Fresh

Brothers, pray for us.
1 Thess. 5:25

I've been in orientation the past two days. And by that, I mean we had one day of nearly twelve hours of information, and one day that involved a campus tour and a picnic with box lunches from The freakin' Corner Bakery. Basically, we've been treated insanely well.

I've met everyone in the program, and I'm so excited for what's going to come out of this year. There are very few of us doing the urban track, but there is some overlap with the international group. I still can't get over the incredible diversity of our group as far as life experiences, backgrounds, interests, but there is this common thread of passion for service in God's Kingdom. It's the first time I've been outside a (strictly) Mission Year group and felt like so many of the people GOT what drives me. Teach Overseas was close, but this is that step beyond. It's an organization more in line with what I see myself doing in the future: this cobbling together of all the things that I love in order to serve. I want to be someone who empowers men and women and kids to do the impossible, to do what they have never dreamed they could do, simply because God has done that for me.

But it's going to be an intense year, and I have given up a lot of my comforts and a lot of my preferences to do this great unknown thing. I have no job, scant savings, these enormous student loans, and a car that makes it up hills at speeds above thirty miles an hour only by the grace of God. We were put in small groups yesterday to do a little Bible study on Psalm 84, and it really hit me. Get beyond easy worship songs that we sing without thinking. This Psalm is about wanting to journey to God's temple. It's about not quite being there, or not being able to go, but longing for that rest and that security. It's about trusting and leaving a trail of blessings as you set out for the goal. Verse twelve really got to me:

"O LORD of hosts, blessed is the man who trusts in You!"

This is what I feel like I'm doing. I've left the comforts of home, of the wonderful NOVA area (at once Southern and not, in all the best ways), of familiarity, and have thrown myself at this with a thousand unanswered or unanswerable questions because I know with everything in me that this is where God wants me. And I can already see what He's doing for me. I needed this. Needed something JUST LIKE THIS to get me through what might have been one of the driest years of my life.
There's this:
Persistance, trust, faith.

And I'm working on all three.