you jump, i jump, jack...

i'm a little scared.

no. wait. that's a lie. 

i'm a lot scared. 

jumping into the unknown is scary and that's exactly what i'll be doing in 8 hours. i'm once again feeling inadequate, that maybe i'm not quite ready. but maybe that's how i'm supposed to feel. because it's in those moments that i only have one place to turn. i'm leaving my family behind and my friends behind. i've known my teammates less than a week and i don't know anyone on the reservation. 

so there's one place i can go. 

God, i'm running fast into your arms. you're going to have to hold me up this summer and give me the strength to go on. 

i'm jumping and it's all for YOU. 

the people you meet

maybe Disney World has the right idea with their ride and song "it's a small world"

or maybe God is just so amazing that he can take the small things in the big world and bring them to our attention.

bermuda is not that big. the entire country is 21 miles long and maybe 1 mile wide. there's 65,000 people. it's the size of a small city in the states. everybody knows everybody. you say hi to the bus driver when you step on the bus and everyone honks at each other all the time as a way of saying hi. 

and it was here, in this small place that i met kelli last week.

kelli was on our flight from philidelphia to bermuda last friday and my friend overheard her say she was from indiana. turns out that kelli and I had a random connection and that got us talking the other night when we met up and went out for dessert.

we talked about missions, about our life goals, about where God has brought us and the amazing opportunities he has given to both of us to pursue what we love this summer. it was one of the best conversations i've had with a "relative stranger"

and yet kelli didn't feel like a stranger. she felt like an old friend, like someone I had known for a while. she was easy for me to talk to and we understood exactly where the other person was coming from even though our interests and passions are seemingly completely different. 

kelli and I are somehow a part of this larger church body that is bigger than the united states, bigger than bermuda and bigger than any other place in the world we may both travel. and meeting members of the church should feel like meeting old friends. we all share something. we share a love for God, a belief that has carried most of us throughout the hardest times in our life. why are we so unwilling to share our stories, to meet each other in different places?

last week the world felt small to me. 

but this week the world feels big. and not an overwhelming big, but a big that is still smaller than God. God is bigger, and yet he can also work in the smallest ways that we never see coming. 

*at the end of our conversation kelli told me that talking with me had been such an encouragement to her. this, in turn, was incredibly encouraging to me and i walked away thanking God for orchestrating our meeting. i walked away full of joy that night and completely amazed at how our God works. 

being alone

if gas was cheaper, i'd be taking mid-night drives around the 270 loop all the time. 

there's something about driving alone, in the summer, in the middle of the night, alone.

for some, this has absolutely no appeal. 

for me, it's a dream.

kind of like my dream vacation: a week by myself on some beach somewhere with no phone, no computer and no contact with any one person i know. just me, my bible, my journal and the beach. i would love it.

so i don't know what it was about tonight that made me think that the world needs to move slower.

maybe it was the fact that there was no one on the roads.

maybe it was the 5 minute train i had to wait for on orange rd.

maybe it was being amazed by God for making beautiful nights.

on my last night in costa rica this spring break i woke up in the middle of the night and had to go to the bathroom. 

i hated this.

it meant i had to walk outside with my headlight looking on the ground for some kind of spiders or something.

and normally i had to kill some insect in the bathroom first.

but this last night, i looked up at the sky.

and in costa rica, in the jungle, you can see more stars than you ever thought you could see.

and i stood there, almost falling over, looking as hard as i could up at the beautiful stars

thinking...

this is incredible. this is God. this is how good He is.

why do i not stop sometimes to look at the night sky and be thankful?

why do i not slow down to remember God's faithfulness?

what's the arizona sky going to be like?

what's the african sky going to be like?

God, help me appreciate the sky and the slowness of life wherever i am...