I’ve been neglecting my blog. And it’s partly because I’m not used to the fact that my audience has changed. Normally my biggest bursts of writing have been during either preparations to go to Ecuador or on-the-ground time with Youth World. Now it’s mostly the people in the Southern Hemisphere wondering what in the world I’ve been up to, so for you and anyone else that was wondering, here’s what’s going on.
When I got on a plane on August 9, I wasn’t exactly sure what the next few months would look like for me. I thought there was going to be a lot more travelling going on for me this fall, and that I would have some concrete and more immediate plans to return to Ecuador. I set a target time for myself to adjust to the fact that I was home in the U.S. before I started moving ahead with my own plans, and then just as I was about to do so, God just sort of jumped in. He does that, doesn’t He? Or at least it seems that way to us, when all of a sudden you realize that His hand is visible to you.
In what might seem to someone else as amazing and coincidental timing, I arrived back in Elizabeth City just as a staffing need occurred at my home church. As four of my favorite people took a step towards the next chapter of their lives and walks with God, I was asked to step into one of those people’s shoes as the Interim Director of Youth Ministries at First UMC Elizabeth City. I say that it might seem amazing and coincidental to someone else, but as I’ve actually gotten to do this job and see some of the ways that God has prepared me for it, I know that it certainly wasn’t my plan to be in this position or even place at this time, but it was His, and He knows what He’s doing.
In fact, even when I don’t know what I’m doing, it’s been amazing to realize how much I need to actively rely on God and learn to trust Him from what I once considered the safety of my home church and culture and town. Not that I didn’t before. But we all have ways we need to grow, and I can definitely say it’s been easier to recognize some of my failings, fallings, inadequacies and sins when I’m in the jungle or a mountainside village or telling my testimony (what?!) to fifty people than it has been in my traditional “comfort zone.” And here I am in what I thought would be a comfortable place, but in much more of a leadership role that I’m used to. All that to say I’ve been challenged, I’ve been growing, I’ve been having a blast, and I’ll continue to be/do all of those things and be aware of the way that God is working, even if I don’t understand it some days.
So in a nutshell, I’m back in Elizabeth City. I’m back to Benjamin House and La Casa. I’m back to Albemarle Music. I’m back to First United Methodist Church but in a new way, and I love it. And whenever my mind isn’t on First UMC, it’s on/in Ecuador. And I’ll have plenty of stories about all of the above whenever I can conjure up the words for them all.
