I've made it! I'm alive, and it wasn't all that bad! I've been in Vancouver for a little over 24 hours now; and since I had a final thoughts before leaving, I'm going to jot down a few initial thoughts after arriving.
First and foremost, I have to apologize to my family because I don't usually take the time to say a good heartfelt goodbye - I'm bad at it, and I really just don't like it. It's not that I don't care enough to say a "proper" goodbye, I just prefer things to be quick and painless. I've seen many families hug it out and sob for hours, but I'm really not about that. Sorry if you disagree with me, it's just not my style. And quite frankly, I'm a guy and I have an ego to protect whether I like it or not. The crying in public thing... nah. Finally, I just don't believe in saying the type of goodbye where it seems like we'll never see each other again.
When I landed, I was pretty tired, as I didn't really sleep much the night before leaving. As you can tell from my last post, I really was not feeling well. But thanks to being so joyfully greeted by my cousins, I was able to get excited pretty quickly. We went to Aberdeen, because it was close to the airport, for supper, and then we got back to Jon's place to get settled in. It's amazing how much more at ease I am just because I have family here, people I know and can trust. I never had that in Calgary, so settling in was difficult. I feel right at home already.
I didn't go to Newbern this morning because I wanted to take the opportunity to visit another church one last time before I'm basically stapled to the one I work at.
Over the next couple days, I hope to get a couple things sorted out before starting work and moving into my place. There's not a whole lot that I have to apply for or transfer over from Alberta; the only actual things I need to get changed is to apply for a BC health card and a new driver's license. Other than that, I think I'm pretty well set and ready to begin.
The first thing I'll need to get over as soon as I can is that I'm not here in Vancouver for vacation anymore. When I landed, the flight attendant was doing her usual thing by talking through the intercom, and the part that I caught was: "if Vancouver is home, welcome home!" I thought to myself, yeah, this is home now. And I'll need to keep reminding myself this over the next while because everything seems way too surreal now. Also, this is the third time I've come to Vancouver in the last three months - the feeling is familiar. This city has always been a place I associated vacation with. However, this has all changed now as I learn to adopt it as my new home.
About my job, I've already been asked two or three times today at 5 Stones of how I feel moving down and starting my first pastoral job. I thought about it each time and I really didn't have a feeling I could give an answer to. I'm not really feeling nervous, not overly excited, not anxious, not much. So, I guess if I really had to give an answer, I'd say that I'm feeling quite relaxed.
I have to thank God for allowing me to feel this way, because if I take the time to look at what's in front of me, I have every reason to be freaking out. But as I told one of the people that asked me about how I feel today, it's probably better that I don't feel anything as opposed to being overwhelmed by the culture shock and the task that's laid out in front of me. Another word that came to mind was "suppressed." All my thoughts and emotions seem to have been surpressed since arriving. I think that there's a good chance I will feel the effects of them maybe a month later or a couple months later, but as of now, I really do feel a peace inside of me.
Not only that, but I already feel that drive and passion begin to burn inside of me, telling me that this is what I need to work on, this is where I have to go, this is what I need to do to get there. Let me be the first to tell you, with what I've been challenged with in the first 24 hours of being here, I'm going to struggle the crap out of it. But you know what, this comes with the cost of being a disciple, and I'm okay with that. My end goal is to be like Christ, so I don't really care what hurdles are in the way, I know I have to get over them even if there are times I don't want to.
So to sum it up a little bit, I feel good. I feel encouraged, excited to be starting a new journey. I feel challenged, knowing how I need to shape myself to be in the position I need to be for this job. I feel blessed, being given everything I need, from family to resources. And, I feel thankful, having come this far in my young life because God has called me here.
When I move into my place, you can look forward to an MTV Cribs syled tour of my suite! It'll be awesome.
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