Hello from Chicago!

Now that I've been in Chicago for five days, I figured it may be a good time to update everyone amidst orientation sessions.  It's been fantastic catching up with all the other YAGMs, picking up from where we left off at the DIP event, and deepening our relationships as we wrap our minds around what it means to be in service and be the face of the church in the world.  Admittedly, we had to have a refresher course in names at the airport (thank goodness for name tags!) and we had to remember where everyone was being sent ("Now, what are you doing again?"), but it's been amazing to become such a close-knit community of love and support.  Kinda happens when you all realize that everyone is going to be leaving the country in less than a week and be taken to an entirely new culture.  It's something great to gather over.  But it goes even deeper I think.  Over the past year, we've all been on a journey of discerning where God's calling us to serve.  We've wrestled with that call and the challenges it presents.  Even in seeing all the logistics work out, we've seen God in some crazy ways.  Now we all gather over the fact that we've come to terms with that call and we're going to see where it takes us.  And in the midst of orientation, we're gathering around even more.

We've been gathering around the idea of accompaniment.  How is it that we go out in our year of service?  In sharing our experiences in the past year, many have expressed that people often ask, "What is it that you're going to do?"  Accompaniment turns this around and challenges each person to ask themselves, "Who am I going to be?"  I think it's this mindset is one of the reasons that I was drawn to the YAGM program to begin with.  One can go to another country and spend the time in a number of ways.  But the idea the YAGMs have been gathering around is that when we go, we want to spend a year building relationships.  This building relationships means that we'll spend a year acknowledging that we ourselves are in a vulnerable place where we need help (you know, trying to navigate a whole new culture while still trying to grasp the language...it's a scary place to be).  But we're also sharing ourselves and genuine interest in those that we'll be living and working side-by-side with.  I think accompaniment gets at the root of service.  How can we step in and say what's best for someone when we haven't taken the time to get to know them and the world in which they live?  Accompaniment acknowledges that all who come to share in the walk have something equally important to offer and it makes being very powerful.  When we become a partner in the journey and share it with someone, we open ourselves up to a lot more learning than if we just went in convinced that we were the only ones who could give. 

I think a lot of the YAGMs are coming to terms with what it means to be rather than do.  I think there will be plenty of things that we will do.  Not all of those things will connect so obviously with the job descriptions that we've been given with our placement sites.  But I look forward to seeing what kinds of things we find out about ourselves as we learn to be partners in our communities.  It will be interesting to see where God works in those relationships.