On the Road Again

My dad and I started out from Baton Rouge yesterday morning and since then, we have made it through Louisiana, Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Colorado, and are now in Laramie!

In that time, we have listened to about 25 “Classic Rock” or “Good Times Oldies” radio stations, broken out into song over “Oklahoma, where the wind comes sweeping down the plains” and “Somwhere Over the Rainbow,” answered Trivial Pursuit questions for a couple of hours, stared vacantly out the window thinking that Dallas traffic/ cornfields/ wheat fields/ Kansas would never end, sung along to all of Les Miserables, wondered if those shapes in the distance were clouds or mountains, and visited The World’s Largest Prairie Dog in Kansas (with petting zoo! Kids get in free!), and lamented about Jordan Jefferson (LSU quarterback) being so stupid as to get thrown off the team!

The last time I was this far west was in fourth grade. So that has been a long time! I enjoy seeing different bits of the country zoom by (even Kansas, though it did have an unfortunate habit of going on forever!). Now we’re getting into really neat mountains and rock formations. Makes me think of words like craggy and desolate and windswept and rugged. Like there needs to be a dusty figure in the distance on a horse or something. Tomorrow, after seeing them in the distance for a while, we finally get into the real Rocky Mountains! I just pray I don’t get too carsick…but it will be absolutely gorgeous! And then, finally, we’ll be in Salt Lake City!

 

Commissioning and Home

So the day before yesterday, I and my fellow Young Adult Missionaries were officially commissioned to go forth in the world to do God’s work all over the world. It was such a moving experience for all of us to be together one last time before all going our separate ways. Even our fellow missionary in Uganda who could not make it to training due to Visa issues with the State Department was able to join us on Skype. Oh, the wonders of modern technology! All of us processed in to the Interchurch Center Chapel singing “All My Days” which we had been practicing for the past couple of weeks and was firmly lodged in our collective brains! (as was the step-step-step clap-clap! processional). Along with mentally going over the “Go here. Then over there. Then sit in these chairs. And when you get up, make sure you have these slips of paper, then kneel, and then when you stand there, say this bit, then wait, then say this other bit” directions, it was a moving and beautiful way to gather us in along with the congregation there and those at home watching the live feed. And then when we were kneeling and got prayed over by everyone from Bishop Ward to the General Secretary to our fellow missionary who was kneeling beside us, I just have no other words for the experience other than moving and powerful and awe-inspiring.

And then once the service was over and we were vested with our anchor crosses (the symbol of the General Board of Global Ministries of the United Methodist Church), it was very cool to think that we were now very much a part of something much, much greater than we were, even the 25 of us. And suddenly, I was in the cab on the way to the airport, looking at all of the scenery of the city (and feeling slightly squashed in between luggage and two of my fellow missionaries. Thankfully we were close friends by that point!). It was deeply odd to think that the end of the journey of training and the beginning of my journey home and then to Salt Lake City would happen in such a mundane and deeply boring place like the security line at the airport. But once I got through security, it became anything but boring as I happened to strike up a conversation with two fellows who were on their way to do some bow hunting in South Africa (this is why I just love people watching. Wow!). And then I was on the plane…and then another plane…and then I was home! What a wonderful feeling to be in my very own bed in my very own room after a long but beautiful day!

 

A Poem and a Prayer

So today, I have been thinking about a poem and a prayer written centuries apart but crazily relevant not only to my personal journey but to many. The first is a prayer my campus minister used to use quite often as it applied to most if not all college students. It was written by Thomas Merton, a 20th century Trappist monk and theologian (or so Google told me):

From Thomas Merton, a prayer

My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going.
I do not see the road ahead of me.
I cannot know for certain where it will end.
Nor do I really know myself,
and the fact that I think that I am following your will
does not mean that I am actually doing so.
But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you.
And I hope that I have that desire in all that I am doing.
I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire.
And I know that if I do this you will lead me
by the right road though I may know nothing about it.
Therefore will I trust you always
though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death.
I will not fear, for you are ever with me,
and will never leave me to face my perils alone.

I am definitely feeling a lot of uncertainty and fear and excitement and crazy emotions in there that I don’t even know how to name. But I suppose right now I’m concentrating on packing, then commissioning, then flying, then more packing and visiting and then moving and then unpacking. A distinct list of tasks is quite helpful!

The poem which has been on my mind since this morning is the well-loved Robert Frost number:
1. The Road Not Taken

TWO roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

My hopes are that by taking the road less travelled by, through God, we can make all of the much needed difference. What a journey we are all undertaking in the coming days. But we are there to support each other and lift each other up, which will also make all the difference!

 

Greetings!

Hello! My name is Marjorie Hurder and I am a US-2 Young Adult Missionary with the General Board of Global Ministries of the United Methodist Church being sent to be a Social Justice Advocate at Crossroads Urban Center in Salt Lake City, Utah. I grew up in Baton Rouge, Louisiana and attended the University of Southern Mississippi in Hattiesburg.

Gosh, that’s a lot of official titles!

But since that is what this blog is primarily about, it did make sense to start off there. For the past two weeks, I and my fellow young adult missionaries have been training at Stony Point Retreat Center near New York City learning facts, ways to handle conflict, how to live on beans and rice, but more importantly, about ourselves and each other before we all go our separate ways across the US and the world.

This has been the most intense combination of learning, community, fun, and sitting around the U-shaped table having knowledge dumped all over us and trying to take at least some of it in! Two analogies I heard that really apply are having our mouths by a firehose on full blast trying to swallow everything we can and being sheets of craft paper with glue on and having glitter dumped all over us! But since we are together, that makes it much more fun!

Now that we are entering the last week of training, I am definitely feeling some more anxiety as the prospect of moving from the Gulf South to the Mountain West looms ever closer. But I know that I have my friends and family and fellow missionaries and the Global Ministries folks to cheer me on from a distance. But I am also intentionally not making too many assumptions because you know what happens when you assume…

Anyways, it’s been interesting and challenging and fun and intense and insane at training and I know that that will only intensify once I get to Salt Lake City. What an adventure!

 

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