Today is a day of very sad endings and very happy beginnings.

On Thursday, we had a PFO talent show, where a good friend and I did a version of Abbott and Costello’s “Who’s on First?” We called it “Who is the first grade teacher?”

That night, an advisor and a home-office employee sang a song called “Little Girl.” While I’m not little, and while you may debate that, I know for a fact I am not a girl. However, the song hit me right between the eyes. The chorus is as follows: “You can travel the great wide open, if you gotta go. When you get there, the words might be spoken. You can travel the great wide open, if you’re all alone. But if you leave me, my heart might be broken.”

One of the verses is, “You can slip through the back door of life, hoping that no one will forget you’re alive. Whatever you may see can bring you back to me.”

Needless to say, as I’ve listened to that song more and more, the tears always seem to surface. It’s tough to go.

Moreover, that night, the kids sang a song and the chorus was, “Here’s goodbye, here’s so long, I must go and follow love.” These are children the age of my niece who are leaving it all behind to go abroad to serve God. Dry eyes were few and far between that night.

Last night was our big gala dinner and goodbye ceremony, and as the night went on, it became tougher and tougher not to lose it, because the bonds that I formed with some people over the past twelve days were so unbelievably deep. After the dinner, I penned a poem called “An Ode to PFO” (PFO is an acronym for Pre-Field Orientation). I include it below with the hopes that if you don’t get everything, you’ll at least get the gist of why it was tough to go:

An Ode to PFO
July 6, 2007
Eric J. Zanger
Written the night before Pre-Field Orientation finished,
after shedding tears at the ceremony earlier on in the day.

Oh the places we’ll go, oh the places we’ll go,
And so we came hungry to PFO.
And while the first line could have been said by a moose,
Our teachers were better than one Dr. Seuss.

We had Libby and Susan and Joe and Dave,
And Tammy and Mark, oh how very brave
He had to be to jump from a plane,
And now he has a tree as the bane
Of his existence. But better by far
Is the story of Libby having to hit the bar
For water, though she bowed and flailed,
And if it were me, I would have bailed.

But there was learning to do, and that’s what we did,
And we learned about a third culture kid.
And about the RAFT we must build to leave right
And to not let our anger linger over a night.

We learned about E’s and I’s and P’s and J’s
Until our brains were a foggy haze.
We learned about passion and purity and doing what’s right,
We realized that if we’re going to make it, we better fight
The good fight of faith, yeah that’s what we’ll do,
And God will equip us for that battle too.
And so, brace up now, we’ve got a world to reach,
And all this happens because we can teach.

“I love PFO, but I hate it too,”
Became the refrain of some people who
Made great friends here and hate to leave,
We’re now like our students; we know we must grieve.

So goodbye Sonic and Memphis and the Fellowship Hall.
Goodbye meals and advisors and playing basketball.
Goodbye PAC and the pews as our seat,
They were even our bed when we really were beat.

Goodbye SBEC, you were such a great host,
But I think what we’ll really miss most
Are the people who in twelve days
Were able to join in one holy gaze
At our king and redeemer and the perfect one.
To our LORD, Jesus Christ, God’s only son.

So goodbye, my dear friends, I’ll miss you so bad.
This was the greatest dorm I’ve ever had.
So as you go out on your way,
I have one last thing I must say:

Wherever you go, whatever you do,
Whatever Satan throws at you,
And when you think you’re at the height of your woe,
Embrace the love that never lets go.

Lean on Christ—He’s all you need!
Embrace His love and daily feed
On the Word, then go and claim
The world for God, in Jesus’ name.

I read the poem aloud in front of everyone earlier today. Again, the goodbyes and the realization that I will probably never see any of these people again until glory shook me. I cry now just thinking about it.

But, as I was leaving this morning, there was something fantastic going on. Roughly 1,000 miles north, a man stood waiting, poised at the front of a church. His bride walked down, and a relationship that I have had the pleasure to watch was taken to the next level. Brother Markus Berger, I wish you the best. It was a pleasure to be your next door neighbor, your brother in Christ, and your friend. I count it all joy. May you and Anjali have the greatest marriage imaginable—may you mirror Christ, and may she be the church. I love you both. Congratulations!

To the rest of you, I’m back in Chicago, and I’m leaving in three weeks. Be close to your cell phones.

If you have never worshipped in a Southern Baptist Church, I recommend you do so before you die. I’ve come to realize that I’m a Southern Baptist preacher stuck in a little northern body. The preacher today flat-out brought it.

SIDEBAR:

The interesting thing about church and preaching is that I firmly believe that if you cannot get excited about preaching the Word of God, you have no business being in the pulpit. You cannot influence people if your passion is dead; you cannot try to win people to Christ if you cannot get up just a little bit of fervor within yourself. I’ll now get off my soapbox.

END SIDEBAR

Week two begins tomorrow for me, and more practical things will be discussed. Just in case you thought this was all fun and games down here in Mississippi, I get to write a 2-4 page report to turn in to my school administrator.

Now, for the fun and games.

I’m sleeping in a science classroom with two other guys. Every day this week, I’ve come in after they are asleep. Science classrooms are notorious for having no lamps—I don’t envision some of my science teachers sitting by a lamp as they investigate a Petri dish. Instead, I see them with overwhelming, blinding florescent lights overhead. Therefore, according to my expectations of a science classroom, my room fits the bill.

There is one small problem—when they go to bed and they turn off the lights, I’m at a loss for what to do when I need to get in and walk to my bed. I would never turn on the lights, because I know how ticked I would be, and I think that both of them, despite my toughness, would whip my butt if they decided to throw down. So, I’m left with one of two options: 1) Stand by the door and wait four years for my eyes to adjust or 2) Figure it out with my toes and shins.

I’ll give you time to think about which one I did the first night.

Anyway, after the first night, I came up with a new strategy: I slide across the floor in a modified bear crawl, but I become a blind bear. Roughly every two feet, I flail my arms and legs like a maniac to see if I can find my bed. As I sit there like a fool in the middle of a science classroom doing this, I can just imagine someone with night vision goggles sitting there, watching me, and splitting a gut.

However, it does beat bashing my toe into the suitcase.

It is amazing to ponder that I will be in Korea in a month.

Be safe.

As much as can be crammed in a week, I think the people here have done a wonderful job doing so. I had a t-shirt that my sister gave me once that states, “My brain is tired.” I’ve been perpetually brain-tired since about Wednesday, so I need to hunt that shirt down and wear it proudly.

It has been such a joy to be here this past week. I’ve been living with a tension of “I’m leaving…so I’m so excited…but I’m so sad.” It was refreshing to hear that this contradiction of thought is perfectly normal.

Moreover, I met some of the people that are teaching at my school in Pyongtaek, and I’ve had the vast majority of my concerns taken care of. There is only one other newbie heading over there with me, so we’ve had the opportunity to get to know each other a little bit.

I went to the Memphis Redbirds game tonight. They are an affiliate of the St. Louis Cardinals, which made me a little bit wary of being excited about going. For those of you baseball fans, I had an opportunity to watch CENTER FIELDER Rick Ankiel (formerly the worst-greatest-pitcher-to-be-if-that-makes-sense-and-you-can-read-through-all-the-hypens) draw the collar at a stellar 0-4.

The presenters here have all spent time on the missions field doing the same thing I’m about to do, and the stories they tell are phenomenal. The advance of the gospel has been breathtaking, and their stories are hilarious to a point of drawing tears. Buckle up, as this will be a great ride.

We are sleeping and living in a high school roughly the size of the main building at Wheaton Academy. We are living in the classrooms, which is a pretty interesting thing to begin with.

Thankfully, the showers are not typical of the high school setting, where 15 guys end up in the same room, try not to look down, and get in and out of there in about .8 seconds. Instead, there are three stalls. The first has a broken showerhead, so we’re down to two shower stalls.

I walked in the first day to take a shower, and in an exhausted daze, stepped into the second stall. I pressed the button to get the shower to go, and to my absolute horror, almost fell out of the shower as freezing cold water came down on me.

SIDEBAR:

I might not have “fallen,” but instead of spending a second more in the stall, I jumped out.

SIDEBAR 2:

This posed a small problem, as one does not take showers in clothes.

END SIDEBAR 2

So I jumped back in.

END SIDEBAR

Small problem when I jumped back in—the water was about 8 billion degrees. I felt like a cartoon animal running across piping hot sand, and with each step, yelling, “hot, hot, hot,” only to dive into the coldest ocean ever (“brrrrr, cold, cold, cold”) and then run back across the same piping hot sand.

The theme of the week was “adapting to new cultures.” I learned to adapt. And the water got cooler as well, which is nice.

I’m back home July 7. I’d love to see you and say goodbye before I go.

Greetings from the Southern Baptist Educational Center, or SBEC, or “spbeck,” if you’re trying to say it under your breath. Considering I’m neither Baptist nor southern, I wonder how I can possibly learn something. But, I press on.

I flew in to Nashville on Saturday and spent time with a college roommate at his new home. I went off to Prague and he got married. Who knows what will happen now that I’m going to Korea? His wife was as gracious as gracious can be, and he was pretty good as well. Paul Allen and Christy, thank you for everything.

I also spent time at the church that I loved so much when I lived there. It’s been wonderful to watch from afar as this church moved from an auto garage with 20 members to a middle school and now, to a property and a building that holds its 500+ members.

Anyway, I drove to Memphis today and now I write from a balcony in Southaven, Mississippi. I’m really looking forward to the next 12 days. Lots of learning, lots of growth, and lots of fun.

Now on to something completely different.

I left Wheaton Academy for good on Friday, and yet, I leave a piece of my heart there. To the students, other teachers, and administrators, I thank you from the bottom of my heart. Thanks for letting me be your teacher, thanks for allowing me to work with such wonderful people, and thanks for letting me work for such wonderful people.

To the parents: Thanks for allowing me to teach your children. I hope that I built up your son or daughter and stirred up a passion for God.

Goodbye to all of you.

Well I’m off…I’m fixing to learn somethin’.

Maybe I’m a southerner after all…

And here we go again…stay tuned, as this will be the great Asian journal, detailing my life away from the United States.

Never in a million years did I think I would ever leave Wheaton Academy, but there is a reason why I am not sovereign.

People have been asking me how it’s been. Well, to put it bluntly, it’s been…tough. Extremely tough. One of the great joys of teaching at WA is that we are allowed to invest our lives in our students. The toughest part of leaving is leaving the students and the other laborers in Christ.

I’ve been doing alright, but as I was talking to a good friend of mine on Monday night, I said, “It’s as though I’ve been in denial for the past two months and now, it’s starting to dawn on me that I’m leaving.” I went the next day to the Senior (and teacher) goodbye chapel and I lost it. The flood of emotions that I had dammed up erupted and I couldn’t help (or stop) crying.

To my students—I will miss you terribly. Please know that. If I don’t cry in your class, it doesn’t mean that I’m not hurting.

Well, this is happening. Tomorrow, I renew my passport and sign a two-year contract.

God is good.

God is very good.