Data Driven

i find myself stumbling,
no motivation, i'm fumbling
my days away, my goals have strayed.
no self restrain, i can't refrain
from technology.
for this, my sincerest apology.
its a modern affliction,
the worst kind of addiction.
worse than drugs, alcohol, or porn
for it has torn, more lives apart
than we are able to start.
cheating, lying, stealing;
all things worth concealing
on our devices,
and these, are our vices.



Over the past month i've lost my GoPro as well as the hard drive that held every bit of my experience of Kosrae; almost 700GB of pictures and video. As i "mourn my loss" reality has sunk in. i no longer have anything to show for the past 9 months.

Wait, is that what i'm here for? to take pictures and video so that i can show my family and friends "this cool thing i did"? Well, no. Had i stayed home, i'd be taking the last midterms of my undergrad with finals and graduation on the horizon. i'd be sending out resumes, doing interviews, and planning my future career. i'd be set on a path of no return, a goal in mind, with no time for mission work. Is that what God put me here for?

i took this year to give my time, my energy, and my body to help someone else before i was set on a crash course called adulthood. Sure, we can all be missionaries in our own right, but i wanted something more. Have i found it? Did i get that "something more"? i'm not sure. Maybe i'll find it in the next month, or maybe it won't find me until that kid i taught that one time when i was in college finds me on Facebook to tell me that he's now enrolled at Walla Walla University and wants to reconnect. i don't know how i fit into the Master Plan, but what i do know is: we don't need pictures, or video, or even blogs to show others what we're doing, our actions and memories of how God put us in a place that He needed is enough.


Updates: A story about Sam is in the works, its finicky. We didn't realize how lucky we were to have a truck until ours broke, being vehicleless makes obtaining food very hard. A mouse ate our sponge, hopefully he dies, this is a brand new apartment we're talking about. On that note, all of God's creatures are important, but sometimes sin has marred that, and things like mice do more damage than good, kind of like humans, except without the redemption story. Happy late Easter? i'm tired of texting my friends, i'm pretty excited being home with face to face communications. As the days drag by, i get less and less excited about leaving. those last two statements are contradictory, but trust me, its possible. I have a bruised bone in my hand so im limited on what i can do, hello yoga? 1 month until i'm on a plane to Guam. 2 months until im back stateside.