I mention my surroundings because I find myself sitting at the center of places that hosted certain significant moments in my life, which give the context for bringing me to four days before embarking on this next great adventure in my life, moving to Indonesia for a year.
April 2005, Helen Newberry House (due north of the LS&A Building). My beloved and now dearly departed Toshiba A-75 Satellite was giving me rounds 1, 2, and 3 of problems. One of my freshman year small group leaders was kind enough to pick me up from my dorm and take me to a computer repair shop on Technology Drive, south of I-94 where State Street turns into State Road.
January 2008 I visited a professor of mine, whose office is inside the LS&A Building, in order to ask him for a letter of recommendation for my applications to law school - a jump I had been contemplating since eighth grade, but as a senior in college in the midst of an emotionally harrowing year, it was a leap I wasn't sure I was ready to take just yet.
My professor assured me that he would be more than happy to write the letter for me, and then said this to me: "I think you should take a year off. Wait tables, read books, attend lectures - find that thing you are really passionate about." I confess, I thought he was crazy to say so, but at the same time, his suggestion sounded romantic - not as in his feelings toward me, but as in something I never dreamed I would do. I left his office that morning, thrilled to have secured my final recommendation for what I thought was this new direction in my life.
June 2008, I was invited by my small group leader at the time to attend a conference in Dearborn, Michigan, on ministering to Muslims in the Islamic world. Since it was something I never envisioned myself doing of my own volition, I decided to attend anyway and see what it was all about. We met at the Cube for rides, and once at the conference, I met many people who were so burdened to share the love of Christ with Muslims, and the thought occurred to me that I had never really felt that way about anybody - but I wanted to.
On the way home from the conference, I had a conversation with my then-small group leader, now-roommate, about these people I met whose passion in life was to share with people how the love of Christ had changed their lives in a wonderful and powerful way. She listened to me thoughtfully, and then said, "I think you should really consider going on missions with our church." By that time, it was too late to apply for a summer missions project. But there I was, a college graduate waitlisted to several law schools, rejected by Teach for America, without a clue in the world as to what to do or where to go next. I had no pressing commitments to anything, and my professor's suggestion to take a year off was sounding like a beautiful reality, and I wanted to do that here in Ann Arbor.
While the economy was not what it is now, this liberal arts kid found it difficult not only to determine a field of industry in which to work for a year or more, but also to find a job! When nothing in Ann Arbor surfaced, I retreated home and started job searching from there. When I felt I was at my rope's end one day in August, I prayed, "Lord, I just want a job. I will do whatever you would like me to do, whenever you want me to do it, wherever you want me to go." That same day, I received a phone call from recruiting at Thomson Reuters in Dexter, asking me if I wanted an interview. I had posted my resume at their website, without a cover letter, so I apologized to the recruiter, who responded by asking me if I still wanted an interview.
I accepted a position in a 9 month internship at the Tax & Accounting Business of Thomson Reuters in Ann Arbor after a series of interviews - the last of which was located at 880 Technology Drive, right next to the place where I had taken my computer to be repaired all those years ago. I took the internship, with no benefits and pay lower than a graduate of the University of Michigan might expect, because I knew that this would be a wonderful year to grow as a person and focus on "being" rather than just "doing." And when I moved back to Ann Arbor, I ended up living in an apartment down the street from the LS&A Building and the Cube, these places where I felt challenged to take the path laden with unpredictability.
There's so much more to say in terms of the small details that clearly show that Jakarta, this place that I am moving to, is exactly where I am supposed to be for this time in my life. I do have the tendency to ramble, and I've already written too many words. But - our visas have been processed, as of this week! Our fundraising efforts have not yielded the results that we thought that they would, but it's been a great opportunity to trust God to provide us with exactly what we need at exactly the right time. If you made your way through this inaugural post, I thank you for reading - and for those who are partnering with us in prayer and financially, thank you for joining us as we go on our way. Four days (4 = empat in Bahasa Indonesia)!
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