Thoughts From Erick

Now March is here and we four have returned to our respective homes and lives. We are really glad that we have been able to keep this blog and that people actually read it. The most common thing that I have heard from people that I have seen since coming home is that they read the blog and were able to stay up to speed with what we did. Some went as far as to say that they felt like they were right there with us. Special thanks (and props) to Nate Crouch, loyal friend and brilliant computer genius, for his help in getting the site up and maintaining it while we were out. Nate kept an eye out for spam and other harmful cyber-enemies that may have been the undoing of our website. Here's to you.

It's hard to properly absorb what I have just been through. A six-month, 11-country world trip isn't the sort of thing that you can process in one sit-down by the fire. It doesn't help that modern life moves along at a furious pace and that while I've only been home for two weeks plus a day, I am already in the midst of plans and preparations for my next adventures(more on that later). In the time that I have had to sit alone and mull over our trip, it comes to me that it was less than three years ago that I was in Africa, on a six-month trip there and that my Africa trip hasn't even been properly filed away in my mind. Having said that, what hope is there that I will be able to understand the depth and scope of what I have just been through? Probably not very much. But maybe that's OK, because I don't feel that the experience has been lost on me at all. Sure, maybe there are parts that I will forget or that will slip through the cracks of my mind. But what I do have is a far greater appreciation for the world and my place in it. And what does that mean? It means that I realize that the world does indeed extend far beyond Canada and the DR and even the other places that I have seen in my life so far. I have been fortunate to have parents and family that support my adventures and my travels, that actually want me to get out and do these trips in spite of the dangers that come with them. This being the case I have seen a great deal of the world for someone who is only 25. But even with all the places I have seen and people I have met, my understanding of the world is very limited. It boggles my mind, but there are people being born and living and dying without any real concept of the world around them. Sometimes you see those posters of a globe with people of every race and people group standing hand in hand in a ring around it. If only that were the case. In reality, the world is really only what I perceive it to be. The globe, the earth, is the blue and green thing I see in the atlas or on the wall at school. On its surface is not one world, but many worlds vastly different from each other and entirely self-existent. As a person from North America, I start with the same mentality that most Westerners do: that our society is better and more organized and therefore desirable to the rest of the world. After all, we are the ones sending missionaries to them and we are the ones that help when they have disasters, right? When was there ever an Ethiopian Red Cross team in Louisiana for the floods there? Or an Estonian relief team to help search for survivors of an avalanche in British Columbia? There never has been. We are the ones controlling the majority of money and resources in the world, and with that goes the assumption that we have the corner on culture and sophistication too. We couldn't be more wrong. This trip made me realize that pain and confusion and hardship is universal, and that so are things like kindness and hope and satisfaction in life. I can't tell you how many people from the West I have had coversations with you seem to think that the solution to the world's problems is financial. That if everyone had enough food and good clothing and a comfortable house that everything would be great. If that were the case, places like Canada and America would be the happiest places in the world. But of course they are not. I'm beginning to realize that money has very little to do with it. I know plenty if people with more money than they know what to do with and are perfectly miserable. I also know poor people in the same boat. But then I know rich people who are happy and carefree and people that are penniless who are cheerful and have a bright outlook on the future. Now, more than ever, I am resistant to the idea that putting money in someone's pocket is going to solve their problems. I'm beginning to see that Solomon was right when he said that the best thing a man can do is to work hard and enjoy the fruits of his labour. We met thousands of people on this trip and observed thousands more in all walks of life. Soldiers, policemen, sailors, salesmen, students, politicians, office workers, managers, on and on. The happiest people I met were the people that loved their work and the living it gave to them. Some of them made a lot of money, most of them made very little. What they had in common is that they did what they loved to do and they were content with their situation. And that gave me hope for the future, because that prospect is possible for many of the people in world, even a large majority, including me.

This understanding is only the tip of the iceberg in relation to what I have come away from this trip with. We said often that it really seemed like we spent a lifetime away from home. It reminds me a bit of the Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, two brothers and two sisters leaving the world they knew to spend years and years in a land far away and have adventures and experiences that they will never be able to fully relate to the people they know, and then to return to where they came from only to realize that they've been gone only a very little while. If you've seen the movie or read the book, no doubt the question enters your mind, 'How can they just go back to what they knew? Surely whatever went on in Narnia has to affect the way they deal with normal life.' I can assure you, as I'm sure the other three will, that following our life and adventures away from home, being gone a lifetime only to return and realize it's been a little while, normal life and the way we view it will never be the same.

E