A year ago today

A year ago today I took my first steps on the 150 mile trek that is the Camino Santiago. I remember waking up in the morning, and in my jet-lagged stupor, I honestly had no idea where I was. Once I figured it out, I simply thought, "Ok, let's do this" and jumped out of bed. As if this was just another morning. Maybe if I had thought about it more I would have realized the gravity of the journey I was about to embark upon. Maybe if I had thought about it more I never would have gotten out of bed.

A year ago today was the beginning of me getting reacquainted with myself. I have learned so many new things about myself the past few years and that's been great, but in the midst of that I somehow forgot things that I already knew to be true. I had forgotten how much I love being in other countries, particularly in western Europe. I had forgotten how much joy it brings me to hear other languages being spoken. No matter if I understand what's being said, sometimes it's better to just sit back and enjoy the symphony of new and unfamiliar sounds. I had forgotten how goal-oriented I am, and didn't realize how not having goals was slowly and silently killing my spirit. All I needed was the simple goal of getting to Santiago to remind me how driven I can be. The goal was to get to Santiago, and by golly, I was going to get there. No amount of lost toenails or ankles the size of a grapefruit was going to stop me. I think I surprised my fellow pilgrims with my resilience and, if I'm honest, I kinda surprised myself too.

A year ago today, I set out on a life-changing journey. It sounds cliche, but it's true. The Camino helped me realize that while I had come to love my home in Charlottesville, my soul longed to be in California. The Camino was the stepping stone into pursuing a career in ESL. Essentially, the Camino changed where I live and what I do with my 9 to 5. Would I have discovered these things, would I have made the same life changes if I hadn't walked the Camino? I really don't know the answer to that question, but I really don't need to know. All I know is that I'm doing my best to follow my yellow arrows. Sure, I'm going to stumble along the way, and I'm sure I've already missed a few turns here and there. But as long as I keep putting one foot in front of the other, and as long as I have others walking alongside me, I think I'll be alright.

Changes

The last time I updated this blog, I had recently come back from overseas, was working for a collegiate missions organization, and living in southern California. I am now writing as an aide for the kindergarten classes at a local elementary school, and living in central Virginia. Needless to say, the last few years have been full of changes, some expected and some not so much. The last few years have been full of dichotomies; it's been easy and hard, joyful and depressing, stressful and relaxing. It's been a time of finding out how much I can really handle, and how I react when life throws me curve balls. I think most of all though, it's been a time of deep community, of being loved when I didn't deserve it, of being gently guided when I'd lost my way. And for that I couldn't be more grateful. And for that it's hard to leave this strange place that has become home. I've been accepted to a program in San Fransisco that will certify me to teach ESL, so I will be moving back to California this summer. I'm excited about the program and the potential doors that it could open. I'm excited about starting a career that combines a few of my passions and that I think I will really love. I'm scared of failing, of starting over, of the unknown. I'm sad to leave the place that I've learned to call home, and happy to be returning to the place that I think I always knew was home. Drastic changes have marked the past few years, drastic changes are now on my horizon again. Sometimes I think I won't be able to handle it, and that I just want to stay in my little bubble forever. But that's not where the good stories come from. That's not the place where you learn about yourself and the One who holds you. And that's not the place where I want to live. So here's to the future, to the unknown, to a new adventure.

CSU Talks

Here's the link to some of the talks we heard this year at staff conference.

http://www.ccci.org/csu/index.htm

I highly recommend both of Francis Chan's talks and the last one by David Platt. Steve Sellers also does a great job of explaining the heart behind our name change and all that went into the process of deciding the new name. I thought it was fascinating to hear all about how people react positively and negatively to different names and logos and everything that comes with marketing and branding research. But I also understand that I'm a sociology dork and know that that not everyone would find that as interesting as I did :)

Enjoy!

CSU in Pictures

I thought I would share my time at staff conference through some of my pictures. Because who doesn't like a blog post full of pics... :)


My dear friend Hillary, who I'm also currently maid of honor for. We stopped in the same spot in Utah on our way to STINT Briefing 2 years ago. We always have fun road tripping together!



Birthday breakfast for Kelsey with friends from New Staff Training. We live all over the country so it was super fun to be able to celebrate together!




Hiking in the Rockies on our day off was a definite highlight for me


And I loved that I got to do it with these 2! I joined staff with Logan and Stephen and they are both such a blessing to me.


There was even still snow on the ground! In July! Which of course lead to snow angels and snowball fights


We talked about our name change... I love the new name and logo!




We also got to hear from some great speakers like Francis Chan and David Platt.

Overall, it was a wonderful time of hanging out with friends, getting caught up on where Cru is headed, being challenged in ministry and our own walks with the Lord, and enjoying the beauty of God's creation in Colorado. I love that Cru cares enough about its staff to bring us together every 2 years, and I'm already looking forward to 2013.

1 dress, 6 months

CNN.com is my homepage. I know it's a more liberal news source, so judge me all you want, but for the most part I enjoy the pieces that they choose to publish. One caught my eye the other day, entitled "One dress, Six months". It was about a woman in Ohio who found out that there was human trafficking in her area, not exactly something you expect to hear about small town America. As a way to raise awareness for what was going on, and for her to realize the amount of freedom that she really has, she decided to wear the same dress everyday for 6 months. Other people caught on to what she was doing, and people in her church and even a group of women from the local university (University of Toledo) joined her in what she was doing. They were showing pictures of the students that joined her, and I started flipping out because sure enough, I was looking at a picture of my friend Rachel! I replayed the video to make sure that it was her, and turns out my eyes weren't playing tricks on me, it was definitely her. I ended up talking to her a few days later and she confirmed that it was, in fact, her.

Rachel was one of the girls that I discipled when I was on summer project in Ocean City, NJ. She is one of those women that, within a few minutes of meeting her, it's clear that she loves Jesus and is living her life for Him. And wearing the same dress for 6 months was just one way for her to do that. After reading the story and talking to Rachel about it, it got me thinking how this was a beautiful picture of 100% sent. Campus Crusade has a vision that every student, no matter where they go or what they do, would be 100% sent with the Gospel and be equipped to share it no matter where life takes them. So whether it's working at a law firm in California or helping orphans in Africa, we want our students to be equipped to share the love of Jesus with anyone that God puts in their path. And, for 6 months in the same dress, this was the way that Rachel chose to be sent, by raising awareness about human trafficking in small town Ohio. It was unique and different and creative, but something that God used to work in Rachel's own life, as well as to minister to the people around her. And who knew that it would eventually make its way to national news, that all the way across the country her friend in California would hear of her story.

Rachel and I in Ocean City

And here's a link to the story: http://thecnnfreedomproject.blogs.cnn.com/2011/06/06/one-dress-raising-awareness-of-slavery/?hpt=hp_c2

Once a sociologist, always a sociologist

I'm a sociologist at heart. I always have been and I always will be. I love learning about different cultures and different people and seeing patterns in the way that different people groups behave. I love understanding relationships and how they work and why they work and why they don't. It fascinates me. It's intangible and big picture, yet at the same time it's tangible and small picture. I love it.

My newest sociology undertaking has been discovering just how different California culture is from Southern culture. The main reason for my new found fascination is because some of my very dear friends from New Staff Training are from the South (North Carolina, Tennessee, and Georgia to be exact). Between getting to know them, learning more about their upbringing and hearing their stories from their ministry partner development time, I've begun to realize just how radically different California is. From the food, to the things people value, to the influence of the church... it's all different. I recently spent some time down there visiting my friends and attending a conference, and I gotta say, there were times where I felt like I had left the country. And I loved every minute of it.

Here are some of the major differences that I've observed so far:
- the Southern definition of traffic and the California definition of traffic are two very different things
- Fried food is everywhere in the South. It's hard to get away from it.
- One of the most valuable things to Californians is time.
- Southern hospitality still lives up to its name, as does the Bible Belt.
- Californians aren't afraid to be rude. I might even go so far as to call it our norm.
- The influence of families is different. (I'm still thinking through this one. I'm aware that it's different, but I'm still discovering exactly how)

By no means is this list exhaustive and please hear me when I say I'm not claiming to be an expert. I just love noticing the differences between cultures, and try as I might, I can't turn off my fascination with discovering these things. And to think I went into college as a biology major :)

Soup to nuts?

We were sitting in our Intro to Christian Theology class at New Staff Training. I have to admit I wasn't paying super close attention to the lecture. It was a nice day and I was staring out the window at the beach, wondering how much more time in between now and when I could be out on the beach playing volleyball. Then our professor said it, "It's the soup to nuts..." I don't remember what he was talking about or what it was a reference to, but I clearly remember the phrase. I looked around at my friends and saw their faces were just as confused as mine; clearly none of us knew what that phrase meant. My friend busted out her iPhone and looked it up, and here's what we found out, thanks to Wikipedia:
"'Soup to nuts' is an American English idiom conveying the meaning of "from beginning to end". It is derived from the description of a full course dinner, in which courses progress from soup to a dessert of nuts. It is comparable to expressions in other languages, such as the Latin phrase ab ovo usque ad mala ("from the egg to the apples"), describing the typical Roman meal."
The phrase kind of stuck with us, and we used it as often as possible for the rest of our time at training. It wasn't often, because the proper use of this phrase doesn't come up in daily conversation too often, but that just made it all the better when someone actually got to use it.

So here it is: the soup to nuts, the beginning to end, the life and times of a full-time Campus Crusade staff member. Some things will be serious and thought-provoking, some things will be random and silly. Some will be about me, some will be about my friends, some will be about ministry, some will just be about life in general. So... here we go!