a letter to ohana

I’m sitting at the Ft Lauderdale International Airport, waiting for my flight. It’s a weird feeling. Everyone is speaking English. And I couldn’t handle actually parting ways with the squad.

O-Squad/Ohana/Giants: this one’s for you.

I met most of you just over a year ago at training camp. I didn’t know what to expect. I met three of you prior. Jake, Steph, & Ryan. But most of you I’d been talking to for over four months by the time training camp actually rolled around. But still…what would it be like to actually meet the people I’d been talking to? Did I really know anyone? Did anyone actually know me?

Training camp blew me away. I’ve been in deep community with people, but never like that.

Launch came. Some hard things happened night one. A few of you rallied around me and prayed. I knew that night, if I didn’t prior, that these were my people. These were radical people who loved with the radical love of Jesus.

I’ve been on teams with 14 of you. I got to have more of you in the same ministry locations as teams I was on. You all showed me what family looks like, acts like, loves like.

You gave me hard feedback sometimes. Things I didn’t want to see, but needed to. Sometimes things I knew but was afraid to grow in or use, and the encouragement made me know it was a gift and that I needed to use it.

I could never begin to say what you all mean to me. I could never tell every story from the past year and more (though you all know I wish I could). I could never say every way you made me grow.

It’s weird realizing I won’t see most of you again for a long time. Weird to think that only one of you is on my next flight, and none of you are on the flight following. Tomorrow morning and the mornings following, I’ll wake up with none of you around me.

It’s time to grieve the loss of community. And I don’t feel ready. But I know it’s time. I knew this day would come, no matter how much I didn’t want to admit it. No matter how much I knew it would come, you can’t prepare for the pain. But a wise friend once told me, “The pain means the love was real.”

Ohana, among the pain, also celebrate. Celebrate the love and care we got to share amongst the squad. Celebrate everything God used us to do around the globe this year. The healings, salvations, seeds planted, watered, and the ones that sprouted, too. There’s so much we got to do, and so much we still get to do.

And in our next chapters, we get to keep encouraging, praying, and celebrating one another and what God continues to do in all of us, and through us. We don’t know where we’re going, but we know the One who is guiding the wind, guiding our ships in the unknown waters. We’ll land on new shores, ready to journey through the next settings of our stories.

Ohana, I love you all a lot. Thanks for being the best big family I could ever be a part of. You are all wild and holy.

And remember: Ohana means nobody gets left behind, or forgotten.

All my love,

Vicks