Young Adults Find Strength at Urbana 2009

This week, while most of us are taking the Christmas tree down, finishing up the last of our holiday turkey and helping the kids figure out their newest Wii game, a group of young adults from Trinity are, literally, on a mission.

Urbana 09 is taking place in St. Louis, one of the largest gatherings of college students and young adults ever to be assembled with a common agenda: learning about tangible ways to connect God's work with their own interests and gifts, and putting them to practice.

One of our young adults, Heather Apperson, sent our Eric Brown a letter shortly before Christmas, and her perspectives fit perfectly with the mission of Urbana. here is an exerpt, full of testimony, faith, and feeling. Heather lives in Juneau for the present. Our young people return at the New Year, and we can't wait to hear all they have received, and what they are about to give in Jesus' name.

"This semester has been packetd full of adventures while exploring the Tongass, the Inside Passage, and the Juneau Ice Field. God and I have had many conversations, and one that always came up was my feeling of restlessness. No adventure was ever enough...deep in my heart I didn't want to trust God in what he asked of me...

...After a series of near misses (while out on adventures) I began to see that I, Heather Apperson, was far from invincible and eternity could be just a moment away...To make a long story short, I chose God, and I wanted to find a way to get my foot in the door and follow my calling, and that is how I heard about Urbana. I'm excited to see how my gifts and talents that will reveal God in a world that has not experienced His hope, love, mercy, and grace. I am here, waiting to see what God's great adventure has in store for me."

What Makes a Wonderful Life?

My husband and I take a holiday time-out each year to view the Christmas classic "It's a Wonderful Life" starring my favorite every-man actor, Jimmy Stewart. The story is an old one; a man, reaching the deepest depths of despair, believes that the world would be a better place without his (what he perceives anyway) minor contributions.

As the story unfolds and a bumbling but truly gifted almost-angel leads George Bailey around a town that, indeed, does not know this frenzied and probably crazy individual, we see how one man's presence touches another's, and another's, and still more, until an entire community is poised to utterly and completely be full of the bounty George Bailey poured from his own gracious cup of kindness.

Remember the scene where George is being asked to carry on after his father's early death? Standing in a spartan office that now belongs to him, George takes a moment to stare at a framed sampler on the wall. It says "All you can take with you is that which you've given away..." I've watched this movie a thousand times and never before noticed the words or paid attention to their meaning.

Service, empathy, joy, sacrifice.

Love, from the Inside, Out. That's what makes life wonderful. George, the richest man in town, figured it out. Have you?

Polar Plunge Success

Here are some photos from the 2009 Special Olympics Alaska Polar Plunge, held last weekend at Goose Lake.

Hundreds of individuals (four of them attend Trinity; Daniel and Sarah Fink, Karl Bruening, and Eric Brown) jumped and splashed their way into, and out of, Goose Lake in single-digit (almost zero, really) temperatures in support of Special Olympics. Daniel, in particular, was a driving force behind his East High School team, and gained our vote for most inspirational teenager...

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