OK Trip 2012

A week (a couple days driving) in Oklahoma made me realize how many things have changed in just a matter of seven months. I think I have mentioned it here and there, but since June my apartment, roommate, city, job and church have changed. I have dueling impressions regarding these changes. It feels like my life of May was going on just yesterday and at the same time, it feels like my “new life” has been like this for years. Part of that has to do with New York just being the place where I belong; the adjustment period seemed to be very short for me.

During my visit my former roommate and I picked up exactly how we left off: dorks being dorky. I can’t really explain why a visit to Hastings is so much fun, it just is. I drove down with a group from church in NY and on the way down found these incredible wooden practice swords in Effingham, and I bought two of them. We’re going to practice so when he visits me here or I go there again, we’ll have a sword fight. If anyone wants to buy him a plane ticket to NYC, we’ll tape it for you... I’ll wear the Green Lantern he gave me, you know, since that might give you more incentive to buy the ticket.

One constant I can look forward to is all of the kids from church growing up. While I was in college, I worked with 6th graders for a while, and last year one of the kids from that department started college. A lot of the guys I taught as fourth graders are in High School now. And there taller than me. I’m so upset about it, I used not good grammar in that last sentence... (It’s ironic, that last “joke” wouldn’t work if it was spoken). Some friends had babies, I even got to hold my little sister for the first time (another of my former roommates and his wife are my “mom and dad”) and other friends are going to pop soon. Maybe someday I’ll grow six or seven inches so I won’t be short... that or my kids will all be tall. I don’t know why, but somehow having tall kids would be a consolation for living life as a short dude.

I was able to hear a lot of great preaching and hear about a lot of guys going out to start new churches right here in America. One of my friends will be very close in Brooklyn; we’re praying they can get started this fall. I also saw some of the guys I went to school and graduated with who are pastoring and doing all sorts of cool things in the ministry.

Also, I am a novice matchmaker and enjoyed hearing some of the wedding plans being made by one of the couples I matchmaked... matchmade? Either way I hope to be attending their wedding this October. If I’m not a groomsman, I may get to be the ring-bearer: I am short remember. But she does have some cute nephews, so they may get chosen over me...

That covers much of my OK trip for the Heartland Home Missions Conference, now I’m going to finish planning my escapades and shenanigans for President’s Day.