The Twilight Zone

Many of you may not know this, but I am an incredibly optimistic person. It is by nature, go God for giving me that gift. And every once in a while I will notice a psychological tricks I play on myself to help me through tough moments. The one that I have noticed this week is connecting old friends and new acquaintances in my mind. This was happening over and over again since my arrival in San Antonio.

The first one I noticed I feel a little guilty about mentioning. I feel guilty because Liz Orrestead has had so many comparisons made with her (in the past she was compared to Jessica Lazdins). But the fact of the matter is that Liz is amazing so everyone wants to see her everywhere. And in a twilight zone sort of way I have found someone like Liz in Texas. Her name is Kaki and she is a strong christian, into social justice, and to a degree has similar facial features. It has been great to meet Kaki because if I am honest I didn't expect to find a person that seems so "Seattle" born and raised in Texas. Kaki in addition to her Liz-like qualities is vegetarian and plays ultimate frisbee on a weekly basis. I am pumped to spend the next year getting to know her.

The next twilight zone moment was in regard to a guy named Preston. It was odd because as I met him he reminded me of Donny (Sara's BF). Don't ask me why, it is something about how they both talk. This is where it gets freaky. When we were all trying to swim in a river (I say trying because the river was mostly knee deep) I found out that he was diabetic (type I) just like Donny. It's crazy... I would say that his diabetic statis prejudiced me, but I swear I connected Preston to Donny prior to learning about his intolerance to sugar. Beyond his Donny like qualities he also is an indie-rock DJ for his college station (which means that somewhere at sometime there is an indie-rock on the radio in San Antonio).  I expect to be getting lots of new music from Donny's soul brother.

Other less thrilling similarities... one of our pastor's Scott reminds me of Brad Nelson. It might have something to do with the hair, more than anything else. I have never gone to a dueling piano bar with Brad Nelson, but maybe when I come home around christmas. 

Texas People

Before I left I was hanging out with Camille and complaining about all of the things that I wasn't looking forward to about Texas. At the time I was having such a great summer that I was having trouble understanding why I leaving, it seemed like a waste of so many good things. After I was done complaining about the lack of things to do and how the physical environment was going to suck (because of the lack of trees/water/mountains) Camille shared some wisdom with me. She said that because San Antonio lacked all of these other things, it would make it so that only one thing was left to focus on: Humanity. This comment has turned into a self-fulfilling prophecy. From the time that I arrived in Texas the very best part of it has been the people I have found. And since some of these people are probably going to be written about a lot I am going to introduce you all to them.

The first person that you will need to meet is my boss, Jason Griffice. He is the reason that I applied to this job in the first place so must carry much of the blame for my move. I met him two christmases ago when I went to Urbana (Intervarsity's national mission conference). He is a lot of fun and is also very approachable so I could tell from the outset that if I worked with him I would enjoy my job. His approachability was initially wrapped up in the fact that he seems like a big kid in a lot of ways. But more recently I have gained respect for his maturity. We are currently in Orange County CA, where he was raised and where is family still lives. Yesterday I got to meet both of his brothers (ages 36 and 17) and his parents (we slept at his family's house). And as we spent time with them, I noticed how Jason was attentive to the individual needs of each of his family members. This indicates a perceptiveness that can only be good for the people around him... it is going to be a good year.

I will introduce more later, but I am going to go get fish tacos at Wahoos!

Blessed by Generosity

So it has been a long time since I posted, and I realize that I have yet to put up pictures of any kind. Sorry about that, this won't be the first picture post... maybe in ten days when I get back from California. But I am getting ahead of myself, most of you have no idea what happened since I left Seattle.

It feels like ages ago, but I flew out on Seattle evening and arrived in Denver late at night. I had this truly ghetto suitcase that barely had wheels on the bottom and would fishtail if you tried to actually use them. Also because I had everything that I had used for the past two weeks in the suitcase it weighed 65+ pounds. It was an annoying to say the least but in my shortsightedness I thought it wasn't a big deal because I would just shove it in the back of my new car anyhow.

The next morning Sarah (my sister in law) told me that she wanted to get me a suitcase as a parting gift. If I have learned about anything in the last ten days it has been about accepting generosity. I tend to prefer to not need anyone's help. But that would be impossible with this kind of move, and thankfully everyone around me is more than willing to cover my bases for me. So that morning we went to Ross and I got a brand new suitcase which also happens to be orange zebra print (a picture is forthcoming). This suitcase is perfect on many levels, not the least of which are I will never have to check the tag for my name after I check it, it does have the lovely (standard) roller/handle thingy, and that it is orange my favorite color.

Another bit of generosity that I received before I left came from Kefi and Bryce. I don't know if it was happenstance or just that they noticed how little I had prepared for the drive down to Texas, but they handed me a GPS (Garmin) at my going away party which saved me as I drove down. Dad had gotten a bunch of maps from AAA for me but considering how new I am at driving taking my eyes off the road for that long a of a period a time seems like a bad idea. The GPS comes with a mounted stand so checking it is like checking my mirrors... it is awesome.

Beyond that, since I have arrived in Texas it has been odd to have people always providing meals and rides and everything for me. Right now I am blogging on my bosses laptop, and I haven't had to drive myself anywhere since I parked my Toyota Corolla in the driveway. My new room is nicer than any room I have ever lived in, yet I don't feel freaked out that I am going to be judged for not making my bed.

I don't even have time to say all the things that people have done for me since I left Seattle, and it is truly humbling to know that I am so cared for.

Note to Audience

My hope with this blog is to start conversations and see who bites. My initial post was a huge success at this mostly because I was emailing people who hadn't heard from me in ages. Still, as the year goes by I would invite each of you to see this as an opening, an opening to email/call/talk to me (Even if we haven't talked in ages, even if it has been six months and you think Texas has changed me, even if you think it might be awkward at first). Because as everyone reading this blog should know, I love to talk and I don't think it is ever too late for re-connections.

I also hope to put a high level of my self into this blog. So far I have done very little self-editing which may make my sentence structure a bit rough and cause dyslexia inspired typos.
I have decided that I like these imperfections. That is me, sacrificing perfection for accessibility. Furthermore, my lack of self-editing will go beyond sentence structure, the lack of editing is most important in regard to ideas. I want this place to be somewhere that will function as an outlet, not as a place where I have to put forth an image. This is why I am refusing to make this an event list. What goes along with this lack of constructed persona is that you may see sides of me that you don't yet know. I wish that I could claim that every aspect of me is equally apparent at all times, to all people, but this would be a lie. So do not be too shocked it you find out something new... in fact I hope you do find out new things about me. But in exchange for all of the me you get to see, please show me more about who you are back... relationships are two sided and even if you keep knowing me while I am in Texas, you have to participate to keep me knowing you.

LOVE.

Rest Stop of Champions

For those of you that don't know already I have settled on getting to San Antonio (henceforth S.A.) by way of Denver. It turns out that I am buying my brother's Toyota Corolla which means the parental unit are conveniently driving my stuff half way to S.A. next week and I am flying to Denver on August 5th. At this location I will hang out with Daniel, Sarah and Alex for a couple days and then drive down to my future home. Which all in all will be cheap, fast and plausible, which the other plans lacked (mostly because I didn't have a car yet). So I am thrilled to have some of the knuts and bolts figured out so that I can plan the more exciting portions of my trip.

The exciting portion that I figured out today was where I am going to sleep after my first day of driving. The trip from Denver to S.A. is about 16 hours meaning for a newbie driver like me that I need to take two days to do it. I will be going alone with the new transportation plan and I was looking at googled route to S.A. and saw no town names that I recognized which didn't feel promising for stopping over for the night. Then, just because it was a dream of mine from early in the road trip plan, I tried setting Roswell New Mexico as the interum location. And what do I discover? Roswell is 7 hours and 47 minutes away from Denver and 8 hours and 8 minutes away from S.A. I don't know if things could work out more perfectly.

After discovering my amazing reststop I also looked up the sights that I can see down in Roswell. There are apparently several tourist traps to grab my attention. The International UFO Museum And Research Center is apparently rather sub-par, but I will go anyhow so that I can say that I did. There is also another spot where I can pose with life size alien dioramas. The best one described is the alien autopsy where I can pose holding a bloody surgical tools. There is also apparently an internal city conflict between the pro-alien and anti-alien Christians. The anti-alien Christians (Alien Resistance) apparently believe that the aliens are biblical demons. A different pro-alien pastor is not so anal and owns an alien themed business in town. I just hope I can get both an Alien Resistance bumper sticker as well as some sort of pro-alien bumper sticker. More info at http://www.roadsideamerica.com/story/11159 for those intrigued.

In other news, Scotti gave me a good idea for something to do in Denver when I visit Daniel and Sarah... Apparently Denver is where Chipotle originated, one of the few places I think I could eat for a month straight and not get tired of. So I am going to track down the original restraunt and eat there. If anyone else has travel suggestions en route send them my way.

Feeling Sent

I tend to overthink things to the extent of it being a failing. It is good to think about things, but I do it so much that I ruin it. Recently, I have been doing that with Texas. Yet, tonight I was writing an email to my old core group leader and I realized that I have the best reason possible to not be afraid or scared or apprehensive about moving to Texas. The reason is that I feel sent by God.

Me and God have been on speaking terms for as long as I can remember, but I don't think that previously in my life God has ever sent me to a place. I don't think I asked God about what college I should go to and with Deputation I feel like God prepared me to accept the location I was assigned not that he necessarily told me Croatia was the place for me. But with Texas it is as though God picked out a specific place and a specific job just for me.

In the years after college, before law school I was incredibly open to what I might be doing. I thought about not only other locations to be a ministry intern but also other jobs altogether. I thought about doing Teach for America, I thought about working for a law firm, I thought about finding my way to California so that the next step in the law school path would be clear and prepared for. But step by step God has pointed to one location and one thing for the coming year of my life.

By the end of first quarter I was sure I wanted to do a ministry internship out of state. When choosing I applied to three places in California and one in Texas. My applications reflected my feelings about where I thought I should go. I only applied to the Texas job because I had met my future boss at a missions conference last year and knew that working with him would be incredibly fun but I held it as a back up location because of my law school plans. In spite of the logic of going to California, I immediately got the feeling that God wanted to send me to Texas. Knowing myself I made a simple prayer to God saying God if you want me to go to Texas you had better close every other door.

I proceeded to watch while every other internship didn't work out. By the end of my application process it was down to Menlo Park or San Antonio. I was waiting to hear back from Menlo Park and even though in my list of choices Menlo was above San Antonio I started to have the feeling that I Texas was the place for me. In that short period where I thought I was going to get the Menlo job, I started to wonder if I would have the strength and obedience to take the Texas job if I got the job in California (because God was being clear about where he wanted me to go). In honesty, I don't think that I would have had the strength to turn Menlo down even though God was being clear. So it is an amazing blessing that God listened and closed all the other doors. I didn't get any of the California internships and have never felt so relieved about not being offered a job.

From that point forward I have felt that God has held my hand in all things related to preparing to leave. He got me a perfect summer job (temping at a law firm). He used my amazing family to help get me a car and get me there on time and within my budget. Everything that will prepare me to leave Seattle and arrive in San Antonio God has made easy. Everything that I am tempted to cling to here that will keep me from truly investing there God has pushed aside or closed.

I have never before been so sure that God intended for me to do something before I do it. That is support, that is a rich well of confidence. And even though I have no clue what I got myself into, I have never felt so sure that choosing to leave is the right choice.

Routes and Preparations

Last night I actually felt like I was leaving Seattle for the first time since I decided to take the job in Texas. This may seem like a belated response since I found out that I was moving to Texas during the end of March, but I feel like it is an early response for me. I am sometimes the type of person that happily functions in denial until I am past the point where I should have faced something, and then I get to look at the hard moment in retrospect. Retrospect is always easier to deal with than present or unknown realities. This method has worked in the past (I didn't feel like I was going to Croatia until I was on the plane) but this time around there are many things to be figured out before I can go so denial is not an option.

This realization spurned me to start google-mapping routes from Seattle to San Antonio. I started with a permissive attitude saying to myself that I can take my time getting there and that I can take desired detours to make the trip more entertaining/eventful. Several maps were plotted but I think that I have narrowed it down to two competing routes: Seattle to Vegas to the Grand Canyon to Albuquerque to Roswell to El Paso to San Antonio; and Seattle to Spokane to Denver to San Antonio. The first route's advantage is that I will get to see a slew of places that I have never seen before including the two that I specifically listed as goals (Grand Canyon and Roswell). The second route's advantage is that I will get to see Daniel, Sarah and Alex and I will have more places to naturally stop and hang out on the way there. The Denver Route is also shorter and cheaper than the Roswell/Grand Canyon route. So what is everyone's opinion? Which route should I take? Adventures/sight seeing or family visitation?

(Did I mention that I invite comments on this blog? Tell me what you think... Argue with me... Expand on ideas... Suggest things. That would be awesome)

Other things that need to pan out are: (1) finding someone to drive with (2) securing a car (3) closure about leaving everything I know behind. If you can help with any of that also feel free to comment.