I have never belonged to anything well established or "big", I grew up in a small rural suburb of Seattle, which until the last 5 years I lived there, hardly had a population over 2000. It was a big deal to cross one of the floating bridges over Lake Washington and go into Seattle. I went to one elementary school for kindergarten and first grade, then a new school was built, starting the life long journey of "being one of the firsts". In fifth grade, our school district built a new high school and changed from a Jr. High system to a Middle-school system, which made my class the first 6th grade in a multi period schedule with seventh and eighth graders alongside us.
When I entered high school it was only four years old and was very much still attempting to establish itself, in my four years of high school we went from a three period day, to a four period day, then to four periods and advisory (homeroom) everyday to just having advisory three days out of the week. During those four years, we also switched sport leagues, and our music league changed twice, hence we never had much competition because we kept changing leagues! This is also when I started following Christ, of course it was at a small church, hardly 70 people at the time, the youth group was small, but the leaders had big hearts, sometimes great things come in small packages.
Then comes college, I of course chose to go the brand new community college that opened the same year I graduated from high school. Once again, I was part of liquid programs that kept changing, and systems that were hardly in place. I went to this "two-year" (assuming you go to school full-time) for three years and I still have at least three full quarters before I get my "two-year" associates degree.
When I did network engineering for the school district, we were the smallest school district (in numbers) in the entire Seattle metro area. This sometimes made it hard to get ballot measures to pass, and other times it was just plain impossible to be competitive with our surrounding school districts.
Now, I am helping church plant here in Poland, and on at a good meeting we see maybe thirty people, which is fairly good for Poland when it comes to non-catholic works. But sometimes without sheer body numbers it can be hard to get people motivated. Our young adults group has maybe ten, and that is only on special occasions, usually only five (including four of the leaders) are at any one meeting.
I am not sure why, but always being a part of small and new things has taken its toll on me. I know when I return I will be very happy to get back to Mill Creek Foursquare church. It is well established and has a good amount of people, so that anyone in ministry is not doing "everything", many people are involved in all the ministries, way less stressful if you ask me. I was so blessed to call Mill Creek my home church for the short year I was there before coming here. I think when I get back I will be looking to work for a larger employer, where I am not the only one in my position, especially if it is over 700 computers again!
I am reminded that wherever I am, wherever work, wherever I study, I must work for the Lord:
God blesses those who work for peace, for they will be called the children of God. [Matt 5:9]
