That's all I can say! I got the call today that I've been waiting for since I found out I'm going to be on this great adventure. I'm A New England Roadie! I was with my friend Whitney when I got the call who was A Roadie in New England in 2008 and we turned up the volume on my phone and when Sabrina said New England we were both equally stoked.

My region will tentatively include Connecticut, New York (New York, Long Island, Albany), Massachusetts, and Rhode Island. I'm so excited I don't even know what to do with myself! I've never been to the Northeast and Whitney is telling me all about it. Apparently NE is one of the best regions out of the 15 so I can't wait to tell you all about the awesome stuff we'll be doing there.

oh, and if you like sticking it to corporate america listen to this: My company, Gap Inc. is matching dollar-for-dollar everything I raise so the more you give the more the company gives, and I get double the support! so give it up here: http://tinyurl.com/JenniferNitschRoadieFund. Until then, have a great weekend!

Well, I have 16 days left in Florida. That sounds so weird! I moved out of my house yesterday and right now I'm in St. Petersburg figuring out how all my stuff is going to fit in this small old house. It makes me laugh just thinking about it. We were supposed to find out our team and region assignments today but in typical IC fashion that too is delayed and our minds will continue to race for a few more days until that day. The waiting doesn't bother me anymore, it's how my employment began and it's how it will continue to be. I love thinking about the possibilities though!

Lauranne (http://theglorifyblog.com)and I have finally made the facebook event for our going-away/fund-raising party, which makes it even more official that we're roadies! It's going to be an 80's themed dance-off competition. Friends will put money down on their pick for the winner and the dancer with the most money goes on to the next round, and we get all the money! We will also be showing IC's latest documentary on the rescue riders called "Together We Are Free." It's going to be fantastic. I am so blessed to be able to share this experience with such a good friend as Lauranne, she is amazing.

Sooo, I sent out my support letters this week! As I write this they're somewhere nearby heading to their respective destinations. I've also had a couple friends give me gifts of support and more promised I'll have them soon. I would love to be at my goal before the plane takes off but my timing isn't who's I'll be relying on.

I'm just too excited to even contain myself right now. If you're wondering if it will be worth your money to give a little to my cause, watch this and know that you're investment will definitely give back more than you can imagine.



Matthew 25:14-30

It's been quite a week.

Tuesday: after 4 hours of sleep I wake up to watch my beloved MJ's memorial (Yes, I'm a fan of Micheal Jackson like some people are fans of sports teams, even through the rough years.) then sat in front of my phone all day waiting for that glorious call that would reveal my future for the fall!

Wednesday: was a blur. I think I told everyone and their mom that I was a roadie, even if it didn't mean anything to them. I got to tell all my students at The Element too, unfortunately that means I won't be able to join them for camp.

Thursday & Friday: consisted of mostly working, but I Lauranne and I did buy our tickets to San Diego! I started packing, wrote my support letter, and my roommate's birthday party was friday night. there was much dancing.

Saturday: I woke up at 7am to prepare a garage sale with my roommates. One of my students made cupcakes and brownies and sold them their to help me too. She's so sweet. My mom and her fried drove up at the end to pick up my bed and as many boxes as possibly could fit in the truck... so this was the first night I slept without a bed.

Sunday: I worked a couple hours in the morning (and brought in the remaining cupcakes to sell in the break room) then came back to the continued garage sale and started to read over my pre-arrival activities. I also got my first gift of support! So at the end of week 1 I have just over $200. I'm 1/10th of the way there! $1800 to go and 21 days to do it.

I move the rest of my things back to St. Pete friday, the same day I find out my region and teammates! Please continue to pray for the HR staff at Invisible Children as they assemble these teams and that the money keeps coming. Praise that my friend who works at Kinko's said I can print off everything I need for free at his work! Until the next time we speak here's a video to inspire and challenge you.

Friends, this is for you. You have been such a blessing to me since my decision to change the course of my foreseeable future and apply for this position. From interviews to weeks of silence you've been my reason, my encouragement, and my hope. You are as a part of this as I am and how can I leave you out just because you can't fit in the van with me!? So here you will be with me from across the country, wherever I am I want you there with me. So in 4 weeks I will embark on the greatest adventure of my life to date and I am excited to share it with you too.