It's All About Love

I have found myself recently a huge fan of the band Mumford & Sons. I was listening to their song "Awake My Soul" recently and this line really jumped out at me:

"Where you invest your love, invest your life."

I'm finding that to be so true in this mission. I am investing at least the next 4 months of my life into loving the people of Romania, especially the kids in the orphanage. I am investing my life into sharing the love of Christ with those who need it. The name of my mission means "Evangelize Through Love" in Romanian. This mission isn't about yelling the Gospel into people's faces. That doesn't work. And it's REALLY not going to work in a place that can be called almost spiritually dead like Romania. Actually, we'll call it in spiritual critical condition. It's all about walking the walk before talking the talk. It's about living everyday like Christ would and leading by example. It's about loving every single person I come in contact with, no matter how they respond to some American kid showing up to live in their town (I have been told by the priest I will be working for that I will not be welcomed all that warmly, but I'm okay with that). It's about loving the crap out of the kids at the orphanage. It's about loving that teenager who thinks I must be insane to leave the United States to live in his town. It's about loving the people who hate me solely because I am Catholic and not Orthodox Christian. 

In For King and Country's song "Proof of Your Love," there is a monologue based up 1 Corinthians 13:1-7 and it says "If I speak with human eloquence and angelic ecstasy but don't love, I'm nothing but the creaking of a rusty gate. If I speak God's Word with power, revealing all his mysteries and making everything plain as day, and if I have faith that says to a mountain, 'jump,' and it jumps, but I don't love, I'm nothing. If I give everything I own to the poor and even go to the stake to be burned as a martyr, but I don't love, I've gotten nowhere. So, no matter what I say, what I believe, and what I do, I'm bankrupt without love."

All I want to do is love. In my 2 1/2 years as a student at Franciscan University, I received so much love from the Lord and from those around me. Now, it's time for me to go out and share that love. 

So, in just 9 days, on August 15, I will be getting on a plane and moving 5,000 miles away from my home in Cincinnati, Ohio to my new home in Turt, Romania. Most importantly though, I will be investing my life where I want to invest my love. 

Please, please, please pray for me. I'm ridiculously excited, but also nervous. I know the Lord is with me in this. He has made it VERY clear. I am taking Blessed John Paul II's advice of "Do not be afraid" to heart.