I have to admit, I have never played Words with Friends. Yes, I may have downloaded it in the height of its popularity, but I could never bring myself to actually play it.
However, I have learned over the years that words carry a lot of meaning for us, and certain words can have more meaning at certain points in our lives.
I dedicate this blog to Words.
AMERICA
Last week I was walking through New York City, looking at signs in English, ordering pizza in English, and buying English things in Target. While it may have been nice to pick up a few non-essentials like a new journal and candy corn (it IS almost Hallowen), I realized that I didn’t miss America. Sure, the convience of everything was nice, but I survived in South America for 3 months just fine. Plus, everything is so expensive in America! I’ll be glad to be back in 8 months, but I’m not going to miss it while I experience so many other cultures.
I take one picture in NYC. Something makes me think America was more about friends
HOME
Woah, this is a biggie. I do admit that I miss parts of being home, like family, friends, and normal food. On the other hand, I don’t spend every waking minute missing home. In fact, I rarely think about it in a nostalgic sense (and for me to not be nostalgic is huge). Sure, I can’t wait to see family and friends when I get home and live in authentic community with them, but that will be in 8 months. I don’t need to worry about it now. I have too much to experience here that it would be detrimental to spend time worrying about home, plus I have skype to keep me contact.
Haven't been HERE in a while
CAMPUS CRUSADE FOR CHRIST, or CRU
As many of you know, I was part of Cru at USC my entire collegiate Career. And now I’m living in Korce, Albania, working with Cru at Fan S. Noli University. It’s amazing how the structure is so similar here even though I’m 6000 miles from USC. The transition to ministry couldn’t have been smoother because I understood what was happening before I even got here. It’s the beginning of the school here, which means that we’re passing out magazines and surveys to freshmen, hanging out in the dorms, and having coffee dates with the students. While I may not be sharing the gospel 40 times a day, I totally understand the long-term strategy here to bring Christ to this campus. Cru’s strategy is Win-Build-Send, and we will only see the “Win” portion while we’re here, and that’s totally fine. It also doesn’t hurt that working with Cru makes me feel like I’m at USC, which is great.
I could be at USC right now. It's crazy how worldwide Cru is
COMMUNITY
This is something that I’ve processed for the last 3 months, and will continue to process for the next 8 months. The World Race is all about building community on the race because they know that is a huge part of your life upon returning to the states, hence they want us to experience true community on the race. And I couldn’t be happier about that. I think as of right now the thing I’m most excited about when I get home is experiencing true community with my friends there. Yes, we had some AWESOME community at USC over the last 4 years, but being on the race 3 months has shown me that community can be even better. Here we are honoring one another, building each other up, and living intentionally with one another. And it’s fantastic. I mean, this month our team isn’t even living all together, yet when we are together everything is so much fun and full of growth. We’re studying the bible and other books on honor together, and just enjoying life with one another.
Yay for awkward family photos
Words have a lot of meaning for us, and it’s good to process what they mean to you.
What do AMERICA, HOME, CRU, and COMMUNITY mean to you? I would love to see some long comments or some emails in my inbox responding to this. It would make my day!
While you're thinking about that, what my recap video of Bolivia. Enjoy!
