One of my favorite movie lines is in Forest Gump when he says “So I went to the White House again. And I met the president again.” I quote that line, or derivations of it, often to express that sense of repetition in my life. And sometimes it’s with that attitude of boredom that Forest Gump had. But sometimes it’s to express that same sense of irony the audience should feel upon hearing such a statement. Who would ever get bored of the White House? But I most commonly quote that line when I’m hosting a Quito Quest team during their first week on the ground. I have been to the Basilica and the Presidential Palace and Plaza San Francisco. So. Many. Times.
But even while I brace myself for the monotony, I can’t help but remember Deborah and Roberto taking me to all those places for the very first time. And I can’t help but be excited that I’m with a group of new friends who have that sense of wonder and excitement that I had eleven years ago, and who I will get to know through this day and the rest of their time on the ground.
Today I also had a small sense of terror in knowing that I would be delivering Partnership Orientation tonight. Partnership is the most important orientation we do with a team, and it can be something very powerful to hear. I’ve heard it three dozen times at minimum, and I’ve given it to several teams, most recently a modified version to my Costa Rica team from the NCCUMC youth ministry. But if I gave Partnership a thousand times I still don’t think I could stop worrying that I’d screw it up. It’s a lot of pressure and I want them to get it. This is the very reason I keep coming back to Youth World, because I think we live out Partnership so well here. So this was important.
I think it went well. The team asked good questions about it. So I could breathe a sigh of relief. And thinking and planning for it added a little but if a beak to the monotony of the same tourist day I do all the time.
But I also had a couple moments in debrief that made this day memorable. The first was when we realized that all seven students in this team are introverts. My tribe is here! The second was an observation by Brett about myself and Caroline. He said we kept pointing out changes in the city, where restaurants used to be, or where there is a new building. He compared it to the story of the Basilica, which is always under construction and never technically completed because legend says when the Basilica is completed, the end of the world will arrive and they don’t want that responsibility. The basilica has to change and grow to stay alive, and the city does the same thing. We all are either growing and changing or we are dying.
Leave it to a Sewanee student to make an observation I’ll be incorporating into my orientations from now on.
