Settling into Philly

Wow, a lot has happened in my life since I last posted here. It feels like such a long time ago that I was sitting in that airplane terminal waiting for my journey to Philly to begin. It has been a great time so far. Because my flight was delayed in New Orleans, I missed my flight to Philly and had to wait a few hours until that left, but it all went well after I got on that flight. And I didn’t loose my luggage!

Once I got here, I stayed the first three nights at Steve Kriss’ house, which was a nice place. Steve is the director of Communications (plus a bunch of other stuff) for Franconia Conference and my boss for the summer. He’s put together a great summer for me and I’m excited to get to work on that. I’ve lost no time. I’ve already written a press release that will be posted on Tuesday!

This past Wednesday evening I moved into my more permanent housing for the summer. I’m staying with one of the pastors of Steve’s church, Philadelphia Praise Center, whose name is Aldo. He lives in a house of other young Indonesian men and an older Indonesian woman who does a lot of the cooking for us. It’s been a really interesting experience to get used to. Everybody is really great and they’re all really encouraging and supportive of me, which is cool. I have two roommates: Jonathan who is a recent graduate of Bluffton University and Arty who is transferring to EMU this fall for Nursing school. So, I guess we cover the Mennonite big 3 of colleges.

It’s been fun to start getting to know Philadelphia. There’s so much going on around here. I’ve been working a lot from home tagging blog posts on the conference’s blog, which has been a task. They updated the Wordpress base they were running and it dropped all their tags. So I get to go put them all back! Yea, intern! Haha.

I’m looking forward to doing more stories. Steve has me taking a few trips different places (Pittsburgh, Baltimore, and Mexico City!) and it looks like I will probably be doing a little video work of some kind for each of those stories as well. I’m looking forward to that.

Alright, this post has gotten long and I should turn in for the night soon. Tomorrow will be my first experience of a Philadelphia Praise Center worship service. Two of them actually! First the Indonesian/English one (then Indonesian lunch) and then the Spanish/English one, which happens to be a special two year celebration of the Spanish service. Oh and of course a fiesta will follow! 

Sitting in New Orleans Airport

Currently, I’m sitting in the New Orleans Airport waiting for my delayed flight to Atlanta so that i can get on a flight to Philadelphia.

I have had a fantastic time at this Fund for Theological Education (FTE) Conference in New Orleans. The people that I’ve met our amazing children of God who have energy for ministry unlike anything that I’ve ever seen. It is a wonderful feeling to recognize the impact that these people will have on the future of the Church. I am highly encouraged and highly energized for the future. Though the conference stretched only five days (two of those being half days, to include travel) I was truly sorry and saddened to leave my new found friends. FTE offered me a great opportunity to enter into conversations about faith that challenged my faith traditions and brought a newness to my faith.

The next step for me is to continue on into Philadelphia. I will arrive there this evening, fully expecting a wealth of new experiences. I will be working with Stephen Kriss of the Franconia Conference, a conference of Mennonite Church USA. I’ll be working in some sort of communication capacity, but I’m not sure what that will look like. I’m looking forward to learning more about that when I get to Philly.

As I continue on my journey, I pray that God’s Love, Presence and Will is lived out in radical ways.