In typical fashion for my team, I got a phone call from my team leader asking if there was any way we could meet up to discuss some team stuff and plan for this next year while they were in the United States. Well, three days later, I was on a plane headed to New York City. A stash of air miles and a cheap ministry guesthouse made it possible.
This is the place where I stayed, a place called Hephzibah House which boards guests who are involved in some kind of full time ministry whether pastors, missionaries or other ministry workers. (so if you fit into this category and need a place to stay in New York City...). The guesthouse is located in Manhattan on the Upper West Side, which made for an ideal location to explore the city as well while I was there.
So, in the mornings I got out to places like the picture above, Cafe Lalo. This is the cafe in the movie "You've Got Mail" where Meg Ryan's character is supposed to meet her mystery friend from the internet. When I visited though, I forgot my copy of Pride and Prejudice as well as my flower. To top it all off, Tom Hanks never showed up. sigh. But, I did get a great (and expensive!) cappuccino and some time to journal. Also in typical New York fashion, while I was sitting in the cafe I was hearing French, Korean, Russian and English being spoken. You gotta love America.
In the afternoons I met with some good friends of mine who are leading our team and work in Central Asia. We had a great time catching up with one another as well as planning, dreaming and praying together for this next year. Those of you who receive my email updates know that there is a lot of things happening this year, so it was good for us to get on the same page and see things moving forward. I will be sending out a newsletter hopefully within this next month to update people, but as a heads up, I will most likely be headed back to Asia earlier than I had originally planned, and therefore have to get my support at a sustainable level before that time...again, these are details for a newsletter to come.
The last day of my trip I took the subway down to the area of the World Trade Center tragedy. I have wanted to pay a visit to this place since the day it happened. This visit was more emotional for me than I had expected. As I walked around the area with other camera-sporting tourists, it was interesting to me that as people walked around the area, there was still a sense of reverence and quiet among them. They talked to each other in near whispered voices. They paused quietly to look upon the construction site where they are working on the foundation for the new building. I felt odd taking pictures because being a tourist there didn't seem appropriate. But, I couldn't leave without taking a few images with me.
I also was contrasting in my emotional capacity, the balance of American patriotism and love for my country, and my love for the people of the nation that was the breeding grounds for this action. Oh how we need reconciliation in this world. And we need more than just memorials, but we need to look each other in the eye, face-to-face and forgive and LOVE. And I believe that that love doesn't come from within ourselves, but from a God who created and loves all the peoples of this world. I want to continue to love the people of both these nations whose history was written together unexpectedly at this location seven years ago. I'll never forget but it's not merely because the tragedy of that day hangs in my memory, it's because the hope of a nation and people in Central Asia is before me every single day.
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