Sadly, dear persistent, patient readers, it has been so long since my last post that I have to pull out my calendar to remember just what HAS been going on for so long. Despite my best intentions of frequent writing during this wild, challenging, and thrilling summer, I've scarcely found time, in the midst of reading with the kids of Project Transformation in Charlottesville, hosting my thirteen-year-old cousin Johnathan from Tennessee for a week, journeying to West Palm Beach, Florida for our youth group's annual summer mission trip, spending a week working for job number two at the Catholic Marketing Network Conference in Somerset, NJ, assisting with Vacation Bible School at Hinton Avenue, taking the youth to Lake Monticello for recreation and worship, planning youth activities for the rest of the summer and the fall, looking forward to the Wesley Foundation's fall kickoff activities, and constant work, to breathe for a moment, never mind spend quality time reflecting and recording all that has been happening.

As such, there are about a million topics that seem to be demanding attention in this post, from the deep honor I felt at being invited to Lina's art show at Albemarle High School on July 2 and the new fitness-oriented small group which has developed inside our UMYF over the past few weeks, in which several of the youth and I arise early in the morning to take a few laps around the CHS track, to the brilliance of John Kerry's acceptance speech and all the nuances of this upcoming critical election, which I'm convinced is the most important in our country in a generation or more (and, by the way, let me be the first to reject the old idea that the nation is evenly divided and predict that Kerry will win in a landslide come November).

One story that is far simpler and less controversial comes to mind, however, as a great way to begin catching you up on all that has been going on in the life of this Virginia Gentleman. We worked very hard to make the dream of this youth mission trip to south Florida a reality. There were a number of people, not the least of whom was the senior pastor of our church, who argued that our time and money could be better spent closer to home, working with similar ministries in downtown Richmond or in hurricane-battered eastern Virginia or, at the very furthest, back in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, where we had taken the youth last summer to participate in the UMC's Adopt-a-House program. Convinced that such a trip is less about the work we do (after all, wouldn't it be more efficient simply to send money ahead and let skilled workers spend a day completing the jobs that take us civilians weeks?) or the misguided notion that we can "save" any people or communities, and more about providing an opportunity within our youth ministry program for fun, fellowship, renewal and transformation, that young people simply cannot find any place else, we began raising money early, inviting church and community members, as well as our friends, family, teachers, neighbors, and classmates, to invest in this life-changing mission experience. Through the generous support we received from key donors, as well as a grant from the Virginia Conference's Youth Service Fund (money raised by youth and allocated by youth to support ministries which benefit youth around the world), we were able to make this trip available to all the young people in our church at a cost less than that of last year's journey to Johnstown. The witness of love offered by a group of people from Virginia who had saved money and taken time from their summer schedules to come and lead children's camps, serve in soup kitchens, and work in food pantries in the West Palm Beach/Wellington/Del Ray area, the relationships our young people were able to build with the children and adults they served and with the youth and leaders from St. Peter's and Oceanview United Methodist Churches, and the once-in-a-lifetime experiences we all shared during this week as missionaries and pilgrims (seeing alligators, water buffalo, and other wildlife during our airboat ride through the Everglades, swimming in the beautiful, warm waters of the Atlantic at Lake Worth and Juno Beach, helping a group of underprivileged children, whose families come from Haiti, Mexico, Puerto Rico, Cuba, Africa, and so many other places, prepare for their summer-ending talent show, and so many more...) have, I think, convinced the entire church, which welcomed home a group of nine youth and four adults who were markedly, and noticeably, changed by that they had seen and felt of God's love, that this was truly a worthwhile, grace-filled experience of mission. Before we left, people kept responding with skepticism and suspicion when I told them we were going to work with the poorest of God's children in West Palm Beach, Florida. While my reply that, "Wherever there are rich people, there must be poor people who are propping them up," wasn't enough for most of them, the stories and pictures and ideas that our youth returned with seem to have done the trick.

But back to the story I was wanting to tell. While it might have been slightly cheaper to have driven the 1,000 miles from our church in Charlottesville to St. Peter's church (our host for the week) in Wellington, FL, there was no way I could have convinced myself or promised these kids' parents that it was a safe or smart idea. So we raised the extra money to buy plane tickets. This meant the pretty wild experience of leaving Hinton Ave. at 2am to make our 6:00 flight out of Dulles, and the mildly frustrating challenge of arranging transportation for our group during the week in Florida, but it also allowed grace to come to us in the most surprising places. For most of our youth (and two of my fellow chaperones), this was their very first trip in an airplane, which meant a fair amount of anxiety and questioning, but also quite a lot of wide-eyed wonder. We had one girl who, while we were taxi-ing around the runway preparing for takeoff, was convinced that we had already been in the air for quite some time, and another who occasionally took a break from hiding her face, exclaiming how much she hated flying, and having a pseudo-panic attack to notice how beautiful the clouds looked from the other side or how cool it was to be so high in the air. My favorite moment, however, came just as we were taking off from Dulles. To my great surprise and delight, all of our pre-flight madness had gone off without a hitch (I emailed Alex upon our safe return to Charlottesville to let him know that I credited his brilliant group leadership skills for everything I know about safely navigating airports, worship services, and mission trips with large groups of wandering souls) and we were finally to be on our way. We had managed to grab a couple rows of seats together, so that everyone in our group was able to sit with friends, and just as we lifted off the ground, I heard a glorious round of giggles and applause from a couple rows ahead that unmistakably belonged to to Ms. Ashley Stollings, grade 10, youth group Hinton Avenue.

Each night, after our long days of work and play, we gathered the group for evening devotions, a time of prayer, reflection, rejoicing, and planning that came to mean so much to each of us. One evening, when we were just going around the circle sharing our responses to a question posed by one of the devotion groups, I shared what a joy it had been for me to accompany them on this exciting journey and used that hilarious and poignant midair moment as a sign of all that we had experienced. And I told this brave, creative group of young people how meaningful I thought it would be for them, years from now, that their first flight had been together, with people they know and love, traveling not to a random business destination or on a simple vacation, but to be involved in the ministry of Jesus Christ, to which they had all been called and responded so faithfully.

So many other moments of the past month deserve recounting and celebrating, and perhaps there will be time for that soon, but for now I'm off to plan the retreats and rafting trips and worship services that will conclude this exciting summer of fellowship and ministry for the Hinton Avenue United Methodist Youth Fellowship!

Shalom!