Random Connections.

It's funny sometimes the people you run into when you're least expecting it.

Earlier this week, I spent an afternoon hanging out in the Commons at EMU. It was "Calling and Career Day," and I was helping Luke represent MCC at the job/service fair. I took a few copies of my resume along. Given that I'm not really looking for an unpaid summer internship or a short term mission trip, I didn't have any luck finding a job. I did get to talk to lots of students about SALT and other MCC service opportunities, however, something which I really enjoyed.

It felt a bit surreal at times: stepping out of the present, I would reflect back a few years when I was the one stopping by the service fair recruiting tables. How experienced and put-together and cultured the seasoned travelers and service workers seemed then!

The afternoon brought many strange encounters, (re)connections with people I never expected to meet. Here are a few such tales...

I was idling by the registration table while I waited for Luke to show up with the stuff to set up our table. A very outgoing woman came over and start chatting with me, offering to show me where our table would be while I waited for "Michelle" (not sure who she was thinking of, but it was just Luke and I representing MCC...). As we walked around the indoor track where the fair was taking place, I learned that she was representing Eastern Mennonite Missions, and that she works in the Lancaster office. "Oh, that's interesting. I have a friend who was applying for a position there a couple weeks ago." She asked for my friend's name, then informed me that she had gotten the job. In fact, this woman told me, she was the one who had trained my friend at orientation earlier in the week (turns out this wasn't true: my friend starts orientation next week). Random.

After we set up the table, Luke and I went to get lunch. Taking sandwiches (shame on EMU for not having any veg. options!), we went to sit with some other recruiters. Introductions went around the table, then conversations continued. I started talking to the girl beside me, who was representing SWAP. She looked a bit familiar, but I didn't have any idea why. Until she complimented the beads in my hair and asked if they were from Uganda. "I was just there a few months ago for a SWAP project with a Methodist church in Gulu," she told me. Oh, of course. She was part of the group that wandered into the MCC office in Kampala right after I returned to Uganda. We had chatted a bit while her group leader got incredibly excited to take photos of the actual MCC Uganda office. Interesting that we would both just happen to accompany official recruiters to this same event.

I took a break after an hour or so and wandered around the tables myself. After turning down a few invitations to sign up for a summer missions trip, I stopped at a display for a local ministry that provides tutoring and other services for immigrants. The guy at the table had listened to my spiel about SALT earlier, so I returned the favor and let him tell me about his work (he spends a few hours a week helping immigrants fill out legal documents). He asked if I was from the area, then where I had gone to high school. Turns out he attended the same high school, albeit a few years behind me. "Do you have a sister there?" he asked me. Before long, he informed me that my middle sister was a friend of his, and he had sung in choir with her for a few years. Well, okay then.

I didn't intend to stop at the table for the Korean Anabaptist Center, but the elderly gentleman staffing it caught my eye and started asking me questions. As I answered his questions about who I am and what I was doing there, I watched the photo slideshow with my peripheral vision. Suddenly, I saw a familiar face. "Hey, I know them!" pointing to friends from my last MCC orientation who just moved to South Sudan this month. I knew my friends had taught English in Korea, but I wouldn't have guessed that this was the organization they worked for - or that these two recruiters would happen to know them well. So, we spent a few minutes chatting about these friends - who I know in connection with MCC Africa and these people knew from Korea. It's a small world after all.

Still amazed by the day's connections, I went back to our table. I found Luke deep in conversation with a guy who looked vaguely familiar. Looking at both his face and his name tag, however, I couldn't figure out why. I was talking to someone else when he finished his conversation with Luke, so I didn't get a chance to say anything to him. A few minutes later, this familiar-looking stranger came back. "Were you in Nairobi in December 2008?" he asked me. "Oh, yes." Now I recognized him as one of the EMM Yes participants who had been at the EMM/MCC East Africa retreat mid-way through my SALT term. More than a year later, I was meeting him again as a first year student at EMU. Who would have ever guessed?

I've heard it said that everyone in the world is connected to everyone else by no more than six degrees of separation. In the Mennonite world, however, I'm not sure it isn't less than that!