Leaving on a Jet Plane... (so they tell me)

Well it has just been forever since I've written, goodness. A quick one-word summary of the time that has passed since I last wrote is: crazy! The semester absolutely flew by. I find myself now regretting that I willed it by so quickly in order to get on to what I deemed the more exciting upcoming part of my life. It was the hardest semester I've had so far, by far. Although I lucked out and had no exams this semester, the papers and reading were quite overwhelming. I remember asking many people for advice on how to handle it all and how to get everything done. But I did it! I got through it and did amazingly well :) I took it one day at a time and didn't focus on the grades, just the learning part. I learned so so much and I LOVED my classes. I read some amazing books, had some incredible discussions and was challenged in so many ways. Which explains that while I'm glad the workload is over, I was not quite ready to be done with the semester. The good-byes were also tough. I will miss my residents quite a bit and my friends were tough to see go as well. I will miss my graduated friends dearly and I cannot wait to see where their lives take them! I hope my path will cross with theirs many times over in the future. I have also said good-bye (for now) to many other amazing people. I will also miss them dearly and wish them the best. So the semester ended and I came home and crashed for a few days-read, slept, helped my dad in the yard, hung out on the deck, slept, and then began to pack and get organized and ready to go for the next year or so. And so the past two weeks have been filled with list making, shopping, saying more good-byes to local friends, and gathering things up to take with me. As the date of departure gets nearer and nearer, I find myself getting more and more nervous... It's weird that I have been planning and counting down until my departure on my adventures for so long, but now that it is within reach, I am quite nervous. Yes, of course I am excited, but I really am leaving for over a year. That's a long time and I'm already missing people... So I leave tomorrow for YouthWorks. I have like 12 hours left at home! That's it! I'm flying to Denver in the morning where I will have a week of training. Then on Saturday morning, I will depart with my staff (which consists of 3 other amazing people) and drive from Denver to San Francisco, where I will be for the entire summer! For those of you who don't know, YouthWorks is a non-demominational organization that facilitates mission trips for middle school and high school youth. They have around 80 sites all around the U.S. that church groups (also from all around the U.S.) travel to for a week of service and spirituality. I went on 6 mission trips with them in middle/high school. I will be working as an Urban Staff member for the summer and I will be in charge of anywhere from 10-25 ministry sites ranging from homeless shelters, food shelves, kids programs, nursing homes, etc. I will be in charge of managing the sites that we send our participants to and dictating who goes where and when. It's going to be crazy and a whole lot of work! I can't wait to meet members of the community, my staff, the participants, and everyone else that crosses my path this summer! Prayers for energy, efficiency, patience, dedication, and my sanity would be great :) At the end of the summer, I'll drive back to Denver with my staff, and then we'll have a couple of days there to wrap everything up and then I'll be flying back to MN on the night of August 10th. Then I have a couple of days in MN until I leave again for Kenya on August 13th. It's going to be an insane couple of days to say the least. During the summer, I shouldn't be hard to get in contact with. There's my blog, first of all which I will try my hardest to update often. Then there is my cell phone which I'll have all summer so feel free to call! My email address is: mtkaempffer@csbsju.edu and I'll be checking that often so use it! I'm not sure what my address is in SF, but as soon as I get it, I would LOVE, LOVE, LOVE to receive letters from anyone and everyone!!! I also have Skype (my main form of communication in Africa) and my username is: kaemp002. Otherwise facebook is always cool :) Please keep me updated on all of your amazing lives! Even if I can't respond right away, I would love to hear about it! I want to quickly reflect on a question recently posed to me. Our theme for the summer is "Free"- and more specifically the verse from Galatians 5:13-14. "You, my brothers and sisters, were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge the sinful nature; rather, serve one another humbly in love. For the entire law is fulfilled in keeping this one command: "Love your neighbor as yourself."" I was asked this: What is it that you need to be free from? I'm struggling with that question a lot right now, because I feel like I need to be free from so much in order be to able to focus solely on loving my neighbors as myself. Life offers so many distractions which prevent me from wholly dedicating myself to this experience and the community that I will be serving in this summer. But I feel as if I am not ready to detach myself from these things right now. Like the incredible people that I have surrounded myself with and gotten so close to and learned so much fun. I'm not sure that I was ready to say good-bye (or as Ashleigh says, 'see you later') just yet and I feel that I am leaving with many strings attached to these people. These distract me from being fully present to my experience. While I don't need to forget these people, I need to move forward and be free enough to be completely present to my work and my service this summer. I also feel that way about CSB. I felt really sad leaving a place that has been so instrumental in my growth and learning and I have a deep love for the place. But like the people in my life, I need to move forward and be okay with leaving it for right now. Because I'll be back. I also need to be free from old habits, unhealthy relationships, sarcasm, and negative feelings in order to be fully present to the experience and in order to lower my barriers and humbly be able to love others as myself. Freeing myself from all of this won't be easy, but I am trying... Prayers for this would be nice as well :) Alright then, I have so much more to say about random things-ideas that I've been toying with and such-but I want to go and spend some time with my family before I leave tomorrow. Thanks for reading and I miss you very much! Next update as soon as I can!