still people

After so many changes and planning and preparing and traveling and meetings and improvements (and washing an insane amount of mattress covers, by hand, mind you!), it is really, really good to have our students back and be doing all that we've been planning and praying for.

My second favorite thing is shaking their hands and hearing about their families and seeing their faces and having them home. My least favorite thing is seeing physically how ragged the last three months have been for many of them. How challenging.

But my very favorite thing is watching our students finally be together. At Emmaus we live like family, we support like family, we love like family, and to see each young man and woman be BACK with their brothers and sisters is so sweet, it brings tears to my eyes.  Watching all the reunions each year reminds me over and over again how relationshipping might be the most important teaching we do...how incarnate ministry might be the only kind that matters...how what is happening on campus in the cafeteria and dorms might be even more valuable than what is happening in the classrooms and online.  

A few years ago one of our female students was transparently sharing with me some of the horrors of abuse, isolation and despair her life had been until finding Jesus and coming to Emmaus, and talked to me about how her entire life, she'd been nothing but meat when it came to men. Treated like meat.  

As she shared with me how stunning it was the first time one of our male students called her sister, how she had never ever been treated as valuable or addressed politely or considered a friend, and suddenly she had a slew of women beside her and a slew of men valuing and watching out for her...how she discovered that what she thought family was all along had been WRONG and twisted and how she has discovered God's design for family at Emmaus...

yeah. 

When I kissed her cheek yesterday, forever reminding me of her story by it's huge jagged scar, I was so thankful, again, again, for the family God is providing to and through our staff and students. 

With Jodenel back out of the finance office until his leg has healed, the last few days have been full of numbers and tuition needs and food payments and budget sheets, and that's all necessary and important.  

But the reunions and the reminders of family...that's priceless.  

and I cherish the reminder of precious priorities.

still people. 

Always bringing Jesus to people, people to Jesus.