"The Last"

With the end of the semester looming in the near future, I've begun to hear a certain word quite frequently: "last." Next week is the last week of classes. The ending of my last final the week after will be the termination of my freshman year. Next week will also be my last service project with my Leadership Journey group that I've been with since day one of arriving at Cornerstone.

Monday night was the Leadership Journey banquet/dessert reception. It was an exciting and entertaining time for which preparations have been made since the beginning of the semester by our LJ group leaders, the Sherpas. What I loved most was that it enabled my group to be together outside our service project one last time during the frenzied end of the semester. It was held at the nearby Resurrection Life Church's youth center, where concerts and other events often take place. There were several amazing desserts, awards, videos of the year's service projects, speakers, and professional photographers to document the occasion. My favorite part, though, was the presentations that were done by three separate sets of students. Ironically, each involved a humorous form of singing that left the audience laughing hysterically.

Most of the evening was bittersweet. It was the culmination of two semesters of getting to know the ten people from my LJ group who have become like family to me. At the same time, since I and three others from my group will continue on to be Sherpas next year, it only marked the halfway point of our participation in LJ (or Terra Firma, the new name by which it will be called in forthcoming years). In that sense, a great deal of enthusiasm about a new year of new students and new possibilities was generated that presented me, to my delight, with an extensive list of "firsts" to look forward to.

Following the banquet, the my group was invited to the house of our CUF, Pete--a faculty member of Cornerstone who oversees the group--for even more dessert. We ended up playing an intense game of Scene It where we learned that although we all love movies, we really don't know that much about them. Still, we all had great time cheering for each other and celebrating the rare occasion when we would know the answer to a question.

A year ago, I was mulling over all the lasts of high school: graduation, the last chance I had to be with my friends on a daily basis, my last couple months of living at home before school, and the last time I would simply have to return my loaned textbooks to the school rather than search for someone to buy them. If I could've seen myself now, it would've been completely incomprehensible. The wonderful blessings I've had in my first two semesters at college make last year's "lasts" seem so insignificant that I look back and laugh. Even though I'm sad about this year coming to a close, I trust that I will never cease to be amazed when I discover the awesome opportunities in the future.