Carbondale at Christmas...

Three days after James and I gave spoke about The Grinch at church, I got to fly back to Carbondale, IL to see some of my college friends and give essentially the same talk to my InterVarsity chapter. Since it was their last meeting of the semester, they agreed to let me repeat myself and deliver a Christmas message instead of making me write and learn two separate talks in such a short time.

On Wednesday night when I landed in St. Louis, one of my best friends from the film program named Will Strang picked me up from the airport and took me out to dinner with his new wife Marci. They didn't start dating until a few months after my last visit so I had never met her before. It was nice getting to know her a bit. They decided to take me out to one of the best pizza places in St. Louis. (Apparently President Obama ate there when he visited the city so it must be good, right? ;^) Actually...the pizza was great, and I had a lot of fun talking and laughing with the two of them. They seem very well matched and I hope I'll get a chance to visit them again sometime in the future.

One of the things I was most looking forward to about the trip was revisiting some of my favorite restaurants. Thursday afternoon, the girls I was staying with took me out to lunch at my beloved Steak 'n Shake. Even though it was freezing outside, I got my usual peanut butter cup milk shake and spicy chicken sandwich. Mmm... my mouth is watering just thinking about it. Too bad they won't have anything like that in Japan. =^/

My talk on Thursday night at IV went really well. I really wasn't sure whether the college students were going to buy into a message based on a kid's movie - but thankfully they all love The Grinch as much as I do and so it was a meaningful trip down memory lane for all of us. I also think that they took the message more seriously than the middle and high schoolers did, so I'm glad that God was able to speak through me once again!

Afterward, they hosted a big gingerbread house-building competition. That was particularly exciting for me because I started that tradition two years ago. Glad to see it's caught on. I served as a judge, which was difficult since there were so many creative ideas. There was a particularly good rendition of the Nativity scene that won the prize for "most artistic". However, my favorite was made by a team of sci-fi nerds like myself. It's an edible replica of the U.S.S. Enterprise from Star Trek!

The best part of the whole trip was getting to spend a lot of quality time with friends. I stayed with Leann, the freshman who I mentored my senior year. She and I were really close at the time that I graduated, and she even traveled all the way out to CO for my wedding! Now she's a junior and serving as the president of InverVarsity! We always joke that he was kind of my mini-me (or protege, if you want to be more politically-correct.) It was very funny to see that we even have essentially the same haircut now. haha.

One of my favorite parts of the trip was reuniting with a couple more of the guys from my film classes that I was close to. It was a tradition for all of us to go out for pizza at Quatros after tests or big film shoots. We have a whole series of photos of us in front of this restaurant. So we took this one, and held out our arms signifying how much we missed our other amigos. =^/

After that, I hopped over to the IV Ugly Christmas Sweater/Mustache party that was being held at our youth pastor Patrick Langan's house. In addition to hanging out with him and his wife Nettie at the party that night, Nettie drove me to and from St. Louis, so I got to spend a lot of time talking with her. She discipled me my senior year so it was great catching up and talking about all that God is doing in both of our lives. =^)

Over all it was a crazy whirlwind of a trip, full of late nights and a lot of laughter. But that's exactly what I was looking for - one last chance to go back and sort of re-live my college days before we leave the country and all of my friends graduate and move on with their lives. I have been so blessed with these opportunities to go back and keep contributing to the ministry, and I hope that door will open up again when I come back from Japan.

Till then, I have some great memories to hang on to... =^)