Reunion

This year is my 20th High School class reunion (Yeah, do the math, I'm old). I went to my 10th, and although I was able to see a couple of folks that I was glad to see, mostly it wasn't that great. It was planned by the old party crowd to please the old party crowd. I wasn't in the old party crowd, in fact, I didn't even get an invite until Mom called the High School to see if there was going to be one. They said they couldn't find me. Never mind that Mom and Dad still live in that same house and still have the same phone number, which is still in the phone book.

So I'm not going to the 20th. I don't even know if there is going to be one. I'm sure they're having a hard time finding me.

This weekend, however, I did go to a reunion. Maria and I traveled to Cincinnati for a reunion of the campus ministry I was a part of some 15+ years ago. For some of those folks, it had been that long since I'd seen them.

Boy was that a good time. Those years produced some of the best memories of my life. These are my spiritual "Good Old Days", or at least some of them. Reconnecting with these folks was like the intervening 15 years hadn't happened, except for the hair lines, the waist lines and the swapping of kid photos. We pretty much picked up where we left off, it was amazing.

This was the ministry I was baptized into back in August of 1988. (Someone had even had a copy of the monthly or maybe bi-monthly church newsletter from 1988 that had my baptism listed. The same one that someone scanned and emailed me back in July 2004. Check the comments here.) We were immersed in each other's lives. We spent nearly every waking hour not in class together. We knew each other inside and out. If there was one thing that the ICOC was able to do well, that was produce family in people that shouldn't be family. We were black white, Asian, middle eastern, rich and poor. Well, it was college, we were mostly poor, but we lived and acted like family.

We mostly lived together, sometimes 15 or more to a house. (I lived in one large house with some 17 other guys for 3 months. Bad, bad idea. Great fellowship, lots of roaches. Ironically, that house is now a bed and breakfast.) We hung out together. There was one corner o the student union that had a ember of our ministry in it nearly every minute the union was open. We went on dates together. I have some of the greatest memories from our double dates.

I was able to reconnect with the two ladies who were out sharing their faith that warm summer Tuesday evening on the UC campus. A summer evening on the campus of UC is a desolate place. For them to be there made no sense, there wasn't anyone to share with. But I was there and my destiny was forever changed.

I saw the man who studied the Bible with me, showing me what Christianity was. He left Cinci in the early 90's and I have probably only seen him once or twice since. I had hoped to catch up with him for a long time. Those times with him, sitting in nearly every fast food place around UC with our Bible's open revolutionized my world. He was warm and compassionate, someone that I instantly knew I could trust. It was obvious that he cared about me, and that concern completely put me at ease.

It was amazing to see them all again. In all, some 65 people were there from a ministry that someone said was around 120 at one time. Because I live close to Cinci, I see some of these folks a couple times a year. In fact, 3 of the guys live here in Columbus. Others came in from Boston, Columbia MO and Orlando. Some are no longer attending church any where, but most do. A few wandered away but have since returned.

I hope we can do this again before another 15 years go by.