Plans For What's Next.

The world is a big place and for the past year and a half I've been excited to see more of it. All of my life I've grown up in the same neighborhood, hanging out with the same sort of people, cracking the same sort of jokes, reading the same sort of books and watching the same sorts of movies. Because I've read alot I've always been aware that just over the horizon were people and cultures as different from me as night is from day. My reading awakened in me a hunger to go, to explore to become apart of those peoples lives and do my level best to understand these people and their cultures. 

For along time that hope was nothing more than a dream; some shadow on the fringes of my daily existence. Slowly that shadow has stepped into the light of day. As I went from homeschooling to a private school to an online college to graduating college one year after high school my dreams for my future slowly began to take actual shape. The process of manifestation has revealed a reality different from the dream I had while I was in high-school and college. As a student I wanted to go, and live and travel and study. I wanted to ride horses through the Mongolian steppes and hear Orthodox monks chant their liturgy that dates back a thousand years.While these are still very real desires which one day I'd like to satisfy. For now the more important desire is one for understanding. I want to talk to people, to read their great books, to learn their language and discover their mysteries. My culture and my relationship with God has left me with powerful beliefs about the nature of our world, the definition of truth and the reality of God's form and existence. I want to test my beliefs in the context of another culture, in a religious, political and social environment entirely different from what I've grown up in.

The Five pagoda temple built before two generations before the United States ever existed.

To live and exist in a culture other than my own will test my beliefs, will shape them and cultivate them. I'm so excited for the man I will be twelve months from now when I may or may not come home depending on how it goes. God has been so kind to me, so very merciful. I have an everlasting stream of reasons to be thankful for all the things God has seen fit to give me as I've gone through this process. The truth that if God is on your side you can never fail has been proved again and again. Initially I was not so excited to go to China. Of all the countries in East Asia, China was the last on my list to teach in. As I've thought more though China is in many ways ideal for my purposes. China is the oldest culture in East Asia rich in lore and wisdom. It's culture dates back to long before the birth of Christ and it's sages have meditated on truths that the west with it's Christian hedonism has long since forgotten.  In addition China is in many respects the political and social opposite of the United States, a perfect environment to experiment with my belief structure. 

Writing about it makes my excited. There is much to be excited about in my life and in yours. I go now to prayer. Thanks all of for your support and kindness may the peace of God be with you.