One year

It's been a year. We've been back in the US for a year. It's hard to believe sometimes, but other times it feels like we've been back so much longer. I posted a status update about it and another missionary friend asked how it feels. It feels weird. Sometimes I feel like my life in Europe was a dream. Did it really happen? Did I really live that far away for 4.5 years? Was that really my life, to live where people dream of vacationing? I did. But here in small-town Texas, it feels so far away. Life goes on. The ministry still continues, even though most of the students we've worked with have moved on.

Our transition back to state-side life was relatively easy. A lot of people have really bad reverse-culture shock, but I think ours was easier for 2 reasons. One, because we were on a military base, we still had a lot of the conveniences and products that are available in America. Two, because we moved to a small town, we didn't have to face the fast-paced American lifestyle. We were and are somewhat sheltered from the craziness that goes along with big cities.

But even with those 2 reasons, there was still adjustments we needed to go through. Luckily those seem to be over now. I still get a little homesick for Europe sometimes. Just yesterday, I took a trip down memory lane as I answered an online forum post about places to visit near where we lived in Germany. I listed my favorite places and relived the memories of those visits. Almost as soon as I was done with that post, I was reading a cooking magazine, and I turned the page to see a full-page photo of one of my favorite places in Italy. We called it "City 2" during Beach Break. It was the 2nd of the 5 cities of Cinque Terra. Our students would jump off a huge rock, over 15 feet above the water, while the rest of us enjoyed one (or two or three) of the too-many scoops of gelato during the week. As much as I complained during the weeks of Beach Break, they were some of my favorite times overseas. I miss the long walks that were so conducive to good conversation, the late night talks in the tent where teens shared more under the cover of darkness than they ever would during the day, the life-changing moments at the end of the week. We promised the students it would be one of the best weeks of their lives, and most of the time, it was. I miss doing youth ministry. I still hang out with teens here, but not on a regular or intentional basis like I did overseas. Maybe someday we'll get back in to volunteering with a youth ministry, but until then, I'll just enjoy the relationships with the few students I been getting to know over this past year.