1.) God has prepared me to handle travel. This one seems pretty obvious. I did YHM. That's a ton of traveling. This 6 weeks should be a breeze. However, there is a deeper part of this trip that God has prepared me for through YHM. That is uncertainty. I am really good at adjusting. Coming to college was a big adjustment. I did plenty fine. Sure I miss my family, but I love being here. Even the parts that I don't love can be worked around. But I think I adjusted fine because I knew what was coming. Doing Wheaton Passage (2 1/2 weeks of canoeing/backpacking) helped me understand the limits of my ability to adjust to situations. I do great when I know what's coming. However, when I don't... I can psych myself out. I could have easily done that on this trip. Sure, we have an Itinerary. But that is vague at best. However, I am prepared for this. I've had to deal with worse, and I survived. On YHM, the only Itinerary we had was what city to be in on what day. I was in a group of 4. Much less support. 10 times less actually. This will be a great trip. Just gotta go with the flow.
2.) God has used this past year to help me get over my "Great Prejudice". What was my great prejudice you might ask? Well, mainly it was against theology. I know right! A good Wheaton student like me not liking theology? Unheard of! Well, it's true. Last summer, I went on YHM hoping to love people to Jesus. Which, don't get me wrong, is a great way of going about stuff but definitely not sufficient a lot of the time. And I found myself in situations where I wanted to get into conversations and explain my faith to others, but I didn't have the words to do so. Nor did I have the wisdom to think through that kind of thing before. The Office of Christian Outreach did a great job of preparing me. I did a poor job of preparing myself. Even when I came back from YHM, I had an aversion to theology. I think it was because I do not see myself as a deep intellectual thinker, and I considered theology to be a deep intellectual task. And I do not like to feel incompetent. So that is why I avoided theology. Then, second semester, I had to take my Christian Thought class. Basically it was theology 101. Well, come to find out, I enjoy talking about stuff like that. I loved learning about it. And then came this week. This week, I spent 3 1/2 hours a morning talking about theology. A lot of it was review. But I did learn a lot of new information: mainly about the Orthodox Church and their beliefs, and the Catholic Church and it's belief. Quite interesting. In the past year, God has taken me from not really thinking about Theology, to not really liking theology, to loving theology. Crazy how He does stuff like that.
On a side note, one thing that I found out this week was that I had a pretty narrow view of Christianity. In the past, I considered "Christian" (what I now understand as Protestants), "Catholic", and "Orthodox" to be three completely separate faiths. However, after taking my theology classes, I understand now that we are three different parts of the "Christian faith." (Maybe this fact doesn't come as a shocker to you. But to me it was a !LIGHTBULB! moment.) Yes, we disagree on some doctrine, even some major doctrine. However, we hold much in common. We should be looking at these similarities more, like the similarity that we all follow Jesus Christ as the Incarnate Son of God. Yes, that looks different for each of our traditions. But the church is supposed to be the unified body of Christ. And for that reason, it is the one thing that we should fight hardest for in this world. So, now I go to sleep. Tomorrow: Exam and Flight.
This is just the beginning.....
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