Who have I become? Extrovert?

Wow, turns out, middle school kids are the awesome. coming to KBF as the youth pastor guy, i was actually really scared of middle school. i had friends in the high school, people that i hung out with and could relate to. not in middle school. i remember the first JAM (that's right: Jesus and Me!! i wanted to change it but almost had a mutiny...) i led: i was terrified! i prepared for like 8 hours, had a manuscript of my talk and everything. and i had no idea who all these kids were. now, if i was forced to choose between high school and middle school, i'd go for middle school in a heartbeat. i love 'em!!

I just got back from the JAM retreat. 2 nights, 3 days in gunma-ken, which had like 3 meters of snow. in spite of realizing yet again that i'm not that good of a planner person yet, and the fact that i thought i didn't like snow, and i got WAY too little sleep, it was pretty much the best time i've ever had. really. for a lot of reasons.

Leaving was hell. i had stuff in my car, stuff in the office, stuff i had to photocopy, stuff in the buildings. the bus pulled up and i was running all over the place. and it was snowing. i was the last person on the bus, after literally sprinting all over campus taking care of last minute details and things i had promised to do. nobody got sick on the way up (praise the Lord) AND i didn't have to put chains on the bus. i'm not sure which i'm more excited about. no, i'm more glad nobody spewed. that makes everyone feel gross.

So at night we'd put the kids in the rooms, threaten them with being smited by God if they talked (seriously), and had our leaders meeting, which pretty much consisted of us talking a little about how we thought the kids were doing, what we were gonna do the next day, and how we were doing. that first night i had to prepare a talk, since one of the gal leaders got sick and couldn't make it. so we're done with our meeting, and some people go to the ofuro (gender-specific, of course), other people go to bed, and some of us stay in the lounge. us in the lounge started talking, naturally, and i ended up talking with lara, one of my gal leaders, for like 3 and a half hours. and even though i ended up sleeping at like 4:30am after not really finishing my talk, and getting up after only 3 hours of sleep, it was totally worth it. i'm pretty tight with a lot of my guy leaders, since i have accountability groups with all but one of them, but i've never really gotten to know my gal leaders that well. and the 3.5 hours talking was really cool.

The next morning was my talk, and i did pretty well, i think. i talked about how according to the example of love given to us by Jesus, love requires sacrifice. and i gave them all a nail so they would remember. and i hung out with some of them on campus today, and they have the nails with them and they still remember what they stand for. amazing. i used cami as the example of the perfect man (i do that alot, actually. he's a good foil for me- i somehow feel that if i used myself as the good example the kids would have a hard time relating to me, so i always use myself as the bad example.) i told stories about my past love life, and contrasted it with cami and deidre, and how i somehow end up trying to get all i can from the relationship, and get freaked out when it no longer serves my purposes, unlike cami, who has gone through some serious emotional battering at the verbal hands of dre (does that even work?)(and i think you're awesome, dre. don't take this the wrong way.)

Then we went snowshoeing for EVER. i was thinking like 3 hours, get back, have a big snow-royale-rumble, have supper, move on with the day. a group of high school kids may have been able to complete what we did in the allotted time, but it would have been rough. we were up there forever. and snowshoes work a very strange muscle just below and to the inside of your hips, which feels weird when it's twitching.

Here's some pictures that might be fun to look at:

the snowshoeing adventure. 18 kids, 6 leaders, and a bus driver
Hikari in the snow
Erika Husby thinking
Hans the exercise instructor
Luke Ozaki snowshoeing
Mary, Hikari, and Tashia freezing
Lizzy
Jared the viking
Flyin' Ryan

While trekking along, a group of kids started straggling a bit, so i ended up back with them, joking with them and trying to get them to forget they couldn't feel their toes, etc. we ended up getting completely separated from the main group- mostly because we stopped to play so much. there ended up being 4 of the 6 leaders in the back group, and we only had 4 of the 18 kids. but man, did we have fun! we found a really steep hill with more fresh, deep snow than has any right to be undisturbed. so, we climbed to the top and jumped down. then we dove down. then we started catapulting eachother down. one of the leaders dove as far as he could and went about 12 feet before he landed. it was awesome!! one of my best memories.

I'll spare you the play-by-play of the rest of the retreat. i felt like i was pretty much always off taking care of something, or getting the props together for the skits, or picking worship songs, and rarely got a chance to just be, except for once in the bath, for like 30 minutes. and even then the gals were throwing snow over the wall. punks...

What was the craziest and most unbelievable thing that happened to me from this whole experience is the effect it had on me. i tell people that i'm an introvert, that i need my "me" time. and those of you who have been around me for a while know that it's true- sometimes i just need to not hang out tonight. the day after the retreat was my day off, and i anticipated desperately needing it. but tuesday rolled around, and sure i slept in, but i was really ready to go do the whole thing again. really. i wanted no recharge-alone time. i missed the kids. i missed doin stuff with them, of being the target for every kid within snowball range. i went in to my day off feeling recharged and refreshed already, ready to go out and conquer the world.

One of the reasons is, i think (and i'm not sure how healthy this is...) that i really never had a spare thought for myself that whole retreat. sometimes when i'm stupid, and especially with people i'm leading or with girls that i think i have a crush on, i replay my stupidity over and over again. and, since i'm not really the best leader, i get people giving me suggestions and confronting me, and i've developed a tendancy to internalize criticism, rather than hold it at arms length and try and learn from it. this means that in my quiet moments i'm thinking about me. up at the retreat, i did not have that luxury, and i loved it. every minute of all 3 days was for the kids- either the middle schoolers or the leadership team. even that one time that i had in the bath, i was praying for them, thinking about how to reach them, how they were doing, etc. i loved it. i think it has to do with discipline- how college students with part-time jobs get better grades than the slackers, and how athletes get better grades during their season, even though they are busier. i spent a lot of time feeling like i'm not really doing all that much, which is kinda hard. my daily life involves kids partially- either in one-hour meetings, or on campus after school for a bit, or whatever. the majority of my time is spent on me, though.

I think i'm sorta doing the same thing i did at multnomah- i don't think i'll be able to function if i'm doing too much, when the reality is, the more i do, the better i do it. man, being a youth pastor rocks.

My Excuse: I almost died.
as to it's truth or validity, i leave that to better minds than mine to decide.
ON TO INFORMATION!!!

Things that have changed:
-due to the exorborant prices charged by JCom, my now former internet service provider, my beloved compy is now at the office, and i am wireless at home( in the bad, regression way, not the cool, good way). this change occured when it became abundandtly clear that it was worth the sacrifice- it's like $80/month for internet and phone!! so, no phone, no internet. just my trusty, slowly disinitgrating cell phone.]

-i have a new love in my life!! well, it's a love/hate thing. cami gave me the key to his motorcycle before i came here, and i really didn't think about it much, other than to make sure that the key actually fit. when he left japan he left it in the care of some people who did the exact opposite of care. well, not the EXACT opposite- they didn't beat on it, but they sure as crap didn't take care of it. and sitting outside in the rain, snow, sleet, slush, sun, and coffee, it was slowly being broken down to it's constituent parts. until i rode on one of the kids' little 50cc monkey he has. then i remembered how fun they are. then i went home and looked at my bike. then i took it as apart as i knew how (which meant the seat, gas tank, and side panels) and stared at it some more. now, 3 weeks later, it still won't run, but it started on saturday!! it made me happy, but not really excited, since it still won't stay running. but it's something. considering i've sunk almost $300 into it, it had better do something! actually, i'm not allowed to touch it for a week. more on that in a bit...

-i have lost 3 of my high school boy leaders. maybe next time i'll rope them to something...but seriously folks...so the year started off at 5 gals and 5 guys leading the middle school group. now we're down to 2 guys. it was hard for me to really deal with- 2 of them asked to be let off, and one i had to kick off. it didn't help that the one that got kicked off is also the one that i'm closest friends with. if anyone can make a machine that will allow us to understand the mind of the high school male, let me know.

-i can plan!! somehow, i've always managed to avoid planning things. even at college and whatever, i never had to do any of that crap- i'm always just happy to let someone who likes to do it take the reigns. stand aside, becky wannamaker!! this is ryan 2.0! complete with planning upgrade!! there's a retreat coming up for the middle schoolers on saturday, and while i'm having the leaders that are doing the planning for a lot of it, it's been all up to me to do the groundwork and get all basics laid out. sorta fun, mostly not. there's like a bajillion details to these things! who are the people that love this stuff, and what's wrong with them? i just hope nothing goes drastically wrong...like i lose a kid in a snowdrift, or someone tells their parents that we ate yellow snow for fun or something. eewww....

-the weather!! today was the first just really nice day we've had since like september or something. it's not so much been rainy, but really windy all the time. so it's been nice through a window, but outside's been pretty much miserable. today it was just straight up nice. so i put on my speedo and spent some quality time sunbathing in the park. riiight...

-my furniture!! becuase my compy's gone, i really have no reason to be in my living room anymore, especially since it's freezing. and i've taken to heating my bedroom for like 20 minutes before i to go bed. so i thought "why don't i move my living room into my bedroom?" so i did. and by living room, i mean rocking chair. but now i sit in my little bedroom, slowly (but warmly) axphisxiating myself over a good book. i've also taken to sleeping in a sleeping bag. it's got this great fleece liner that i take out and warm up before i get in. it's the best idea ever!! this way no matter how much i roll around i'll never get out from under my covers. and it's WAY warmer than just my bed and blankets. i get a gold star for a good idea.

Things that haven't changed:
-my perpetual singletude. what with it being "loner hater day", i thought i'd add that 1+0=all the time to do whatever i want, and 1+1=BITE ME. i think i've made my position clear. i all reality, though, the "marriage=death" attitude that i had in college really doesn't serve me all that well over here. i wrote something about this in the past, but the whole living alone thing's been really hard. i don't regret it at all, and think that everyone should deal with it at some point- one of the side effects is you really find out a lot about who you are (this will either make you a better person, or incurably bitter). i sorta wish i've learned this lesson well enough to move on to step two, though. that would be the step where you're not living alone in a huge house. or at least not undating. in my youth group talk last night, i was telling the kids about idolatry, and how i was really lonely and how i had idols that i used to try and feel less lonely, and trying to get them to understand the depths of lonliness that i had experienced, and one of the gals was like "yeah, we know what it's like to be lonely too, ryan". i chuckled silently to myself when she said that- i have no doubt that she has very little idea of what it's like (in the rare event that you find this blog, i love you megan!). i also discovered that according to the rules of the mission that i am missionary-ing through, i am not allowed to date anyone for the first year that i'm here. who knew?! who cared?! thinking about it, i'm sure that there's a huge long list of things that i'm not allowed to do. i never thought about it, and i'm determined to stop in the very near future. after all, you can't break a rule you don't know about!

-john mayer's song "daughters". in the 189 times i've listened to it while making this post, it's been the exact same awesome song, every time. the only person that i know enough about to think about when this song is played is deidre. hope that's not awkward.

-my parents. i was thinking about this today, and i think that when children get old, they should be the ones to brag about their parents. that is, if the parents are brag-worthy. and i really think mine are. i got a valentines card from my mom, along with a letter. then they called me today and we talked for like 2 hours! that's a long time for my dad to be ok with "wasting money" (love you dad!). the truth is, my family members are all pretty much my best friends. and we learned that from our parents. and they were stupid sometimes, and we drove eachother to head-exploding-madness sometimes, but if i'm ever a dad, my goal will be to be one like my dad. and if i find someone who ends up being like my mom, i'll consider myself blessed. granted, it took 5 kids to break them in, but now they're 2 of my favorite people. in fact, i dedicate this entry to them. mom, dad- i love you guys. you are awesome. good job being amazing, loving Christian parents. if everyone had parents like you....well...that would be weird. but probably good.

this has turned way longer than is worth reading. now that i have the compy at "work", i'll probably be doing more entries as a means of procrastinating, which is good, i think.