Where I'm at right now

I think I speak for all of us when I say that the most frustrating part of all of this is not knowing what we're going to be doing there. Whenever I hear about long term trips of this nature, one of the things I hear people go through is wondering if what they're doing there is making any difference, if it even matters. And prone to anxiety as I am, I'm already starting to feel some of that.

In working through it, I simply asked myself, "What are we going there to do?" Plain and simple. The most basic answer I can give is that we are going there to live. But following from that, it occurred to me that we are going to live, for 3 months, in a world that we do not know. To the point, we are going there to live, for 3 months, in a world that has been torn apart by war, oppressive regimes, and religious & ethnic hatred. Eastern Europe has been marginalized and mostly forgotten about, except when the rest of the world feels threatened by its increasing misfortunes. Caught between the always in-vogue Western Europe and the volatile Middle East, countries such as Romania, Bulgaria, & Albania are often blacked out in our worldview.

So while we don't know what we're doing yet, this is why we are going. And regardless of what we get done, how much we help, or how "effective" we are, we know that our calling is to something much greater. It is to share life with those whom our savior has called blessed. We have been called to be with the "least of these", those whom the world has forgotten about. In other words, we are called to love. Love: that is, through God and God alone, what we're going to do.

- Jake