summer

Everyone asks you what you are going to do now that you have graduated.  Normally I joke around and say that I don't know. To be honest, I've never been much of a long-term planner... and it's starting to show.  I always have to know what I'm doing today, or tomorrow, but after that, I like the mystery.  

  

side note: there really is something to keeping the 

path of life unwritten or perhaps writing ten different

 ways that your life could end up. Sure it can be

 scary sometimes but more in a

 "sky-driving-is-so-scary-but-such-an-adrenaline-rush" 

kind of way. 

So while I may not know exactly what my future looks like six months from now, I do know how I'll be spending the next three months of my life... and that is what I'm going to tell you about ... not so you can be insanely jealous (though it's understandable if you are), but so that you can understand what this summer is really supposed to be: the period of finest development, perfection, or beauty previous to any decline. (let's face it, once you hit 25, it all starts to go downhill! [insert eye rolls from anyone older than 40 reading this])

This summer, before my big-kid-life is forced to start, I will get to spend it refining my development, my perfection, and my beauty (all both inside and out) in three of the greatest places on earth: WASHINGTON DC, NEW YORK CITY, and AFRICA!

Granted, I'll only be in DC for two days but I'm hoping those days will bring clarity into what my future looks like three months from now (thank you Beyond BYU 2012).  As for my weekend in NYC...... let's be honest, I just want to play with my fabulous sister! 

The majority of my summer will be spent back in Africa-- Uganda to be exact. I'll be with twenty or so other students and two professors researching everything from ethnicity to micro-saving to child soldiers.   We'll go to Rwanda to visit the Genocide Memorials there; we'll go on a safari; a couple of students and I are even hoping to go to the Refugee camps in the West. It is going to be an INCREDIBLE three months!

 

Now to get serious. I feel like I need to explain why I am going to Uganda this summer. I feel I like I owe an explanation to those people that I'm leaving-- a wonderful boy whose name rhymes with "boa", my friends and family, (heck! I even owe BYU an explanation for putting off graduation!).   

So why am I going? Because.....because....  Have you ever had something that touched you so deeply that it made an imprint on your very soul? your very eternal being?  Well, I have.  And her name is Africa. For reasons I cannot begin to comprehend, Africa is able to reach the deepest part of my soul-- the part that is normally reserved for God alone. 

Maybe it is because it was the conflict in Darfur that I first learned the power of loving strangers as children of God.  Rwanda taught me about strength and charity. Countless others have taught me about about the miracle of forgiveness.  Last summer, Ghana showed me how to hope for a better world, how to have faith.  And Uganda? My beautiful Uganda? Uganda will teach me patience. Uganda will prepare me for the future.  Uganda will steal my heart. Uganda will push me emotionally, spiritually, mentally, academically farther than I've even been... and because of that, Uganda will be the best thing that has ever happened to me. This summer will be the best thing that has ever happened to me.