A challenging, awesome, hot summer

If you wanted to get more of a picture of some of the things I'll be doing, here's an excerpt of an email that the program directors Gerry and Sharie Chappeau sent us:

“So an underlying emphasis of the summer is the discipling of our hearts for a lifetime OF RECEIVING GRACE---AND OF GIVING IT;--of living radically out of an intimate relationship with God that is prompted by his grace and our need.

We become deeply involved in the lives of people in the community, living in their homes for a week near the beginning (like the home of recent African refugees who speak
little English and have 7 kids in their apartment; or the apartment of a grandmother raising 4 of her grandchildren; or of a young Anglo couple who came from accomplished professional families, had top-notch educations, and have re-located to an 96% impoverished community to share life together, adopting half of their 6 children from the neighborhood).

We will spend the summer around people who seem to have nothing--and strangely, many of them at the same time seem to have everything that really matters.

We remember that Jesus said something about people who "lose" their lives actually find them--and we begin to believe it.

We will wrestle through issues like ethnic privilege (and gender privilege, and educational privilege, etc) AFTER we've spent a month together and have built some trust and honesty

--and after our study of the good news of the Gospel has given us tools to be open about our own sin

We will laugh together, cry together, play, work, worship, study, eat--lots and lots of eating, TOGETHER

We will have adventures together. Quite a lot of them.
We will learn to rely on God--and realize that WE are part of the answers to each other's prayers.

Times to sort out the voices and figure out which are God's.

Time to fall in love with a city...and people too numerous to count.

And time for a few strangers to become more important to you than you could ever have imagined.”