Random friends

Dear Blog

According to my facebook account I have 507 friends. Now the majority of them are people that are from my past and have managed to connect with online. About 100 of them wrote me birthday greetings the other week which was much appreciated. Even so, it is only a minority of them with whom I stay in regular contact. When I think of my life there are thousands and thousands of people I have met and become friends with to varying degrees. Some have been best friends and we've moved apart, others have been in my cabin at summer camp for a week, or come to my youth, or played sports with.... I think that even here in Panama I have been introduced to more than 507 students on campus. So why am I thinking about this...

Well Sunday morning I was woken up by the phone. It was my friend Kyle Wilson, who is currently a missionary in Nicaragua, calling to let me know he was in Panama. We managed to get together a couple of times this past week and catch up. However the truly random thing to happen this week was Monday night. I was talking to Tricia on the phone and decided to join her and Laura going to the movies (which was pretty random for me). Upon entering an empty theatre I hear a familiar voice....'Steve?!?!!?' turning around I see that one of the 4 other people at the movie was my friend Jayson Garrison from Vancouver...passing through Panama City for 2 days while backpacking through Central America.

This isn't the first time something like this has happened to me (actually the 7th time in a foreign country...pretty crazy actually) but it has got me thinking about people in my life and the impact we can have on others. My grandma e-mailed me last week telling me how a lady who had been in her Sunday School class over 60 years ago found a postcard from my Grandma from the 40s and has managed to reconnect with her.

What impact has this had on me? Well its made me realize how unique relationships are, and as 'random' as we like to call them, I truly do believe that God has put all those people in my life over the past for a reason, and continues to put people in my life for a reason...so my objective is to simply make the most of these relationships...