I'm in Chicago!

Today was the day ladies and gentlemen. I was very flattered my little brother and sister woke up at 4:30 to say bye. Fewer tears were shed than I was expecting (as in none) but I take this as a good sign. There has been so much support from my family, it's been absolutely wonderful. My dad has been on board from day 1, and my mom and I had some really good conversations recently about this service and I know they're both excited for me. I could see it in their faces this morning, and it just helped confirm that this is the right time for all of this to happen. Since they're probably reading this, I love you guys.

Basically I slept through my flights since I got less than four hours of sleep last night. Nothing special, I'm kind of a pro at this whole travel thing by now. Here's our little YAGM shanty town in the airport, waiting to be picked up from baggage claim.

Oh and since I haven't shared a picture of the YAGM family yet...here you go. A couple of these people declined their placements, but they were still part of the discernment journey. As you will see from future photos, I was significantly less hairy here.

Reuniting with everyone (especially my South Africa peeps) has been great. Our Midway bus arrived earlier than the O'Hare bus to the Lutheran Theological Seminary Dorms, so we had a good amount of time to chill and throw my disc around. Interesting how a piece of plastic spinning through the air can attract people and make quick friends. Only sad part of the day was that the box of YAGM t-shirts I designed and had printed for everyone was lost during the flights. But, I just received a call that they'll be delivering it tonight! This is good news since I also threw my winter fleece in the box instead of carrying it with me.

Dinner was a tasty mix of fruit, shish-kebabs, and rice. They also got me a piece of oreo cake since my birthday was two days ago. Worship was powerful as always. Still working on questions of faith and where I stand in the spectrum of certain beliefs, but I know this is the right place to work on all that. I'm consistently amazed at the level of musicianship in YAGM. People will just sit down and play the piano or sing beautiful notes and think nothing of it. There are at least 10 guitars and a couple of mandolins here. Very inspiring group of people to be among. Anyway I'm off to bed since my feet have gone numb while writing this post.

There's a website worth sharing with y'all called ELCA Global Links They post monthly about missionary activity, and you'll see a post from the country coordinator for YAGMs in Malaysia which is actually a link to a link to a pdf, but worth checking out.