So I wrote this blog yesterday morning about my travel to the States, but didn’t want to post it until after the wedding so not to mess up my surprise
6/23/16
This weekend I’ve had the privilege of traveling from Phnom Penh, Cambodia to Portland, Oregon in order to surprise my sister Shelby for her wedding. This has been a surprise long coming. You see when I applied for the WR, Shelby and Daniel hadn’t been dating that long, and Shelby looked at me and was like what if I get married while you’re gone. This made leaving for the WR a hard decision, especially once they got engaged right before our training camp. I knew I had to make a decision, and the decision came down to spending a year of my life away from home serving the most amazing Father I know, our God or postponing it so that I could be at my sister’s wedding. It was a hard decision to make but ultimately I decided that God wanted me on the WR and I needed to obey what he wanted for me. So I launched in January, expecting to miss my sisters wedding, and praying that I’d be able to call her on the big day.
As January flew by, and I skyped Shubs, I realized just how much it meant to her that I wasn’t going to be there, and I started to wish that I could be there. But honestly I didn’t think I’d be allowed to leave the field for it; long story short, my Squad Mentor Beka actually mentioned me going home for it in Malawi, and while we were at Ibada Africa at the end of month 2 I managed to work out the details about finances and next thing I know I had tickets bought for the wedding, The last four months have been hard, it’s involved getting people in on the surprise (I decided not to tell Shelby I was coming), it’s meant listening her be sad about me not being there, and enough small white lies about that weekend that I’ve had trouble keeping track of it. But here’s the deal the lies are over, the truth comes out tomorrow night (6/24) and it will all be worth it. I can’t wait to see her face.
The surprise and her wedding is great. But traveling today (6/23) has taught me a few things, one in particular and I thought I’d share it.
I had been traveling since 6 am the day before and I was headed into a 8 hour layover at the Shanghai airport in China before headed to San Fran for another five hour layover before heading to PDX then driving to La Grande for the weekend surprise. I had slept pretty well on the first flight, but new that I would need to get some sleep while on the layover so I wouldn’t sleep the entire 10hour flight to San Fran. So I get to my gate, find a charging station which had a row of seats next to it that I could lay down on. But before I got a chance to lay down, I overheard a conversation between an Australian girl…let’s call her Bella, and another woman named Sarah. Bella is in her late 20s and was headed to London for a few weeks, before she was headed back to university to go to med school, and Sarah was on her way to Singapore to give a discussion on a paper about animation and films. The conversation continued on with me joining in about traveling and our different travels, and advice for future traveling. We talked about how we all had degrees in English, and the different avenues we were taking with that degree; Bella into Medicine, Sarah in the Film industry, and Me…well I want to go back to school to get a degree in social work to eventually be able to drug and alcohol rehab counseling for teens. The more we talked, the more things we found that the three of us had in common and the things we had that weren’t so in common. About an hour after we started talking we all went to separate rows of chairs to sleep. When I woke up about three hours later Bella was gone but Sarah was still there. I didn’t expect to see her there still, she was supposed to be on a plane two hours earlier and yet there she was. In fact when I flew out a few hours later, her plane still hadn’t boarded.
I sat there as my plane boarded thinking about my interactions with these two ladies that morning. Especially my interaction with Sarah. I got to thinking about how many people we cross paths with each and everyday that we never take a second to say hi to; how many people we cross paths with that we never know their names to. Something we’ve talked a bit about as a squad in the last few months is how Names Matter. A name gives a person something, knowing their name lets them know that you took the time to get to know them, if only to ask their name. I’ve been thinking about writing a blog about Nameless people, and I still am thinking about it, but today just reminded me how important it is to talk to people, even if it’s out of your comfort zone; to say hello, to ask for a name.
What’s your name? Is it important to you that people know it even if they don’t know anything else? You are important, God allowed you to be born, gave life to you for a reason. Even if no one ever asks your name, remember He knows. As Psalms 147:4 (ESV) says, “He determines the number of the stars; he gives to all of them their names.” If God found it important to number the stars and name them all, then just imagine how important we are to him because he named us too. So next time you walk into Starbucks and get your mocha, check the name tag on the barista or ask him/her their name; start taking time to find out the names of people, and even if you don’t get a chance to maybe say a little pray that someone else will get a chance to. Today I got the chance to ask a name…and her name is Sarah.
Above: Her Name IS Sarah
