i'm "new" and i'm awesome!

To many of you I owe a promised update, to others I owe a thank you for sharing your resources with me. But to you all I am even more indebted to the love you have shown me as we seek to be faithful to our calling to love YHWH and love others.

The past nine months have been exciting and demanding. Upon finishing the ’06 Spring Tour with Invisible Children I slept on a friend’s couch and set out to determine my life plan from those three cushions and an ocean view. Not much of a life plan arose but I did make good friends with a puppy-who ate all but one pair of my shoes and constantly stuck a wet nose on my face early in the morning. I learned to surf or at least the theory of surfing, not much shredding of waves was done by me but the love for the culture and sport was indeed planted. I learned through selling coffee at 7/11 and teaching in an after school program at Buena Vista Elementary what it meant to work 12 hour days and to communicate with kids, which is surprisingly mostly just listening. I also learned what it felt like to think you had no purpose in life and how difficult each step away from that illusion could be.

I moved from California to Indianapolis in November. While in Indianapolis I have been doing a design internship (9-5) and working at a coffee shop (6-2). Its exhausting. Also I have been meeting with a mentor who has the joyous duty of peering into my character and shining some light and challenging a few things. No fun if you know how stubborn I can be.

After a visit this past weekend (good Friday weekend) it became clear that I no longer needed to stay in Indianapolis and wait to move back to Knoxville. So, I’ll be moving from Indianapolis to Knoxville the first of May. There have been several opportunities for me to move back to Knoxville since I’ve returned from the West Coast but the Spirit within me kept whispering not yet not yet. I had a dream about a week and half ago where I sat up in bed and was looking down a map toward TN. Then it was as if two hands moved all obstacles and opened a clear path to Knoxville. Where the path lead was a bright white light with a dark figure standing in the middle. From around this figure all these hands reached out of the light and pulled me out of my bed and into the city of Knoxville. I seriously woke up and said out loud “weird, okay I’ll move back to Knoxville” and then went back to sleep. I love it! God speaking to us in dreams, how crazy when we can’t even hide from him in our sleep!

I have begun to notice that it is the people around me that have changed me most, or have been the tool for changing me. I forget who said it but there is this quote about community that I find to be so true, “it is only in community that we find our true selves.” My teammates on tour called me on a lot of things, my roommates in Encinitas humbled me time after time, and the man mentoring me challenges my thinking meeting after meeting. Without others to experience life with, I would be returning to Knoxville a lonely uncertain person. But thank you Holy Spirit for moving us to places of better understanding and security of our identity…

Someone once told me that most young white-middle class men my age spend their twenties bouncing from experience to experience never fully knowing the growth that can occur from a commitment to some where or some people. So, Knoxville it is time for me to commit to you and your people. See you in May.

May Shalom be with you.

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beauty | freedom