Horas from Indonesia

This post is a brief hello to say that I have made it and am doing well on my 3rd day here. After 28 hours of travel time, I finally arrived in Medan (Indonesia’s 3rd largest city and provincial capital of North Sumatra) on Sunday morning, April 1st. We spent the night there and then traveled by car to Balige on Monday. Because of traffic and a windy road with potholes, the journey took about 7 hours.

Enjoy these two photos below. First, one in Medan, then one of some of the students singing as I arrived at the HKBP Deaconess School. Stories, more photos, and video (I hope) to come.

enjoying fresh coconut

the students sing their greetings

L I M I N A L__S P A C E

LIMINAL SPACE

clickety-clack, clickety-clack
this train ride at the threshold
has no time of arrival
and no certainty of where it will stop.

clickety-clack, clickety-clack
let the rhythm of the rails take hold.
stare out the window
hour after hour
and think: oh, the places you’ll go!
welcome to the liminal space,
an expansive neither here nor there.

clickety-clack, clickety-clack
what more to do
but let go and sit back.
come, make yourself at home.
let the rhythm of the rails take hold
here in the liminal space.

I wrote the above as a result of my train ride from Seattle to Portland yesterday. It’s not even what I’d consider a finished poem (and I don’t write poetry often), but I share as part of my process. I’ve taken that route many times before, and I know: whether rain, shine, fog, or in that case, snow, there is never a shortage of beautiful views from the tracks. The above photo is of the south end of the Puget Sound. From the train I watched the snow fall into the Sound. It struck me odd that it is mid-March, and snowing in a region where little snow falls, and yet I’m told on that very day it was above 70 degrees in South Dakota.

Sometimes, things don’t turn out as we expect. It’s mid-March and the mild winter has some things topsy-turvy. It is mid-March and I am not in Indonesia as I once expected. I use the words “liminal space” to describe where I am. It is a place at the threshold, between two worlds. Soon, I hope I will cross over the threshold (via the Pacific Ocean and the International Date Line) into a new life.

Of Visas and Paperwork

Let the paperwork begin! This post is a quick update about my progress to Indonesia. I am now in the midst of completing the necessary paperwork for the ELCA as well as assembling some initial documents to send off for the visa.

For the visa, what I need at this time is diplomas and my TESL certificate. Then, I shall wait to hear what other stack of documents I’ll need to produce.

The photo is the student visa from the year I studied in Tuebingen, Germany. That visa is in a well-loved and well-used passport that expired earlier this year. Yes, I have a close relationship with all of my passports lined with the varied stamps and visas I have acquired in my travels throughout my lifetime. Like a photo album, each stamp has a story or multiple stories.

I am eagerly awaiting the stories yet to come from Indonesia and the other travel I may make in SE Asia while I live there. My renewed passport has empty pages and a stiff newness that needs to be broken in, stamped, and a fresh visa to cover the ueber-patriotic background.

Stay tuned.

Twenty-Two

For a little bit of insight into the past year of my life, I share this number. Twenty-two is the number of US states I have been to since September 2010. Well, the number is actually 23 counting the District of Columbia, which isn’t a state (but should be).

Here they are, in no particular order: Washington, Oregon, Idaho, California, North Dakota, Illinois, Indiana, Wisconsin, Michigan, Minnesota, Iowa, Nebraska, Georgia, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Virginia, the District of Columbia, Maryland, Oklahoma, Texas, Tennessee, and Kentucky. The final four being states I hadn’t been to before.

How is it that I managed to visit nearly half the 50 US states within 12 months? Mostly because I had a temporary job as a traveling recruiter for the Lutheran Volunteer Corps (LVC), something similar to AmeriCorps. For six months, between September ’10 and February ’11, I was paid to travel, back and forth from DC (where LVC’s main office is located), to universities across the country, seeking young people interested in committing a year of their lives to intentional community, sustainability, and social justice.

For the job, I traveled via planes, trains, and automobiles; I attended career fairs, some specifically for non-profits/service work; held a few information sessions; sat at tables during lunch time; met with campus ministries; contacted career centers at universities LVC had never been to before; and, of course, spent many hours planning travel arrangements, and contacting various people.

It was seriously an amazing (and at times, stressful) series of trips: places in WI, IL, IN, OH in early October; southern CA in late October; MN, IA, and NE in Nov; San Francisco, the Bay Area, and Fargo, ND in early February; TN and GA in late Feb; and many more in between. In the months since returning to Seattle in March, I have traveled quite a bit too, though not nearly as often.

Why does this matter now? In many ways, I have not had the typical year: I left my home in Seattle, packed most of my belongings into storage, and spend half of the six month job living in DC and the other half on the road. Travel has, of course, always been a passion of mine, and I already was well-traveled. This position offered me the unique opportunity to combine work with travel—to talk about an organization I care about, while seeing friends and family along the way.

As I reflect on what it will mean to leave the country for 2 years, I am grateful for all the time to see cities, family, and friends across the country I would otherwise have not been able to see in a year’s time, and could not afford to see now.

The travel in twenty-two states (plus DC) stirred discernment within me, and the decision to apply for global mission became clear just days after returning to Seattle in March. Global mission had been on my mind for a number of years, and I realized this was the time to go for it.

So tonight I give thank to a stressful, yet amazing year of opportunity, blessing, and travel, and look forward to the years to come.