Mission Year/Mission Life. Love God. Love people. Nothing else matters.

So I got an email from the President of Mission Year, my old friend, Leroy. He asked the ATL alums to write him a letter kind of summing up our Mission Year exprience/the effect it had on our lives, and I couldn't resist. One thing: it had be a page. I can't limit myself to a page when it comes to Mission Year. There's too much to say about it, but I tried my hand at this, and this is what I came up with (slightly over a page, btw):
Dear Leroy,

It’s been years since I returned from Atlanta – almost three and a half years, actually. Mission Year was one of the most difficult experiences of my life, but it’s also the one thing that I can point back to and say “That changed the course of my life forever”. Maybe that sounds a little melodramatic, but it’s the holiday season and it’s been a long day at work, so it sounds right to me at this moment. I think back on all the other things that I’ve done in my life, and nothing has had such a profound effect on me as Mission Year.
I’ve always said that Mission Year ruined my life in a good way. Even now, three years out, with cable television and a car and a life in the suburbs, my life is radically different because of my experience in Atlanta . It took me a while to get over my suburban guilt, I won’t lie, but in the end, I decided that Mission Year wasn’t meant to make me feel bad about living in the suburbs. It was about exposing me to reality, forcing me to look at society and my individual role in it; and making me realize that life is ministry. That’s where I am today. Yes, I’m living in Northern Virginia , but I’m carrying on with the ideals of Mission Year: I live and work in the same neighborhood. It’s where I shop, where I hang out, where I spend my time. I have a vested interest in my community. Maybe I’m not buddy-buddy with my next door neighbor, but I know this community. I hurt for it, I care about it, I need it to work. Here’s the thing: it’s the same community that I was completely unattached to pre-Mission Year. In fact, I loathed this community. Not even kidding. But now that I’m back, I can see that God cares for this place, too. God wants to work here, too. And the other thing: it’s far from perfect. The problems I learned about in the city are here in the suburbs, and as my particular community experiences a shift in demographics, it’s becoming harder and harder to hide these issues.
I’m currently in my third year of teaching, a career that I say I stumbled into by accident, though I know full well this was no accident. I teach at a local public high school where I’m one of ten over-worked and under-paid “World Language” teachers and one of two teachers who work with the Spanish for Native Speakers program. That alone should give you an idea of the types of kids I work with. In a community that is quickly becoming more anti-Latino, I have the privilege of instilling pride in these children: pride in their culture, in their language, in all that they are and can become. I remember at the closing retreat saying through tears – thanks Mission Year – that I wanted to do something for “my people”. And that’s what God has me doing here, in the community I thought I hated. I see the problems of the inner city here as well: violence, single parents, poverty, gangs…. I can still be involved in working for social justice; I can still work one-on-one with these struggling kids and point towards something better, something beyond this reality.
That’s Mission Year’s legacy.
And I really mean that it ruined my life in a good way. I can’t sit by and watch all this happen; I have to do something. I can’t store up material things because there’s so much need elsewhere. I mean, Mission Year even messed up my dating: I am now terminally single and entirely too picky. Just kidding! I’m hoping it’s not a terminal condition, but the pickiness is totally true. Alright, I’m on my way to being over the one-page limit, so I’m going to wrap this up, though I’m still going to move on to page two. In addition to the work of the past three years, I’m hoping to continue on in my “Mission Life” by earning a Masters in International Development. Not only did Mission Year ruin my undergraduate career, but it may also ruin my graduate studies. What can I say? I’m a glutton for punishment. Of course, that all depends on whether or not I can ever figure out how to write curriculum vitae.

And seriously, Leroy and the rest of the Mission Year family, thanks. Because even though at times it sucked and I hated it, Mission Year is the best experience of my life thus far.


That is what I sent back to him. It's not exactly what I expected to write, but that's the course it took. I'd planned to be more witty, because in person I like to think I'm pretty clever and fairly amusing, though this doesn't always translate well into written communication without the use of - God forbid! - emoticons. Instead it's about community, which was the hardest thing and the best thing about Mission Year. It is what it is.

I haven't been able to stop thinking about all the other things I could have said after writing it. I could have said something about J, and the fact that what I love about him (did I just say that?) is that he's passionate about all the crazy kids I'm passionate about, that he loves to work with them, that he also tries to understand them and connect with them. I think we both do in our own ways.... Anyway, it must've been that terminally single thing that set me off thinking about J. Even if officially we're not anything, I don't feel totally single because of him. He's someone who lives out a lot of the MY ideals that I hold dear, and that's a rare thing. Also rare, the baggage he's bringing with him. Good news/bad news. *sigh* It is what it is.

More things I wish I'd said: that I still drive a 1991 Toyota Corolla (with a leaking radiator) because I don't see the point in trading up; that the friendships I forged in MY are some of the strongest ones that I have; that I still refer to Atlanta as the best year of my life. I love, love, love my job, I spent an amazing summer in Vietnam, I do so many things, but nothing compares to the rightness of place/occupation/company that I experienced in Atlanta.

And about those friendships, my two former roomies are absolutely the first people I turn to when I need help. They know me better than anyone else. Better than my parents. No joke. Atlanta was the first place where I felt like I was fully myself. Not that I was frontin' my whole life, just that in Atlanta I began to experience a vulnerability I'd never let myself feel before. I was more flawed and broken there than anywhere else, but at the same time, I was more perfect and beautiful.

I don't want to relive the experience; I know that's impossible, and it was so hard that I don't want to go back, but I appreciate every moment. The comments as I walked down the streets, the scent of hot asphalt and diesel, the symphony of gunshots and train whistles every night... So much happened. So much beauty and growth and education. I love it. Seriously, it changed my life.

There's no way I could sum up the impact of Mission Year on my life in one page. I'm still sorting through it all. Gathering (that makes me think of J. straightening quizzes on his desk...) my thoughts. Three and a half years out, I'm still wrapping my brain about the profound impact of Mission Year on my life. That's a good thing. Really, it is.

Anyway, this is getting much too long. Check out Mission Year, if you haven't already. If you're tired of the status quo, of coasting through life, of sitting by - it's for you.