Goin' Down the Bayou

Hey friends!

This past weekend Lauren, Ashley, Evan (New Orleans YAVA) and I got out of the city and headed southwest to Houma, Louisiana for Voice of the Wetlands, a music festival that promotes awareness of Louisiana's rapidly disappearing coastal wetlands. We arrived on Saturday afternoon to good food and even better music. For a wee bit more on the festival and the wetlands, you can read Ashley's account of the weekend on her blog.

Part of what really made my heart smile, though, is the welcome we received from church members that night and the next morning. Lauren's church for the year is First Presbyterian Church of Bayou Blue (her bosses for the year also happen to be the ministers there), and when we wanted to go to the festival, a church member so very kindly gave us a place to stay Saturday night. Sunday morning we headed to church, arriving to hugs instead of handshakes, honey's and baby's instead of our names, and fair warning that we wouldn't stay thin for long if we stayed around town. (Seriously though, about that last one. The monkey bread at coffee time? Pretty sure it fell directly from Heaven.) After church and fellowship time, we headed to the aforementioned ministers' house and proceeded to sit on their screen porch drinking tea and eating fruit picked from trees in the backyard. Have you ever had a satsuma? Or a persimmon? I had my very first of each on Sunday! Persimmons are very odd. But good. I think.

Even back towards the city, it takes all of half a second for someone to start telling you their whole life story, (and everyone wants to know yours). When Madame Blueberry (That's my car. Named for the Veggie Tales character.) had a dead battery, I learned all about David the AAA guy. About how he grew up here, and this one time he ate a whole bottle of baby aspirin ("ate it like candy!") and had to go to the hospital, but while he and his mama were waiting at the bus stop he fell off the bench and hit his head. All that, and a recommendation for a good sno ball place, just in the time it took to install a new battery.

Anyway. None of this might seem like a huge deal, but it is just so wonderful to be in a place where strangers embrace you as family the second you walk in the door. I'm not saying this is totally unique to coastal Louisiana, but it is certainly something very special (and something quite lovely when you're far away from home).

Love,

Allison

PS- Here's a picture of a bayou where we ate lunch on our way back to New Orleans from Houma. The scenery was extra welcomed, seeing as Lauren's car had just broken down and we'd been on the side of the road for a couple hours...but that's another story for another day.

And, just for fun, here's a little diddy from The Princess and the Frog:

Something Bigger

Hey friends!

In my last post I shared some of my (mostly stressful) thoughts about orientation. Another thing I keep thinking about, though, is how incredibly thankful I am to be part of this little YAV world of ours. I remember hearing about how much it would mean at orientation the first time around, but I feel like I get it now. That's not to say that I didn't realize it was something big last year, or that all the new YAVs can't get it now. But several times during orientation last week I was almost brought to tears with thoughts of YAV friends new and old, the ones that I've known for more than a year now and the ones I've known for just a couple weeks. Despite the rough patches that inevitably accompany a year of service (or any year, for that matter), it is unbelievably comforting to know that you are part of something bigger, and that your friends scattered across the world are, in perhaps slightly different ways, going through similar things. And it lasts longer than just your year (or two) of being a YAV.

Tropical Storm Lee has been making it's way through New Orleans over the past few days, and several YAVs sent texts and messages to make sure we were alright. When my birthday happened during orientation, I found out that my fellow former Nashville YAVs had all signed a card and sent a present for me. When I was at Montreat this past summer, two other small group leaders were YAVAs. None of these are probably huge deals in their own rights, but put together they give me confidence that I am part of something pretty incredible. And as I head out on this journey towards seminary or wherever else I end up, I can rest assured that I will have cherished friends along the way.

One of my fellow New Orleans YAVs shared this quotation (from David Nicholls's novel One Day) with me...

"What are you going to do with your life?" In one way or another it seemed that people had been asking her this forever; teachers, her parents, friends at three in the morning, but the question had never seemed this pressing and still she was no nearer to an answer. "Live each day as if it's your last," that was the conventional advice, but really, who had the energy for that? What if it rained or you felt a bit glandy? It just wasn't practical. Better by far to be good and courageous and bold and to make a difference. Not change the world exactly, but the bit around you. Cherish your friends, stay true to your principles, live passionately and fully and well. Experience new things. Love and be loved, if you ever get the chance. 

So here we go, YAVs and YAVAs all over the place, trying to change the bits of world around us or at least make a little bit of a positive impact. (Because make no mistake, being a YAV changes the way you see the world even after your year is up...at least it did for me.) Probably I won't change the world in New Orleans, but if I can brighten somebody else's day or make the slightest bit of difference then that's good enough for me. If you count all the current and former YAVs and add up all those slightest bits of difference, it counts for a lot. We might not be revolutionizing policy or overturning entire systems of injustice, but all those bits can add up to something bigger. Something way bigger. Just in the US, here's where YAVAs are living now (and before you all think I'm creepy and found/typed in addresses, I found this map on the YAVA blog)...

Blue = one YAVA, yellow = 2-6, and pink = 6+

In the words of Needtobreathe, we're "just tryin' to make the world a little better, you know, shine a light." And we're not trying alone.

Love,

Allison

The House(s) That Built Me

Well friends, I'm home. In Davidson. My year as a Nashville YAV is officially and totally over. I don't think it's really sunk in yet...seems like when I leave in less than a week I should be heading back to Nashville instead of New Orleans. (But that having been said, I'm still super stoked about heading to the Big Easy.)

In other news, my last weekend in Nashville was filled with Furman friends, due to a wedding in town. It was sort of odd, Furman people in my YAV town. But it was also so so wonderful. Most of my friends at this wedding I've known for five years. Which is crazy, if you ask me, that it's already been five years since I started college. But anyway. Despite the fact that I only really got to spend a handful of hours with most of these folks, the day reminded me of how much I truly love them. And despite the fact that I haven't seen most of them since either homecoming in October, or since graduation more than a year ago, we could still sit around and talk just like when we were in Greenville. I'm not the best at regularly talking to people that aren't in the same place as me (oops), but maybe this weekend has made me a little more motivated. 

After the wedding, one of my Furman roomies helped me pack up my stuff and kept me company for the 7.5 hours from Nashville to Davidson. After some coffee and thrift store shopping the next morning, I drove her back to Greenville. I remember thinking, when I went to homecoming, that it was weird being in Greenville and not being a Furman student. It's still just as weird. But we got dinner in at my favorite Greenville restaurant, did some bowling, and had breakfast at another favorite eatery of mine. Then it was back to Davidson for me, where I've gotten to spend some time with high school friends, and I've even seen a couple camp folk. At some point I s'pose I should unpack and re-pack so I can leave on Tuesday. But that's besides the point.

The point is that all this hopping around and seeing all these different groups of friends is that I know some pretty stellar people. The friends I made in middle school, now we can go with our moms to trivia night at the wine room. The friends I made during those oh-so-important college years are still people I hold close to my heart, and the camp friends that gave me a faith community I didn't even know I needed will forever be a part of my life. Then here come the YAV friends, from Nashville and soon from New Orleans, that have transformed me even more. 

On my drive back from Greenville a Miranda Lambert song called "The House That Built Me" came on the playlist I was listening to (a year in Nashville'll do that to ya). If you haven't heard it: in it Miranda Lambert talks all about a childhood home and how she's trying to find herself again, there. I don't feel so much like I need to re-find myself in the five days I have left in Davidson (five days! AH!), but I do think that all of these places I've met my friends (and family) have a large part in who I am today. And whether or not I talk to all of those people on a regular basis, that fact will always be true. I really don't think all the rambling in the world could express how truly thankful I am for that. 

Thanks anyway, though, dear friends and family, for being the houses that built me. Let's stay friends, yeah?

Love,

Allison

Reason(s) for the Season

Well friends, I hope you all had lovely Christmases this year, wherever you spent them. Even though it started out just cloudy and rainy, we ended up getting a little bit of white stuff here in Davidson. :)

There's no doubt Christmas is a hectic time of year, but also inevitable are the requests to remember the "reason for the season." (Namely, the birth of Jesus of course.) These reminders are good, I think, since it's awfully easy to get wrapped up (Ha. Wrapped up? Like a present? Anyway...) in the excitement of Santa, gift-giving, and the host of other secularized traditions. I've been thinking about it though, this year...maybe all the hooplah still has it's benefits. I mean, don't get me wrong, I avoid malls as best I can in December and sometimes all the money people spend on each other seems a bit ridiculous. But Christmas Eve after church, I sat in the kitchen with my parents and brother talking about random stories from our childhood, thinking about how nice it was that we all were sitting there doing that. I feel like even though obviously the reason Christmas exists is to celebrate the birth of Jesus, maybe the not-so-religious traditions can be a benefit of the season too. I'm of the opinion that God means for us to be in community with each other, so having a big turkey dinner (or a brunch, in the case of this year for the Wehrungs) can't hurt, right?

This of course assumes that one has a family with said traditions...or that one has a "family" (whatever that may mean) in the first place. Over at Preston Taylor Ministries (roommate Mary Kate works there), they substituted their traditional angel tree for a "nativity store," where parents of kids in their programs could come pick out gifts and buy them (for a small fee). The idea was to empower the parents, and to eliminate the need for them to rely on the charity (at least as far as Christmas is concerned) of other people simply giving them gifts. We YAVs went over to help with one of the stores on a Sunday night, and it was really incredible to see how much the parents appreciated it being able to be actively involved in what their kids would get on Christmas morning. Maybe if this whole idea of gift giving every December 25th had never been thought up, these parents wouldn't have gotten to experience that. Of course this doesn't mean all of their hardships are solved, but it's something, I suppose.

So maybe this is all just me rambling, but it's just what I've been thinking about these past few days.
See you in 2011!
Love,
Allison