traveling

Well, I've got the itch again here lately to travel. It has been, after all, almost a year since I've been anywhere overseas. I still remember when I first came home from my big trip and I was perfectly content to just stay in Sarasota for a while. That has since passed now. I'm ready for some crazy adventure where I go to a new country and am left to fend for myself and find my way around. Also, I desperately need to do some couchsurfing soon. Maybe if I just did that in Florida it would fill my travel void that I'm currently experiencing.

Thankfully, I did some traveling yesterday and am now at my parents' house in Illinois. So that's at least something. Seems like if I don't cross some ocean soon though, I'm going to explode. Okay, okay, maybe I'm exaggerating a bit there but you get the idea. My life gets so boring when I'm stateside it seems. Now, I realize that stability is good for me but geez, I need something exciting to look forward to, ya know?

Hopefully I'll be going to Turkey this next summer if I ever hear back from that particular missionary that I've been in contact with. I also want to go back to the Czech Republic to see my friends Rob and Audrey but I don't know if I'll have money enough to do both this time around. Maybe I should skip Turkey and just do some touring around again. Turkey would be a cool place to go but it would be fun to be constantly on the move like I was this past year. It can get tiring yes, but it's a lot of fun to see a lot of different sights in a short amount of time.

Where does this need for travel come from? I really have no idea. We took some trips when I was growing up but I didn't go overseas until I was out of college and on my own. My pastor wants me to lead a mission trip somewhere but that has proven much more difficult to organize than just worrying about one person to take care of. Hopefully something will work out with that this upcoming summer as well. I just seem to have a really hard time generating interest, which I put on myself. Apparently I've failed at making a trip look worthwhile and meaningful, I don't know. I'm trying to talk to a couple of different people about shorter trips as those should be more manageable for people I would hope. I don't know if I should focus more on the youth group students or adults, I'd prefer to take adults so I'm not liable but many adults don't seem to have the time to do it so that presents a problem. Either way something needs to happen with it. My job is to get people involved with service in our church and I feel like I've failed for the most part with that particular role. We have a few people at different service projects but not nearly as many as I'd like to see.

Maybe after my 1 year term is up I'll just go back to teaching full time and let someone else who is better at organization take over the director of service that I currently lead in. There is something to be said for working in one's strengths and I certainly don't feel that I've had that opportunity with this job. If anything I've been working out of my weaknesses, which is probably why I feel so much frustration with it. This past week my friend Brandon and his wife were down in Florida visiting so I got to hang out with them quite a bit. I started talking to Brandon about my role at the church and didn't realize just how much of a failure I felt like within that role until I started talking out loud about it. My pastor means well in hiring me but I just don't know if I'm up to the task of getting all our people involved with serving. Serving is inconvenient, so much so that a lot of people simply aren't willing to do it at all. When I started the job I was hoping to change that but I have failed miserably at that part of my job unfortunately. Then again, change takes time so I have to remember that of course.