Hi Everybody! My name is James Gilbert and I am a recovering sinner.
But let me give you some background info before I get ahead of myself. I am 25 years old and am living in Tucson, Arizona with my family. I have two beautiful and wonderfully quirky sisters, my parents and two dogs. I was saved when I was seven years old and from that amazing day, Jesus has walked beside me through thick and thin. I grew up in the church where I went to ALL the summer youth camps (good ole’ days of trustfall and volleyball), and grew in my walk with Christ. After graduating from high school, I attended the University of Arizona (go Wildcats!) for a year and a half as a Computer and Electrical Engineering major. My one and only engineering class ended, through a miracle (see they do still happen these days!) with a C-. That coupled with my experience at an engineering firm showed me that maybe that wasn’t the correct path for my life.
So I transferred in January of 2000 to Wheaton College in Wheaton, Illinois and began my careeer as a teacher. Well, I was actually an English major but I also received my secondary education certificate when I graduated in 2003. I actually cannot really explain why I decided to get the education part of it, since that had never occurred to me before. But God was working and using it all and as I look back I laugh at how He was always working in my life, even when I had no idea about what I was doing.
In the summer of my senior year, I was supposed to go to China for a missions opportunity, but that was during the big SARS scare and they would not allow us to go. So I went nearby to the breathtaking country of Japan for a month, teaching english classes at a church in Nagoya. It was during this time when I felt like I was supposed to do this. It was natural and so very rewarding to be teaching something that I love to people who I also loved. I had classes with children and adults and during that month, I think God truly showed me that He could use even me.
After the trip and after graduating, I returned home to Tucson, Arizona where I worked for about 10 months at a bookstore (I can’t get enough of books). I felt like God had prepared me for something other than teaching in the States at that moment, so I, with the help of my church, got a teaching position at a university in China. I spent the last year and a half teaching a variety of courses ranging from Writing to Western Culture to students who I love more than anything. It was amazing how God truly moved in these students, and how I was able to be a part of that. I was also part of a team and it was on this team that I learned a great deal about how it was not about me. These were definitely hard lessons that I had to learn but the people were so loving, that I could not have asked for a better team. I recently returned to Tucson again, and am now working at a different bookstore.
It was a very difficult time returning to the States after being in China for so long and feeling like I was part of something so much bigger. But God has shown me a number of things that I could not have learned without being back here, so I praise God and His infinite wisdom. I have recently been reading a good deal of atypical Christian literature such as Donald Miller and Shane Claiborne and they have really pushed and stretched my idea of what being a Christian is and what a Christian does. I used to think that I was a loving person, caring and kind to others, but I was nothing like Jesus. I still am not. And that is what I want from this trip- to be more like that radical man known as Jesus. Jesus was homeless, wandering to where the people needed him and embracing those that the world considered unworthy. Sheesh, I am nothing like that. My love is so shallow, so uninvolved. I will never understand love until I understand about the unloved. As Mother Teresa said “A sacrifice to be real must cost, must hurt, must empty ourselves.” My goal for this trip is to love unconditionally, to be real to the point where I am truly vulnerable to others and to my God.
Boy that was a little much maybe, but oh well. Gotta start somewhere. Let me finish by giving a general overall view of who I am. I love playing sports such as soccer and volleyball and pretty much anything that causes a sweat. I love to travel and meet new people and experience new cultures. I like reading and studying things like languages and philosophy and other nerdy things like that. By God’s design I am a true nerd at heart and I love it! I mellow out by playing the guitar and am a firm believer in power naps- but be careful when you try and wake me up. I love doing things spontaneously but can handle the structure too. Overall I love having a good time, meeting new people and trying new things, while spreading that joy that is Jesus. Well I guess that’s it. Meeting adjurned.
