My Last Week in Austin

This past Sunday was my official last day with Oak Meadow Baptist Church in Austin. And you know what? It doesn't matter how much peace I have about moving to Ft Worth and attending seminary. Leaving this church is absolutely one of the hardest things I have ever done. 

When I thought about moving away from Austin, I really expected to be sad to leave the "Austin-y" things. No more Alamo Drafthouse. No more Town Lake and gorgeous Greenbelts and Mt Bonnell. No more Kerbey Lane Cafe, Threadgills, Trudy's, Dominican Joe's, Torchy's Tacos, Hey Cupcake, or awesome food trailer parks (I could go on and on and on about Austin's food scene.) No more murals in every alleyway, art on the sidewalk, and local/original music everywhere you go. 

I am going to miss those things.

But this past week, while I expected myself to be making the most of my last chances to experience these things, I instead spent the majority of my time at the church or at an event with my students. 

There was a huge turnout last Tuesday for my last Tuesday night youth Bible study. I had a whole lesson planned out- we were on our last week of Jared Wilson's 7 Daily Sins. I had read and reread the chapter, created an in-depth powerpoint and reviewed discussion points. But when I was cleaning out my desk I found these nifty information sheets that I had forced the students to fill out for a game at our very first event two and a half years ago. They had questions like- how many texts do you send per month and if you could choose any superpower what would you pick? Now, 2.5 years doesn't seem like toooo much time but the difference between being 15.5 years old and 18 years old is pretty drastic! So we played the game again. It was an awesome way to end with something from the very beginning.

Whenever it came time to start the Bible study I put the book away and just turned to Ephesians 3:14-19

14 When I think of all this, I fall to my knees and pray to the Father, ¹⁵ the Creator of everything in heaven and on earth. ¹⁶ I pray that from his glorious, unlimited resources he will empower you with inner strength through his Spirit.¹⁷ Then Christ will make his home in your hearts as you trust in him. Your roots will grow down into God’s love and keep you strong. ¹⁸ And may you have the power to understand, as all God’s people should, how wide, how long, how high, and how deep his love is. ¹⁹ May you experience the love of Christ, though it is too great to understand fully. Then you will be made complete with all the fullness of life and power that comes from God.

This is my prayer for my students, that they would truly understand God's love and that they would be rooted down in it.  And basically reading that prayer is all I could get out. 

We made chicken fried steak and played floor pong on Wednesday (my last Get LOW)

We went to Blazer Tag, had ice cream sundaes and played more floor pong on Thursday night.

And Sunday night, I beat everyone at bowling with my awesome skillzzz. Seriously, I got a turkey. It was legit!

(that's Josue ducking out of the picture)

I didn't do a lot of local, Austiny, artsy or original things in my last week in Austin. I think my heart knew what it wanted- to make the very most of the time I had left with the people who mean the most to me. Those students have my heart. I have to believe that God loves them more than I can possibly understand and He will be there, providing for and protecting my group.