Seminary and things to come

When I found out I was going to be deployed I made a list of things that I wanted to do before I left.  My list included going on vacation with Karyn, building a cabin (more to come on that), watching the Mountaineers, you know real important stuff.  Another thing on my list was to see The Avett Brothers in concert.  If you've never heard of The Avett Brothers you're really missing out.  They had been touring with Dave Matthews, but I wanted to see them as the main event.  As I was looking around only one date worked in Karyn and mine's schedule.  The only problem was that it was at a college in Kentucky and it was being advertised as for students only.  I emailed a few people and after pulling the Iraq card got the thumbs up to go to the concert.  It's about a five hour drive to the college so we were going to spend the night Friday and come home on Saturday.  I didn't want to pay for a hotel room so Karyn and I tossed around the idea of camping, but I thought the weather might not work out for us.  Then I remembered couchsurfing.org.  If you're not familiar with couch surfing it's pretty simple.  You register and offer to host someone in your home who will be in the area.  Well we're adventurous so we decided to go for it.  I logged on and found Laura who graciously agreed to host us.  Laura lives in Wilmore KY and I knew that Asbury Seminary was there.  I've wanted to attend seminary for a while and I've been looking into different online, and intensive programs so that I could take classes and continue to work.  I thought that since we were in the area maybe we should try to get a tour of the seminary.  When I asked Laura (who works at Asbury College, across the street) she said she could give us a tour.

Laura grabbed her neighbor Wes (who just happened to be coming home when we pulled into town) and asked if he could give us a tour and he agreed.  Now you should know that I had a preconceived notion of what Asbury would be like and what the students would be like.  I pictured a stuffy atmosphere with people walking around in shirts and ties wearing penny loafers talking about how great John Wesley was.  Not my type of crowd.  Wes totally blew any of those stereotypes out of the water.  He had bushy beard (I'm jealous) and wore cut off shorts and sandals.  He gave us a great tour of the facilities and answered all the questions that Karyn and I had.  To top it all off the weather was amazing and spring was in full swing.  We talked long about church and about the hope that can be found there.  Wes, Laura, Karyn and I had many of the same critiques and dreams and thoughts.  It was wonderful.  I started wondering what I would miss out on if I didn't attend seminary full time.  Too often I spread myself to thin. 

On the trip home Karyn and I started talking about what attending seminary full time might look like.  It's an exciting thing to be thinking about.  One positive thing about the deployment is that the educational incentives that I'll received after the deployment will be enough to pay for seminary, however I choose to do it.  This much I know for sure is that I want to attend seminary, and I want to be involved in ministry as a vocation.  I have no passion for Military Pay.  As Karyn and I wade through all of the options in front of us I pray that we can do it with an open mind and with a faithful heart.