It's always hard to say 'Goodbye'

"Tanner! I missed you! You came back!" I heard the voice before I felt the small arms wrap around my waist. I looked down into the beautiful brown eyes of six year old Peyton as she took my hand and led me to the front of the Boys and Girls Club. Her face was beaming as she paraded me around as her best friend who had finally come back to visit. This was my third or fourth time at the Boys and Girls Club but, those times I had been there I really connected with this particular student. "Can I have that?!" She asked as she noticed the little Youth Specialties flash light on my key chain and knowing this was my last day at this site I decided to let her have the light. Her smile grew as she analyzed the flashlight I had put into her hand and she skipped to her classroom. After 5 minutes of making sure that everyone was situated I made my way to Peyton's classroom to say my final goodbye. As I entered the room we made eye contact and it was as if she knew what was coming and she began to tear up. I hugged her several times as I explained how I would be leaving New Orleans and she would be starting school soon so I would not see her anymore. With tears in her eyes she hugged me one last time as I told her the flashlight was a gift so she could remember me.
I walked out of that building praying and hoping that Peyton would have a good life. That she would realize she is an amazing daughter of God and has so much great potential. She greatly impacted my life.

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"I should have bought her flowers!" Eric, an intellectually disabled worker, sang for the fifth time as he presented one of the girl volunteers at Arc with fake Mardi Gras flowers. Eric had been doing the move all morning and many people were getting tired of it but, I could not help but smile at him. He loved this song and he loved the attention it gave him. At the beginning of the summer Eric was the last worker at Arc that I thought I'd get to know and yet through the weeks we had developed a friendship. It was tradition for me to lose at a thumb wrestling match every Monday and greet him by yelling, "Eric!" when I entered the room. We would always talk about what songs he liked and occasionally he would invite me to sing with him in his toy microphone. I will never forget serving alongside Eric this summer.

At the end of the day as I said my goodbyes to our volunteer coordinator and community cookout singer, Margie Perez, I could not help but feel a desire to return to Arc one day to reconnect with Eric, Mike, and Peter and to see how Margie is doing. This site has been one of my favorite service sites to work at even though most of the work is just sorting recycled Mardi Gras beads. The work was pretty easy but, it was the relationships that made this site such an amazing one to go to. I will never forget seeing students dance to the Wobble as the worker Mike showed them how to. I will never forget quiet Peter who had a great heart but never said too much. And I will never forget the memories made at this amazing organization where we sorted around 3,000 pounds of beads per day.

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"Hey Tanner!" As I looked up a piece of cake hit the side of my face before I could process what happened. In the middle of our staff meeting Rebekah had taken a piece of birthday cake and shoved it in my face. This led to an all out cake war among our staff as we ran through the halls after each other during church group time. By the end of the fight our faces were covered in cake and there was frosting all over the ground. This was just one of the crazy, random things we would do at our late night staff meetings. We have grown so much over the past summer and it is hard to believe that our time together is coming to an end after next week. 

This line of thinking has put me in a contemplative mood all weekend. My thoughts have been wandering around concepts of community, longevity, and intentionality. This summer has shown me how important it is to invest into the community you are ministering in. It is not healthy to invest into people's lives only to leave shortly after. Now I am not saying that only living some place for a summer is a bad thing but, it has helped me transition to the mindset of finding a community to invest in for a while. I went into this summer with the idea that my ideal job would be being a nomad and traveling all over the world for a couple months at a time. Nothing is wrong with that idea but, this summer has shown me that my passions for youth, community, and development require commitment, longevity, and intentional community. As much as I have a love for traveling and wandering the world I need to find a community where I feel led to invest in. I do not want to always be saying "goodbye" to the Peytons, Erics, and YouthWorks teams in my life. 

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All of this talk of community has shown me how important it is to invest in the local community in which I live. This coming school year will be my senior year and I want to leave Mount Vernon knowing that I invested myself in that community. I have done a decent job of doing that on campus but, now my challenge for myself is to become more invested and involved in the local community of the town. I want to get involved with programs for lower income children. I want to get involved with programs like the Arc of Greater New Orleans. I want to find ways to help the homeless and be relational with them. I will commit to my community during this final year of school. It will be hard to let go and move on with my life at the end of this year but, I am ready to give this final year my all. I am ready to truly invest my senior year into the community as one of MVNU's Student Mentors. 

These are simply my thoughts on the ending of a summer in New Orleans and the need for community. 

Community on the 4th

11:30am-woke up. It was the first real sleep in day I've had in almost 2 months and it was July 4th. The day that fills me with so much conflicting emotions. I love living in the US and I know there is a lot of need here, but there is something about patriotism and nationalism that does not sit well with me. Yes, I know that is something I should work on...it would be good to be patriotic at least on the fourth. That's the mentality that I started my holiday with. For the first time in forever I was massively missing home and everyone was all busy doing their own patriotic festivities. I was not ready for an adventurous day, I was just wanting to sit home, drink coffee, and read all day.

Nevertheless, my team wanted to dress patriotic and go adventuring around town. For the sake of community I joined their festivities but, I was not that happy about it if we are being completely honest. Despite my disappointment that was the best decision that I could have made. 

After exploring the city we ended up at the French Quarter--which is so different to be at without students all around us. As we were walking along the Mississippi River we started hearing someone preaching the gospel. I immediately was turned off by what I was hearing because I am not a fan of that form of evangelism; luckily my team does a great job at keeping my attitude in check and reminding me that there are other great forms of evangelism than what I prefer. They had the idea of going up and listening to the message. We learned this group was called R.A.V.I.N. and that they had a church on Bourbin street which is exactly the kind of place that would need Christians at it. We got to talk with two of their members--Chloe and PT--which allowed us get to know more about their ministry and to pray with them. Because of my team I was able to get to know fellow Christians instead of judging their megaphone evangelism methods. They're still people, still need love, and are striving to build God's kingdom like I am.  

After this grand adventure we met up with one of the Episcopal youth groups from our previous week. We watched the fireworks and just hung out and spent time getting to know them. I learned so much about the teens, the Episcopal church, and youth ministry in general. It felt so humanizing to hang out with this group outside of work and get to know them all. It was exactly what I needed. They provided the community that I was yearning for on this 4th of July. 

After 2 hours of walking around the French Quarter and conversing with this amazing group, we departed from them to get Froyo and get to know each other more. As we walked down Canal street, around midnight, we took a journey down memory lane to our high school years. We grew closer as a team in the late hours of the night. My day of boredom was redeemed by community. Community is what we're made for.