Moving!
I had been leading Young Life at Lloyd Memorial High School in Erlanger, KY for the past four and a half years. I was the varsity cheerleading coach there for the past three years. On a normal week, I was up at the school six days a week. And I loved it. I've met some of my best friends there. Once Dan and I got married, he started leading at Lloyd too (he had lead at two schools previous to Lloyd). I figured we would stay at Lloyd for forever. I started looking at houses in Erlanger, accepted the coaching job for another year and thought nothing would change anytime soon.
We went to Great Wolf Lodge in January of 2014 for a leader weekend. The person in charge of Area Development in the Buckeye Region talked during one of the large group seminars. He spoke about a place called Chillicothe, Ohio. I couldn't understand what he was saying. Chilly coffee? Chilled clothie? Apparently this town didn't have Young Life but a committee had been formed basically out of thin air and they wanted to get the ball rolling. My thoughts were something like, "Wow, that's pretty cool. Sounds like Young Life would do really well there. I wonder if they grow a lot of coffee there. Coffee? I need some of that. I'm sleepy. I don't want to go back to work tomorrow."
...And Chillicothe didn't cross my mind again until our next leader weekend in May. The same area development guy (I learned that his name is Erik) asked to have breakfast with Dan and me one morning. During breakfast, he asked us to consider moving to Chillicothe to start Young Life there. My initial response was no way. I love where I live. I don't want to move to the middle of no where. Nope, nope, nope.
But very shortly after, like within days, I started feeling differently. I started wikipedia-ing (it's a verb) facts and statistics about Chillicothe (which I learned to not only pronounce correctly but also spell). It got brought up more and more in conversation with Dan and I. We ended up visiting it "under the radar" just to kind of get the gist of the town and to see if we could imagine ourselves living there. It was "good", pretty average, not much to it.
A few days passed then two things happened. The first is that we learned that there is no Young Life anywhere in Southeastern Ohio. I just couldn't get out of my mind that there are thousands of high school students that might never get to hear the gospel. Thousands. And that there was an opportunity that God had placed right in front of us to do something about it. And secondly, we met the people. We were introduced to the committee in Chillicothe. And the rest is history. It was over. We were sold.
So we're about to move to Chillicothe. The only people we know there are a few high schoolers and people who are on our committee. We have a house! I'm still looking for a job. And we have God. Cheers to our next great adventure!
We went to Great Wolf Lodge in January of 2014 for a leader weekend. The person in charge of Area Development in the Buckeye Region talked during one of the large group seminars. He spoke about a place called Chillicothe, Ohio. I couldn't understand what he was saying. Chilly coffee? Chilled clothie? Apparently this town didn't have Young Life but a committee had been formed basically out of thin air and they wanted to get the ball rolling. My thoughts were something like, "Wow, that's pretty cool. Sounds like Young Life would do really well there. I wonder if they grow a lot of coffee there. Coffee? I need some of that. I'm sleepy. I don't want to go back to work tomorrow."
...And Chillicothe didn't cross my mind again until our next leader weekend in May. The same area development guy (I learned that his name is Erik) asked to have breakfast with Dan and me one morning. During breakfast, he asked us to consider moving to Chillicothe to start Young Life there. My initial response was no way. I love where I live. I don't want to move to the middle of no where. Nope, nope, nope.
But very shortly after, like within days, I started feeling differently. I started wikipedia-ing (it's a verb) facts and statistics about Chillicothe (which I learned to not only pronounce correctly but also spell). It got brought up more and more in conversation with Dan and I. We ended up visiting it "under the radar" just to kind of get the gist of the town and to see if we could imagine ourselves living there. It was "good", pretty average, not much to it.
A few days passed then two things happened. The first is that we learned that there is no Young Life anywhere in Southeastern Ohio. I just couldn't get out of my mind that there are thousands of high school students that might never get to hear the gospel. Thousands. And that there was an opportunity that God had placed right in front of us to do something about it. And secondly, we met the people. We were introduced to the committee in Chillicothe. And the rest is history. It was over. We were sold.
So we're about to move to Chillicothe. The only people we know there are a few high schoolers and people who are on our committee. We have a house! I'm still looking for a job. And we have God. Cheers to our next great adventure!
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