I'm Off

Well, this is real. I am currently sitting on a plane from Spokane to Minneapolis (then on to New York), in the middle seat, listening to “the Moth” podcast, drinking crappy coffee, with a huge bag of film (35mm 400 B/W, so elegant), and a little painting by Erika tucked between the computer and seat in front of me. I have a backpack full of computer and camera stuff at my feet and another backpack with clothes, soccer cleats and a toothbrush somewhere in the hold. So it is really happening. I have been planning on going somewhere this year since CASP (study abroad trip in spring ’08, see previous posts for more info). I have known I was going to Peru since Placement Weekend in April. A little over two weeks ago, I quit my jobs and have been blessed to get to spend lots of time relaxing and just enjoying life with people that really make it enjoyable.

So I guess the obvious question is how do I feel right now? I feel ready, I think. In one sense, I’ve done this my whole life. My first real international experience was at 1 ½ years old to Mexico. I know that I can thrive in a culture that currently I do now know. I also know that I have spent so much of my life on the go and kinda in limbo that I am ready for a life that is kinda unknown. I really do not know what I am doing this year, but that is totally cool. I love the life on the road. Planes feel so comfortable and normal and turbulence is just like a roller coaster. There is no horizontal surface that can’t become a bed. I think I remember how to speak Spanish (though I know I am quit rusty). I can meet people. I get to take pictures. My life is great. I am so blessed to be able to have these experiences. My blessings are so great to allow me not to “take a year off” or to “find myself,” but mostly just to serve.

The biggest comfort for me is that God is in Peru too. I really don’t know what his plan for me is or what is really going to happen, but I know that he is with me. Our relationship is something that is going to be tested and expanded upon. I hope to learn how to let him be my hands and feet. He will make me learn to lean on him for my very existence and to lean on him in Joy.

So I end this first official post with gratitude and a request. I am SOOOOOO thankful for each of you that are in my life (yes, I am tearing up right now). You have all helped so much in instilling this need to serve in me. I thank my family who has been with me forever. You are all the foundation of my life and will be there for my future too. Thank you for everything. I love you all. Thank you to each of you from my life in Gig Harbor. To all the PHS, HRMS, MCES, and EES people that have helped me to be a real person, thank you. To my leaders at CHPC, GH 1st Baptist, and Lakebay Church, thank you for helping my faith to be real, thank you. To my friends from Whitworth, thank you for opening my eyes to a real world and helping me have more fun that I knew was possible, thank you. To all the other Spokanites who I worked with or got to be around, thank you for making a boring city worth it, thank you. And to everyone else who have helped me to life, laugh, and love, thank you (yes, that is the cover all sentence). Thank you all for helping me thrive. As for my request, I ask that you be involved over the next year. I do now just want to write a blog that is just a laundry list of what I have been doing or just mini dissertations about my thoughts, but I want it to be a conversation. If you are reading this, you have somehow acquired connections to my life, but I ask you to be involved. To contact me directly, please email me at jtobiason08@gmail.com, look me up on skype (jtobiason08). The address for the blog is http://www.thecentralamericanblender.blogspot.com, for the facebook group: http://whitworth.facebook.com/group.php?gid=6781363428. , and for the google group: http://groups.google.com/group/Joeinlima. Please find your own way to be involved. Please let me know what you are thinking and not just for my own sake, but I want this network of life to be traversing as many people groups as possible because we are all interconnected in some way and together we can work to improve this world. So, just to see if people are paying attention and to see if you have made it this far, my first (of many) questions for general comments is: If you were able to go golfing with 3 other people (anyone ever), who would it be and why? I would go with Dave Niehaus, Alex Trebeck, and Barak Obama. I know they are all male and I feel kinda sexist by saying that, but Dave is one of the best story tellers ever (especially when the M’s are being destroyed), Alex shares my love of trivia, and Obama is the freaking president and an awesome dude. What do you think?

Ok, so you’re tired of reading so I’m going to wrap it up. I would love prayer that this week of orientation goes well, that relationships are formed and that we all really learn how to live and serve together. I pray that our trips off to sites around the world go safely. But what I am most pre-occupied about right now is that I can find a community where I feel connected and can find people that can really be bound to me and that we can together find God. You are all great community, but I need some local community too. Thank you for being in my life.