So I guess Rachael is rubbing off on me....

I say this because she is emotional and cries really easy. We are very different in that way, but I still love her a ton.

While I've been home I have cried more than usual... which means I have cried at all haha. Yeah, not a big crier. But a couple of times here when I've been talking about Atlanta, poverty, etc, and especially when I try to talk about our kids, I haven't been able to keep from crying. I started crying on the stage in front of my church for goodness sake.

I think being away from it and being able to rest allows me to see how deep everything there has affected me emotionally, even though I am a robot. When I am there I can't really afford to cry about everything that should be cried about, because I am right there in the middle of it and there is work to be done and all. I don't have to keep that kind of control or distance here I guess. Maybe that makes sense, maybe not, but that's my theory.

December newsletter, late

Dear Friends and Supporters,

November has come and gone. We played in the leaves with our kids, had a Spanish speaking family over for dinner for the first time, had a beautiful Thanksgiving dinner/weekend, and now we only have a few more weeks left in the first third of our year here!

This month I want to talk about my Kindergarten class, and the things I have been learning from them.

It is surprising to me how much I have changed in my attitude towards kids and my comfort level with them since I’ve been here teaching these children. Anyone who knows me pretty well knows that I am not super good with kids. I love them and have always wanted to have a large family of my own someday, but I’m not high energy and fun with large groups of children… or teenagers or adults I guess haha. But I LOVE these Kindergarteners and I’ve gotten better at working with them, even though I am still not great at interacting with a classroom of kids (Praise God that Rachael is basically destined to teach Kindergarten. I don’t even want to think about what our class would be like if I was teaching by myself!). The situation of our students is so different from what mine was when I was young. Our kids start out with an academic disadvantage because of the language barrier. I remember my mom teaching me to read and my dad reading to my sister and me every night. Their parents can’t do that, at least not in English, and they also can’t help them with their homework. One of my students’ moms works every night and sees her kids mostly on the weekends. Another’s father was deported back to Mexico last year and she told us that her mom cries all the time… Things like that break my heart for these kids and make me want to give them as much of myself as I can. It is hard for me to pray for them without crying. They deserve to have everything I had and everything I can give them. And I fail to do that sometimes. I forget that I had such a privileged childhood and how big of an impact I can have for good in my students’ lives. I get tired and lazy and sick and annoyed… and I forget. I am constantly learning that I can’t love and serve them without Gods grace.

Soon I’ll be coming home for Christmas break. I am excited to be back for my birthday and Christmas, but I will also miss my housemates and work sites and church, our little house and our neighborhood, and all our students. It feels weird to be leaving them and coming back to a place where I am comfortable and spoiled. A big theme of our Mission Year is solidarity. Solidarity means living alongside someone, walking alongside them in whatever they are experiencing. It’s hard to know how to live that out here, let alone when I go home for Christmas. Does my solidarity with my neighbors end when I get on the plane to Seattle and then begin again when I return to Atlanta in January? My neighbors don’t get to take this kind of break and go home to family and friends who will spoil them and take care of them. They are going to stay here and have the holidays with the same resources they have now. This break will be nice and refreshing for me, but I don’t want to lose my perspective on poverty and what it means to be content with little and to really live in solidarity with my neighbors… The battle between wants and needs is highlighted in this season and the contrast I will be experiencing between my trailer park and my parents neighborhood is hard to reconcile. I guess this is always going to be a learning experience; I’ll never be at a place where I don’t have questions about how I should best live with poverty and simplicity and love for others in mind. It’s something that I will always need to consider and wrestle. And that is good for me.

Thank you so much for your support and prayers through this first trimester of my year. If you are considering giving, Mission Year has received a matching grant so that all gifts given in December will be matched, so it would be a great time to donate! I have raised most of my support goal, but many of my team members have not, and our fundraising is shared communally. I love you all and hope you have a great Christmas with people you love!

Love and Peace,

This is my Kindergarten class, wishing you a merry Christmas! Aren't they adorable?

Home

It's funny, here I call Atlanta "Home" and in Atl I call Washington "Home"... It's weird to feel like there are two places you belong.

I belong here (in Washington) because my family is here, I grew up here, all my long time friends are here, I love it here.

But Atlanta is home too. At least a temporary one. Because I love love love that trailer park, my kindergarten kids, all the kids really... And I love my housemates and their weirdness and the fact that they love me even though they live with me and know many (but not all) of my faults. I love being challenged every day to be like Jesus and to love people more and give more of myself. I love dancing under the disco ball mistletoe and screaming about cockroaches and sitting on the heater because I'm so cold. Everything about my Atl home is so special to me... Although I would be really happy if we got a heating system and I didn't have to sit on the space heaters in the future (thank you God for Tara). I know that in August I am going to feel like I left part of me behind in East Point, GA, and I'll always remember that community.

Anyway, being home is really nice. It's clean and warm and fun to hang out with my siblings and parents. It's nice to get spoiled and to have my mom make me special dinners and buy me things I want. It's good to rest and contemplate and digest the last 4 months.I am actually really excited to move back to Seattle, go to the University of Washington, and live in the city, hopefully with my older siblings.

It also feels a little weird. Culture shock I guess. I miss my students and team.

Also, it's probable that I am making this all sound much more emotional than it is. I am not really distraught. We all know that I am nothing but a emotionless robot with a cold rational mechanical interior. One that speaks in a British accent when I am forced to express my emotions. So imagine this post in Robert Pattinsons voice or something.

The end.

not much

another week! It was a good one I suppose. I worked in the food bank at Family Life this week again and I love that so much. This morning we got to go to a food drive with FL at a private school in East Point. We loaded so much food into a rental truck, probably like a couple thousands cans of green beans, corn, soup, etc.

This week I was kinda a bitch to my team. Not the whole week, just some of it. Once I got frustrated with one thing, I would snap at anything anyone did... But I got over it. Living with people is hard. Being accountable to them is even harder.

We had some good pilates time in the girls room this week. The combo of New Moon, candles, and getting/giving backrubs is pretty awesome.

By the way, candles are officially my only friends. This is because Chelsea won't allow me on her bed because I farted on in a few weeks ago. What a friend, right? Haha. So I have to sit on the floor with the candle.

My pictures won't upload to Facebook for some reason. This makes me frustrated.

The end.

Halloween is a big deal

All our kids were so excited about it, it made all of us get excited too. Actually, Kelly was already excited. If we didn’t even have kids in our neighborhood we probably would have still dressed up and done something. But since there are lots of kids and we spend so much time with them, we have a good excuse for how into it we got haha. I think Kelly started talking about it in her class at the beginning of October, they even had a countdown chain that they took a loop off of everyday. My Kindergarteners were pretty excited as well, even though they didn’t really have a concept of when Halloween actually was (everyday of October is Halloween apparently). The Wednesday before Halloween, we took the Kindergarten class, minus two students, to a fall carnival at Tara’s church in Decatur. They got to go on pony rides, do rock climbing, jump in a bouncy castle, and of course get candy for playing pointless games! I hung out with Marlen and Stephanie, two of the sweetest and best-behaved girls in our class. All the girls wore princess costumes that Tara bought them, and the Crystian and Brallan (pronounced Brian, I love the Hispanic spelling haha) wore GI Joe costumes. They were all so adorable.
Sometimes I feel like what I am doing is so ridiculous, walking around a carnival in a pretty rich, nice area, with two bilingual Hispanic kindergarten girls who live in a trailer park. Someone referred to me as their mom, and I just felt like laughing at the whole thing. Who does this? Seriously, so many of the things we have been doing are things I wouldn’t ever have done at home, and that so many people just don’t have the opportunity to do. That’s a great thing about Mission Year I guess. Tara jokes about how her goal is to take videos of us doing the most random things possible. So far we have video of me and Chelsea driving a Bobcat bulldozer, some of us hitting piñatas, and some of us hanging out in an Emory University frat house, with 50 plus or minus children in costumes making a mess of themselves with college students helping them.
About the frat house thing… So on Saturday, Halloween, we got up and did devos and then rode to the church where we do the afterschool program with some of the older girls to make penguin ornaments for Tara to sell at a missions conference thing. The girls made them, with our help (I was in charge of the hot glue gun assembly line) and then we went back home to prepare for the afternoons Halloween shenanigans. Rachael, Andrew, Joseph, and I left at about one with the 5th graders , because there were too many kids to take all at once. So we went out to lunch at a Mexican restaurant near the college. This was another one of those weird situations that make me laugh and wonder what the heck I am doing. We are in the restaurant with 10+ 5th graders, eating Mexican food and watching soccer on the tv… in Spanish. I took a great video there as well.
When the other van loads got there they picked us up and we went to the fraternity. The kids carved and painted pumpkins and caused general havoc and destruction before going trick-or-treating with the students. It was really fun, both the kids and the students had a great time. And we had a great time because we didn't have to watch all the kids constantly. They were the college students problems haha. All the kids, especially the older boys, got a crazy amount of candy.
Afterwards the 5th graders had to wait to go home, becasue of the same van probem, so we went trick-or-treating in the neighborhood surrounding Emory. It was a really nice, wealthy area, and it was weird for me... taking our kids there felt so out of place and really made me sad. Those people probably have never experienced the things our kids have, their worlds are so far apart. It made me think a lot. Our kids noticed too, mentioning how nice the houses were and how rich they all were. At the same time though, I don't think they really understand the difference between their lives and the lives of the kids who live in there, in that beautiful, safe neighborhood. Kinda ramble-y, but these are the things I am thinking about lately.

I didn't really edit this post, so sorry for the typos and weird grammar. My Sabbath is too precious to spend time spell-checking haha. Love you all.

Also..

This week has been good. Sooooo much less conflict within our team since we had a family meeting last Wednesday night. I feel like since then I understand everyones point of view and just feel more free, because we can all openly discuss our issues and now we know that we can deal with them in love. I love my team. We are so much like a family, haha. I have a video I need to upload to facebook or this blog of a couple of nights ago after dinner... the boys were doing the dishes and Andrew was dancing, no surprise there (he can move his hips in ways that I'm pretty sure no guy should be able to...), and I walked into the living room to find Chelsea and Rachael in a full on wrestling match on the floor. I went and got my camera.

So I love them. Nothing new.

Today Chelsea and I went to the Camp Creek Marketplace, a huge shopping center with a Barnes and Noble, Target, Sally's, BJ's, and lots of other department stores. I bought a toothbrush cover finally so that I can put my toothbrush in the toothbrush mug without fear of contamination. And at Sally's I got some dreadlock wax... and hot pink and bright purple hair dye.

Then we went to Barnes and Noble and got drinks at the little cafe and used the internet. I read a Twilight fan magazine. Yes I did. I am seriously excited for New Moon to come out. I know I'm lame, but that's ok with me.

Actually, we have been reading Twilight outloud in our bedroom at night. Chelsea reads it to us three, and I always sit on her bed with her. It's a good bonding activity. We are only 1 chapter and and epilogue away from being finished with it.

Um.. Also last week Chelsea and I went to see Whip It at the Midtown Art Cinema. It was great. It made me want to get into a fist fight with another girl (hopefully team conflict doesn't come to that... but I'm just saying...). It inspired me to think more about playing a sport at UW next year.. maybe rugby.

(And also there is a British flag)

The end.

Why the Piggly Wiggly is from Satan:

I hate the Piggly Wiggly.

Now... Jeff told me not to knock the PW, but...

On Saturday we went to buy groceries, after not buying food for like a week and a half. We drive up to the Kroger, and they tell us we can't go in because of a power outage or something. Anyway it was closed. So we drove up to the Piggly Wiggly....

The bread was not marked with prices. Everything was overpriced. The produce was sketchy. The selection was aweful.

That's how I feel. Yes, I am bitter a little bit.

I love my neighborhood.

I love all the trailers and how they are painted bright colors. I even love the ones that are empty and boarded up.

I love the Spanish music that we hear late into the night when our nieghbors are having parties (aka every weekend).

I love the acorns that fall on our roof and make a lot of noise (we have no insulation).

I love ti when it rains really hard and our streets turn into muddy rivers, and there is no point in trying not to get wet when you go outside. (Everyone asks me, "Is this just like Seattle?" haha)

I love Tara and how much she LOVES the kids and their families. She is so inspirational to our team. And she is going to buy us Snuggies. For real.

I love our tiny house. Our tiny bedrooms. Our beautiful new bookshelf. Our big kitchen. Our bathroom that now has shelves in the closet. Our red door. The fact that our bedroom doesn't have a doorknob.

Basically. I love this niehgborhood. It's crazy to me how fast a new place can feel like home. Looking back, I can't even remember my thoughts about the trailer park when I drove through it with my family before Mission Year started. Now it seems like a completely different place to me. The house with the teddy bear over the fence is where Jazmin and Daniel live. I know all the streets and can't imagine not knowing them. It's weird. I love it. Did I mention that?

It's October now...

... which means we can walk places by ourselves. And yet, here I am at the library with 3 of my team mates. I just can't get away from these people!

I am totally kidding. I love my team. It seems like we've been living togethere for so long, but it's only been a month. I can't really imagine living without them now either... but maybe I should give it a little more time, haha. I thought I would need a lot more alone time, but I haven't ever just wanted everybody to go away yet. I work with them all day and then hang out with them in my free time.

Basically, living in community is great. The end.

p.s. it is also really hard sometimes. Especially when someone is in the shower when you get up and you have to pee really bad. Just a heads up.

Sabbath = awesome

Hey people. Today is Friday. Which means I get to be lazy and spend my time on facebook. It's beautiful really.

This week was good. I switched to the Kindergarten class at the Moncrief afterschool program, because Tara wanted there to be two teachers there. I sort of miss my little 1st graders... but I think that's because the memory of their aweful disobedience is fading from my mind.... Haha. Kelly is teaching them now, and she has her hands full.

So... Chelsea and I have been talking a lot about tattoos lately. I want one. We were joking around kind of seriously about all of us getting a team tattoo. Not everyone is so into that... probably because they think we will end up hating eachother by the end of the year. It's possible.

But really we've been having a great time, getting along very well, dancing in the kitchen, and playing cards. Good times. I heart them all. Oh, community.

I am really tired every evening, because the afterschool program is really draining.. It's a good thing we do devotions in the morning, because there is no way I'd be disciplined enough to do them in the evening on my own.. I'd be a heathen and never read my Bible haha.

This is a really random post, because I don't really know what to write about... but I love Mission Year. It's hard. And fun. And we are weirdos. The end.

September Newsletter +

I’m finally in Atlanta and Mission Year has begun! On the 27th I met my team and we moved into our house in East Point. We’ve been getting along great (so far). There are three other girls besides myself and two guys… in a two bedroom house. All four of us girls sleep in one bedroom, so we are becoming very close very quickly, haha. We are learning a lot about living in community and buying food that everyone likes with our limited budget! We've had some pretty intense conversations about food actually. That's been one of our biggest conflicts so far.

Our house is in the middle of two trailer parks with mostly Hispanic residents. The kids all speak English, but many of the parents only speak Spanish. The kids like to come and knock on our door to ask us to play, and if we are busy they hang out outside and watch us through the windows. Last Saturday we had a fiesta/barbecue outside our house to get to know our neighbors. Pinatas and candy + 75 children = insanity! It was lots of fun though, and I am really excited about getting to know our neighbors better. We also know an awesome woman named Melanie who lives a few trailers down from us and makes us gifts of food. Randomly in the evenings one of her children or grandchildren will come to the door and ask us if we want something she has made for us (eggplant casserole, soup, strawberry cake, etc), so she is a huge blessing and has made us feel very welcome. I'm pretty sure all the kids in the neighborhood call her grandma, so I'm not sure which ones actually are related to her for real. Outside the trailer parks are some housing project apartment buildings and small houses with mostly African American residents. We also live close enough to downtown to walk to the library and public transit train station. I like riding the train. haha.

Our church, New Jerusalem Missionary Baptist, is within walking distance from our house. The first Sunday we got soaked running back home in the rain after a thunderstorm started during the service. It is a very different church experience for me, but I am enjoying learning a new style of worship. Or sort of enjoying... Last week's service was 4 hours long.... Next week we will start working Mon-Thurs afternoons at a nearby afterschool program that the local kids attend. I will be in charge of the 1st grade class of about 10 kids, which is a little intimidating for me. Please pray that I will not be overwhelmed and that the first week will go well! We’ll also be deciding on our morning work sites soon. I am hoping to work either at the local health clinic or at a homeless or food ministry. I also would be really inteterested in volunteering at a English program for the Hispanic adults in the area.. We'll see.

We had Mission Year orientation last week and heard from several great speakers who really inspired me with their life stories of loving and serving the poor and marginalized in our society. We learned about social justice, community, race, and logistics like safety and fundraising, and got to spend some time hanging out with the teams from all the other Mission Year cities. We stayed in cabins (which they said were way better than what last years teams had to stay in) and met lots of spider friends... Joseph, Andrew, Rachael, and I went on a "nature hike" and almost got lost. And Rachael got in a spider web and screamed like someone was cutting her leg off. We also played an abundance of Dutch Blitz. Jeff (my City Director) is super good at it. We all got pretty competative. Good times. This week is city orientation, with only the Atlanta teams. We’ve been learning more about the logistics of our schedules and heard an amazing speaker on conflict resolution.

I feel like I am learning a lot, but it’s also overwhelming to take in all this information and not have any practical experience yet. I know that once we get into a schedule it will probably get easier for me. I am very excited and want you all to be able to share in my experiences and excitement as well. I would love to receive snail-mail letters from any of you, as I will have very limited access to the internet for a while, and I’ll do my best to write you back. Thank you all so much for your support and prayers in these first few weeks and continuing into this year.

Love and peace.

Kimberly Rixon

304 Veterans St

East Point, GA 30344

the day after tomorrow.....

...... Mission Year starts! Yay hooray! I've been staying at the Nickels house since Friday, playing with Hazel and Juniper, reading, and making the most of my last "alone time" before I move in with my team. I have a feeling that with 6 of us in one trailer there's not going to be a whole lot of personal space, haha. Well, I signed up for this :)

I think we are doing some kind of technology fast in the first months of MY, so I'll update when I can... might be a while.

Oh, I finished reading Les Miserables! It was super good, and now I want to go see the opera again :) Someday maybe. Actually, someday for sure I will go see it again. It was amazing.

"Should we continue to look upwards? Is the light we can see in the sky one of those which will presently be extinguished? The Ideal is terrifying to behold, lost as it is in the depths, small, isolated, a pin-point, brilliant yet threatened on all sides by dark forces that surround it; nevertheless, no more in danger than a star in the jaws of the clouds" - Victor Hugo

Also I am reading Repenting Of Religion, by Gregory Boyd. I stole it from my dad and brought it with me to Mission Year, haha. It's all about judging other people vs. loving them. I'm about half way through it and I am really enjoying it.

Peace.

Tybee Island

I'm in Georgia! Yay!

Sunday we got up at 4:45 to go to the airport and fly to Florida. Said goodbye to Scott until December :( Saturday night I said goodbye to Kyle and the young adult group at church. Abbie and I were going to go to bed early... but we stayed up kinda late talking. It was weird having my last night living at home... last night in my super comfy bed. Haha.

The plane ride to Orlando was good, we switched planes in Houston. Abbie and I watched The Return Of The Jedi on her computer, finishing up the summer Star Wars series. So good.

Monday morning we drove to Merritt Island and picked up Janna and Alyssa at Teen Missions! It was so cool. They were waiting in the dining room with the Floras and one other girl from their team. They saw us walking up the sidewalk into the main entrance and came running out (in all their travel shirted and booted glory). We loaded their stuff up into the rental van, and then we went on a little tour of Boot Camp. We saw their tent site and showed mom and dad the OC and everything. It was really fun to see it all again, made me miss our Egypt team a lot and remember all the good old days we spent in that torture camp (sometimes torture is fun, if you are with a team of awesome people). Janna and Alyssa wanted to change into tank tops and other "civilian" clothing and then we left to drive up to Tybee in Georgia.

So now we've been hanging out at the beach! I've never swam in a warm ocean before, it was super fun! Abbie even went in and liked it, which was a big surprise. I officially love the ocean.

Janna and Alyssa were really excited to get on Facebook and stuff, after going the whole summer without technology. We've spent a lot of time on the computers and talking about everyone at home and from their team. They have a lot of funny stories which also makes me miss Egypt people :( But there's no way their team this summer compared to ours in 2007 ;)

Ok, time to go look at Alyssa's pictures from Nepal.

Peace! Or as Andrew would say, Nuclear Disarmament!

East Point Team forever! Haha

So..... we found out where we are living for Mission Year, and who we are living with, this week! We didn't know that we were going to, so it was a big surprise and we all freaked out with excitement.. kinda like when the early placement people got our city assignments. I was with Abbie at the church and I opened the email and I kept telling her, "I'm so happy! I'm so excited!" over and over again. Hahaha.

I'm on the East Point team! My housemates are Chelsea, Rachel, Kelly, Andrew, and Joseph! I already love them and am soooooo excited to meet them in person on August 27th! This week we will start planing out who brings what for the house, I think.

Knowing where I am living also makes the whole thing a little more real... and scary. I am actually doing this! It's for real! It's a month away!

Packing is scary too. Haha. I have too much stuff... Which means free clothes for Abbie and Janna, who are planning to wear everything I leave behind.

Anyway, thanks to everyone who has supported me and donated! You are the reason I can go on this crazy adventure.

Summertime is here

So.

Blogging is kinda weird. Since I haven't actually left or done anything interesting yet, it makes me feel like I am really self-absorbed.. Like I think other people actually want to read about me? Really? Haha. Oh well. Maybe once I am in Atlanta this blog will be more interesting and worthwhile to read.

It's summer! It doesn't look it outside right now, but it is. No more school until after Mission Year. That's kinda weird to think about actually. I've been working, but not a lot. I am hoping to get more hours now that I am back from Minnesota and I have nothing to do.

Janna is at Teen Missions Boot Camp now. I am surprised that I don't really feel like I want to be there too. I still miss our Egypt team a lot. But I think I've moved on from Teen Missions. Like now that kind of missions trip isn't all I want. It's fun and you learn a lot, but it isn't a way you can live your life. Mission Year is. Or will be. I hope. But I also think that maybe without going to Egypt I wouldn't be doing MY now, so... everything teaches us something.

It's a weird (how many times can you say that in one blog, eh?) feeling to only have 2 months left at home and just be waiting... and I'm already worrying about how to pack everything I need, haha.

Peace! With an exclamation point because it's exciting.

school is almost over!

Yay! I have an Arabic test tomorrow, and then only one more week until we leave for Minnesota. I am skipping the whole last week of school, haha.

It's a little weird to be completely done with school for the first time ever. I have my Associates degree now, and of course I want to go back to school after Mission Year, but still... I'm done. For real done. And I'm such an adult now... haha, not. I'm going to miss my Arabic class buddies. We've been hanging out and studying together since last fall, and now only one more week together... I am hoping to be able to get some contact info from them and get back in touch when I return to Wash after MY. We'll see.

Btw, mewithoutYou's new cd is awesome. Yes.

Peace.

waiting

For us 09-10 MY-ers, last month was mostly made up of waiting for our city assignments. I think that every day one of us would comment on our facebook group and say something like,“Everyday that passes where I don’t receive an email telling me what city I’m in causes the suspense to kill a little piece of me inside" (thanks for that little gem, Hassan). April 31st we complained and commiserated all day…. Some of us stayed up past midnight waiting to receive an email telling us where we would be spending the next year (I went to sleep, content to find out in the morning. Haha). I’m sure the rest of my fellow 09-10 team members that I wasn’t corresponding with on facebook also felt the same anticipation.

And now we finally know!! I am placed in Atlanta, which I could not be happier about! When I read that line in the email, I literally felt jittery with excitement. My hands were shaking and it was really funny.

And now we have to wait some more. Waiting is really hard.

I really need to try and focus on what is going on here at home and not give everything a halfhearted effort because I am looking forward to the future so much… But it’s hard. I keep thinking, “I’ll just be leaving in a few months, so why…(fill in the blank).” I’m trying to think of Mission Year as already starting and trying to live out the commitment to “Love God. Love people. Nothing else matters” now, before I move to Atlanta.. And not doing so great a job of it, honestly! It’s also hard not really knowing what to prepare myself for, or how to even prepare at all.

I’m trying to wait patiently… and failing.

Mission Year intro

If you’re reading this blog you probably already know something about my plans for 2009-2010. Last September as I approached the last few quarters of my time at Bellevue Community College and started making plans about what I would do next, I came across the website for Mission Year. The idea of spending a year in service to some of the poorest communities in the US immediately caught my interest and I think I read every single page of the website in one sitting.. and then again the next day. Long story short: I am doing Mission Year 09-10 and am crazy excited. (if you don't know what Mission Year is, look it up because I am tired of explaining it... www.missionyear.org)

I hope to learn how to live in community with other believers, understand the viewpoint of the poor, and be able to translate my love for Jesus into purposefully living to serve others. I want to be challenged and pushed out of my comfort zone. I have become so dissatisfied with our culture and the way I see myself conform to its ideas of consumerism and individualism. I know that isn’t the way Jesus wants me to live and I think Mission Year is a great way to learn how to start living the way I need to. I can’t wait for this fall and all the things I will learn as I go through this year, and I hope any of you who read this will enjoy going through them with me!