Moving On: What about the relationships?

It took me quite a while to get back on this one. Eventually I knew I had to post something on here to keep this blog going. About a month ago, I took off from my beloved small town of LaMoure, after a two year stint as a youth pastor. If you've ever lived in a small town then you would probably know the effects it had on me. I have rightfully claimed it was by far the best experience I have ever had in my entire life. The main reason supporting this claim is the relationships I established with almost the entire community of over 900 people. To some, that is a pretty small town but there was always more to the town than just a small town label. Apart from that it brought back to the good old memories of growing up in rural Kenya.

Growing up, there was a clear sense of community wherever you went. Whether it was at the village market or the old prairie church or on the corridors of the mud-walled elementary schools, you always never failed to sense somebody was looking out for you. I remember being punished for wrongdoing by people I didn't even know. I remember being aided by people I had never even met. All these happened the moment I arrived in the small town of LaMoure. During my time at the seminary in Kansas City, my fellow students have always wondered what in the world led me to LaMoure and how I survived two winters there. To them it is probably the most fascinating thing that they have ever heard of. To me, it was just another wonderful life experience.

Here is my point. When I first arrived in LaMoure, there was a little curiosity by a lot of people to know who I was and where I came from and some of my stories, both good and bad. After a while, everybody seemed to have known me inside out. There is always a small town mentality where people tend to share stories and spread news very quickly. Suddenly people I had not met or even remembered anything about began to say hello to me and tell how good it was to have me in the town. I was kind of fascinated by that having lived for a while in Nairobi. Life was totally different when I moved to Nairobi in 2003 after high school. It was even hard to know who lived next door no matter how many times you met. So when I came to LaMoure, my values were reinforced and once again I began to develop relationships. I was always taught to value relationships with people no matter where they came from, their background and everything that defined them. Nairobi seemed to have taken that away from me. The teens especially made my life what it is and for the first time I knew that people whom you didn't even know still cared.

Eventually, it was time for me to move on. I had arrived without any friends yet I left having developed many relationships. I don't know how long those relationships will last but I know for sure that they existed at one point in life. Nevertheless, there is only one relationship that can never be broken. The relationship with our Lord and savior Jesus Christ. We have to remember that we are capable of walking away from it but he will never leave us nor forsake us. So you know that I am a true Wesleyan.