People I Will Miss...

As we prepare to leave this week for Jakarta, we all have been excited about seeing the impact God will make through us in that city. One thing we haven't been looking forward to is being apart. I've made many friends here. Some of them closer than others and its strange that I will not see them for three months.

Our whole school will be divided into different teams and be sent to different areas of Jakarta. We will all see each other at one or maybe two events but for the most part we will be totally separated. We'll only have a week after our trip to be together once again and to tell everyone about all that happened. I wanted to take time to write about the people I will miss.

First of all I will miss all the guys in my dorm room. There is fourteen of us in a small classroom sized room with seven bunk beds. Our dorm is the best because of all the different personalities in it. We talk sometimes up to 12:00am, our conversation, as you can guess, is guy talk mixed in with a lot of locker room humor. Most of us all have nick-names, mine is "Grandpa". I got my nick-name because not only am I the oldest in our room but I tend to go to bed early. 10:30 may not seem early for some, but to a bunch of wild eighteen to twenty year olds it is pretty early. Out of all the guys in our dorm, there are two guys that I'm going to really miss.

Blake is the maturest 19-year old I've ever met. Since he was sixteen he's had to take care of his mom and younger brother and be basically the man of the house. He's had jobs working construction where he actually manages men who are probably twice his age. He's one of the most intelligent and most talented people I know but his intellect is well balanced with his personality and charisma. What I'm going to miss about Blake is his friendliness and his ability to talk to almost anybody on any subject. This is the guy who spends some nights climbing and jumping from nearby buildings because its fun. He's also one of the funniest guys I've met. Almost everything he says makes you laugh.

One of the surprising things that about YWAM is how close I've become to some of those from Europe. Stefan is one of my best friends here on base. He's a 22-year old Dutch school teacher. We have a couple of nick names for him, none of them are really appropriate for this blog, but surmise it to say he's a character. What I love about Stefan is how seriously he takes God. He leads worship for his church in Holland is very talented at playing the guitar. His passion is obvious when he plays and sings worship music and he's a real quality guy.

When I met Clara I thought she was one of the most soft-spoken people I had met on the base, but when I got to know this girl from Germany, I realized that she had a lot to say and it wasn't so much because she was shy but because English is her second langauge and she is very self-conscious of how she sounds. I'll often practice my German with her. I think this has made her feel better because I'm trying to speak to her in her own language and I'm not very good at German. We have a lot of fun talking and getting to know how our cultures work. Generally when we talk we like to talk about the deep things in life but we've had a lot of laughs along the way. Usually it's Blake who is making us laugh or it's us picking on one another trying to get the other one to laugh.

Marieka and Mariana are both from Holland, like Stefan. In the beginning I hung out with these two girls a lot. We talked about Dutch culture how frugal they are and how different America is from Holland. Both girls are a lot of fun to hang out with.

Chris is another amazing German. He's very funny, almost like a Marx brother or a Charlie Chaplin, most of the time making people laugh through a facial expression or just clowning around. But one thing you can sense about him is that he is a true friend. He loves on people so much and there's a warmness to him that just makes you want to hang out with him.

Brady is from Kansas City. He's one of the most recognizable and most popular people on the base, not because he tries to be popular but it's because of his real ability to connect with people wherever they're at. One of the things that makes Brady stand out is his collection of bandanas which he wears around his head to keep his long blonde hair from falling into his face. Brady doesn't just accept something because he's been told it, he always questions what you give to him and will often take Devil's Advocate for something, not because he wants to argue with you but more often it's just him trying to see things from a different perspective. I'm going to miss some of the deep talks that he and I've had. He's always ready to talk about theological or philosophical things with me.