As One Door Closes, Another Opens: Hellenic College Graduation

Receiving my diploma on May 21, 2016 for a BA with a Major in Religious Studies with Minor in Human Development from His Eminence Archbishop Demetrios, Geron (head) of the Greek Orthodox Church of America and the President of Hellenic College Holy Cross Father Christopher Metropulos

I have graduated from Hellenic College this past weekend and I cannot wait to start at Holy Cross Greek Orthodox School of Theology this coming fall. I am so blessed and thankful to Hellenic College and all it has given me in my four years there. From friendships to professors, a found vocation grown from a love for missions and most importantly a strengthening of faith. 

Thank you to all who have helped in that formation. My family. I love you so much. Present and past students, the clergy, administration and professors... especially to Father Matthew Baker who (memory eternal+++) showed me how to fight and persevere in this sometimes persecuting vocation of pursuing theological studies. If I was to name everyone and why they have made me who I am right now, it would be a thesis in and of itself. 

Lastly, to the future students of Hellenic College, I can't wait to see what you do and more importantly who you are!! ;)  

This past weekend, I also got engaged to the love of my life and fellow Project Mexico roof goof, Steve Sarigianis. Words, they are so powerful and yet I am struggling in this moment to find the right ones... GLORY TO GOD! I cannot express how blessed and overjoyed I am to call this man my fiance. To have my family embrace him, and have his family embrace me. I find that when words have failed me, tears of joy have replaced them. Blessings many rich blessings!

See you for round two at Holy Cross!! 

It's Time for Africa

Please Lord, grant me patience, joy and love to fight for something noble and right!

Missions, it is the root of Orthodoxy. Missions is love. Unconditional love. It allows you to see people as human beings, as images of Christ. When I looked at myself in the mirror today, I could finally see me. Through the spiritual warfare and the growth that comes from it, I am able to finally see Christ in me. The way he made me and why my life has unraveled in such a way. Granted there are still a plethora of struggles and many veils I have yet to lift, areas of my spiritual life I have never "tapped into" but the one thing about myself I know to be true is that God has placed me in the field of missions. Into the line of fire. My heart is full of a fire like passion and joy. Other times it is filled with massive amounts of pain as if, like the Virgin Mary (or Panagia in Greek), a sword has also peirced my heart when I see how disturbed, broken and fragmented the world and the peoples in it have become. I heal though through the prayers of the heart: Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy upon me a sinner. 

The mind tries to escape when it gets hard in order to get out of suffering. We try to find Kansas by clicking our heals together saying that there is no place like home. But I have no ruby slippers, no Wizard of Oz and no Todo. It is just me, God and my team. I think about the suffering, which compared to what the indigenous peoples of Turkana, Kenya go through is nothing. I think about how soon this trip will be all but a distant memory calling me back. Calling ever so persistently beckoning me back here to the bush, back to Lodwar, back to the land of Kenya.