Feb Update

Emily is almost finished with 5 months on the Race and is currently in Ecuador and we will visit her at the end of the month, which we are looking forward to. I think her experience on the Race has been full, meaning she and her team have experienced a full range of life - days that are easy and fun and days that are difficult. Ministry is joyous and tedious, people get sick, new food is fun until it's not, travel days are fun until the 24th hour. But we are very excited to see her and spend a few days with her and her team. Overall, it is what we desired for Emily - a time before college when she grew in intimacy with the Lord and grew in life experience.

In the meantime, empty nesting has been very quiet and a tad boring. But we knew it would be slow and wanted to lean into this and let this time run its course. I've been pondering three concepts of late: 1 - Residency, how when people do a 'residency,' it's a deep commitment to learning a craft and how Jesus takes up residence with us. 2 - Pilgrimage, the act of spiritual pilgrimages and the slight shift from traveling as a tourist to journeying on a pilgrimage. 3 - "to contend for" - to fast and pray and pull out all the stops for someone for something. I'm thinking about all three of these when it comes to cross cultural service with young people but not sure what it means yet. And I'm having lots of fun with my Toyota 4Runner.

[#1 and #2 from above are influences from The World Race and #3 is from the This Cultural Moment podcast.]

Maybe another update in March.