Hi everyone!
Well, I moved into the Sojourners house on Tuesday and I am positively overwhelmed (in a very good way). I have so many impressions and details I want you to know so that you can really sort of be with me here, but it is difficult to describe. Well, I am living with 8 other people: Andrew, Dave, Mark, Lisa, Noeleen, Liz, Emily and my roommate Claire. I am one of the only ones sharing a room and I thought that might pose more of a problem me having been spoiled with this HUGE room previously at 45 S. Wyoming, but it is shaping up to be just the kind of atmosphere I need to grow this year. Not to mention we have a bay window sort of thing and I have my lovely papazan (sp?) chair set up right in front of it which creates a place for already really engaging quiet times for me. The house is this big dark red rowhouse with bamboo wallpaper and past intern paintings and 21 years of funky, cheap, simple living decorations. If you know me at all, you know I love it. I am not Martha Stewart. One of my favorite things is rooms (or people) with personalities and that usually entails a certain lack of organization, rhyme or reason. So that is my living environment.

As for the people, today we just finished up sharing our respective stories for hours. We each took about 15-20 minutes to give a rundown. We are all so different. There is a Mennonite, a ex drug-user/Younglife leader, a Texas sorority sister, a 27 yea5r old who is the first African AMERICAN in her family, and more. I am really pumped at the diversity within our little community and the steps we have already made to be intentional and comfortable with each other. We are sharing our money. Sojourners provides money for food, healthcare and all that and we each get an $80 stipend each month to live on. We are making meals to share 4 times a week, working at the office, getting involved in service opportunities around the city, taking classes at the servant leadership school and acquiring a mentor who works full time here at Sojourners for the year. It will be full and it will be amazing. I know because I already knew and that was confirmed by just meeting everyone and realizing how much this will educate me about how to be faithful and truly relevant in the small world I have to work with and with the little bit of power I am have to influence change.

This is all so vague for right now which is why I was reluctant to update. But you will get more details. We are in the midst of orientation and it all begins on Monday and I am so ready for that. Challenges I foresee? I am reading Thomas Merton's No Man Is An Island right now and it was remarkable that his advice should be the same as what I ahve heard for ages. You cannot be friends with everyone. Jesus wasnt. But you can love everyone deeply He also says that to love someone sincerely, you have to want what is bets for them. That is how you bear with them. You trust that when they hurt you or offend you that often they may just be trying to love themselves because they know themselves. Loving someone else does not need to always reference back to me. I am seeing already though, the self-knowledge that will come with this year. I realize a lot about myself when explaining to the group how I deal with conflict and how I compare myself to others and how I long to just KNOW so many people and be known myself and yet being hurt by the limits of that. The biggest challenge for me will be living into the person God has made me here and not being afraid to use that for a work He has already begun with Sojourner's ministry.

So pray for me. I need your prayers and I want to hear from you. I only have internet at work so this may be less than regular. But I love you so email, call, comment. Do whatever. I like to know that you're there.

"Why spend your money on what is not bread and your riches on what does not satisfy? Listen to me and your soul will delight in the richest of fare." (Isaiah 55:2)