In the nearly five months since I accepted the invitation
from by beloved Episcopal Church to take on this extraordinary journey, a whole
lot has changed. In what feels these days like more or less a blur, so much
seems to have gone by.
On April 27th I happened to be on a pilgrimage in
Israel with members of my home congregation, when I reached into my pocket to
check an email on my phone. I was shocked to find an email from YASC notifying
me of their plans to send me as a missionary to…**drumroll please….** Italy??
At first I was admittedly reticent and more than a little
bit shocked. Italy, I thought, is surely too first-world, too glitzy, too
stereotypically bourgeois to be a twenty-something ivy-leaguer traipsing around
Europe for a year. I’d expected to be sent somewhere in Africa, or Latin
America perhaps – places I much more associated with missionaries than a city
revered by elites for about three thousand years.
But when I noticed the assignment – working with refugees in
the city – my mind gradually began to change. In conversations with my bishop,
my family, my future supervisor and others who know me and St. Paul’s Within
the Walls well, the verdict was unanimous.
And so I embarked on what would be a summer of preparation –
a busy four months of fundraising, traveling, visa applications, preaching,
church events and oh yeah…. Graduating from seminary!
On May 18th I woke up, got dressed, walked from
my apartment to the Yale Divinity School quad as I had done more than a
thousand times before. Except that on that particular Monday I walked across a
stage, dressed in a mortarboard and robe, and received my master’s degree with
almost two hundred classmates.
Making the weekend even more significant, my mother received
her doctorate two days earlier and two of my cousins received their master’s
degrees in the same weekend as well. A very special occasion for a truly
blessed and well-educated family! The following Sunday the four graduates and
dozens of our loved ones celebrated our accomplishments together at a splendid
party in our family’s hometown – Louisville KY.
The next day marked the launching point for the fundraising
effort that would consume most of my summer. I painstakingly drafted the first
version of a letter I would send more than one thousand times over the next
several months. They went out to fellow church members, family, friends and
acquaintances in cities across the country. Taking care to personalize each
one, I signed, folded, labeled, sealed, stamped and mailed every one of them.
Week by week I sent more and more letters detailing my
mission, the costs and making an earnest heartfelt request for support.
Wonderfully people have been extraordinarily supportive and generous in
supporting this effort.
A view from my desk: Lots of letters!
From May 17th through mid-July, I was blessed to
do a remarkable amount of traveling throughout the country preaching at many of
the congregations that I have grown to love over the years. I’ve posted the
videos from those sermons earlier on this blog, but I’m compelled to mention
how absolutely honored I was to share the Gospel with the good people of St.
Luke’s New Haven, St. James’ Cincinnati, St. Augustine’s Gary IN, Christ Church
Cathedral Cincinnati, and St. James’ Baltimore. For a young not-yet-ordained
preacher to have so many opportunities to preach in so many places is a truly
rare pleasure.
Although my preaching engagements were not designed at all
for the purposes of fundraising, at almost every stop the rectors would
announce my plans as a missionary and invite me to ask the congregation to
contribute. I was honored to oblige, and the congregations were largely happy
to support as well.
From June 23rd to July 3rd, I was
fortunate to attend my first General Convention as a young adult fellow of the
Episcopal Peace Fellowship. I won’t discuss it in much detail here as I’ve
written an entirely different blog about the Convention here. Suffice to say
that witnessing the election of Bishop Michael Curry (my former childhood
rector) and the affirmation of same-sex marriage was an experience I will never
forget. On top of it all, I got to meet my new supervisor Austin, my
predecessor YASCer Will, and Bishop of Europe Pierre Whalon at the convention
in Salt Lake! What a way to prepare for this incredible journey to come!
(Part 2 of this post will be published here shortly)
No comments:
Post a Comment