Hello everyone! I am glad I can finally connect with you after a week. We didn't have internet access where we were staying so I couldn't make any updates. However, now that I have wifi…because I am in LONDON!!! I can share with you again. Like I said, we have made it to London. Woohoo! (More info on that to come). Before talking about arriving in London though, I wanted to share a tiny, smallest of the small, snapshot of this past week of YAGM orientation in Chicago, Illinois…

The week of YAGM Orientation was one that I don’t think any of us were expecting. When we, the YAGM’s, first arrived in Chicago, we unanimously agreed we had no idea why we were there and what on earth we were going to do in the next week between saying goodbye to our families and preparing to leave the country for an entire year.

It became pretty evident in a matter of hours however, we had begun an amazing week that none of us realized that we needed until we clung to our time together desperately. From the opening worship Wednesday night, to devotions and our first presentation with YAGM alumni the next morning, our worlds were turned upside down. In the moments that we began to spend together as 63 not so seemingly similar young adults, we realized quickly that there was something very powerful bringing us all together. We realized that we were all very much the same and felt at home with one another. Some people even saying that this was the first time they ever felt truly at home or free to be themselves in their whole lives. We also began to realize that the year we were about to experience was no trip or fun vacation. The worlds we were about to enter were dangerous, intense, and filled with conflict. It was a huge reminder that what we were doing gave no guarantee that we would enjoy our entire experience or be happy entirely in our decision to do this. There would be times when we would be very much alone. There would be times where we would be incredibly angry about what we saw happening and couldn't do anything about it. There would also be times when we would bear witness to amazing acts of love and kindness. We would experience people and moments were God is clearly present in that space. Our experiences were about witnessing. Seeing another way of life that is different from our own so that we could change and be changed by it.

The group of 63 people I came into this week with are now some of my most beloved brothers and sisters. These are friends that I have shared a very deep connection with very quickly and it’s not like anything I have ever experienced before.

It is hard to explain and I am sure it is quite perplexing to understand, but all I can really say about the experience was that my fellow YAGM’s and I changed. Like I said, it’s hard to muster up the words from my orientation week and the surprising emotions it brought up in all of us and I apologize for that. I am honestly, at this point in time, trying to figure out how to write about this awesome experience, even thus far, when I am finding myself at a loss for words for most of it, or at least a loss for words that do it all justice. I have never been very good with words so I apologize for that too. So much has happened in so little time and it’s hard to break it all down. I guess what I mostly want you to come away with from this blog post is…even here on my first day in London I am already not the person I was when I left you. The phrase I would use to sum up my week of orientation preparing for my YAGM year would be profound awakening.