"We're meant to be on the road."

On June 18th, I was blessed and honored to met Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori, the Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church USA. She said something, one of many things that effected me over the two weeks. She was talking to the YASC group, therefore a group of Christians who are about to embark on adventures the world over. "We're meant to be on the road," she said. As Christians sitting down and being complacent with our personal faith is not enough. Though at times that is perfectly acceptable. The apostles and first disciples did not do this. Albeit they needed a kick from the Holy Spirit, but they eventually got to work in spreading The Gospel across the 1st century world. Today missionary work has changed. We are not going to evangelize and proselytize to the masses, like some certain groups do when you're trying to sleep in on Saturdays. Instead we are going abroad to integrate ourselves into a different Anglican community to change ourselves and do the work we have been assigned to effect change, no matter how small it may seem to us at first.

For the past two weeks I have been at Stony Point Retreat Center in an grey area of Metro New York City and Upstate New York. I had the opportunity to grow and build relationships with about 26 other YASCers and adult missionaries. We ate together, had a roommate, took trips into the city, did lectures and training together. And through all of these things we learned that to be a missionary today one does not go around with tracts and Bibles but through work, love, and understanding. We should not talk but we need to listen. We should not do, do, do, but always be in present. It was hard leaving them yesterday. My eyes watering as the two early groups left. Most of whom I will not see again until later next year. But we all will be together in spirit and our love for one another with be taken with each of us to our mission fields.



Photos above:
1) My fellow YASCers conversing on the main lawn of the Stony Point Retreat Center
2) Welcome sign at St. Paul's Chapel -Downtown Manhatten
3) Stained glass window at Eldridge Street Synagogue-Lower East Side, Manhattan
4) "The Cross is the World's Medicine", Holy Cross Monestary, West Park, NY