Kimberly Rixon
About Mission Year
Mission Year is a year long urban ministry program focused on Christian service and discipleship. We take teams of young people, place them in an area of need, and help them to serve people and create community. We are committed to the command of Jesus to “love God and love people,” by placing the needs of our neighbors first and developing committed disciples of Christ with a heart for the poor. Learn more about our first year program…
Kimberly Rixon's Blog
Fin / Jul 17, 05:43 PM
So basically I have sucked at writing blogs this year! I found this format to be kind of difficult, and blogged more at www.kimberlyrixon.blogspot.com (for those of you pre-mission year-ers who are stalker-ish as I was, feel free to read it!)… But I wanted to post my final newsletter on here for y’all to read:
Summer camp has been going really well. The latest highlight was going to a local carnival and riding rides for several hours with three of our classes. We have been able to do lots of fun things with them this summer, and have a really good time together. It’s crazy that we only have three weeks left! And that this will be my last Mission Year newsletter! It is almost time to say goodbye…
This year has been life-changing for me. Y’all have probably only been able to experience a fraction of that through these letters, but I hope that in some way this year has impacted you as well.
When I came to Atlanta, I think I had a romanticized view of what this year would be like. Most of my expectations were wrong straight off. For one, I didn’t expect to live in a Hispanic community! I had a lot of romantic ideals of how I would help people, how I would change and be a better person who cares less about myself, how I would be the best teammate ever, find direction for my life and learn how to live. Some of those things have happened, but not in a way that I expected. Living in Community has shown me more of my own faults than anything else. Much of the time I don’t want to serve my roommates, and I don’t want to experience the awkwardness of being truly vulnerable with them.
Living and serving in the inner city is not glamorous or heroic. Sometimes it’s not even fun or rewarding. Sometimes I don’t want to put myself out there in order meet people and to go through the embarrassment of interacting with my limited Spanish. It’s easier to sit back and be idealistic from a distance than to put in the effort necessary in order to get to know my neighbors. I mean, sometimes I don’t even want to go to Elia’s house, even though I know that I love being with her every time I go. But when I do force myself to do things I am uncomfortable with, the results surprise me! I catch a glimpse of God’s love at work in my neighborhood, and how I can be a tiny part of that.
And I think this year really has made me a better person… but not a person who has all the answers and knows everything about serving the poor. Maybe more like a person who has had the great gift of being able to live alongside them and get to know them. I might even have more questions about how to live, and more uncertainties of belief than before. But I have experienced a kind of love that doesn’t have an explanation or words to describe it. This year has expanded my hearts capacity to love. My ability to listen, observe, and learn without forming opinions. I am so grateful that I have had the chance to receive so much love and grace from our neighbors, and to share in their generosity and contagious joy, sometimes in spite of myself. I am leaving this year broken and humbled. We think we have a lot to give to the poor, but the most beautiful thing about this year has been learning that I don’t really have anything to give. That maybe the poor have a lot more to offer me than I do to offer them. That just living with people is enough to change you both.
And now I am leaving. It’s a very mixed feeling. It will be very hard to say goodbye. I am excited to go back to Washington, but I can’t believe that I only have three more weeks here. A year is too short of a time to invest in a community. Mission Year has made me want to find somewhere that I won’t leave, people that I will stay with and love and watch change. Where I can continue to build on what I have learned this year. Continue to see how God loves the poor and how I can be a part of that, simply by living with them and doing my best to love like Jesus. After Mission Year comes “Mission Life”, which is cheesy but true. My life will be a continuation of this year, and the mission I have had to love God and love people, above everything else.
Your support this year had been critical to my success here. Thank you, thank you, thank you!
Love and Peace, Kimberly
last year right now / Nov 14, 04:06 PM
It weird for me thinking that this time last year I was applying for Mission Year… and now here I am. I dutifully stalked all the people I could who were doing it at the time, reading all their blogs and looking at their facebooks. I have been called a creeper before, and I gladly accept that title.
It’s so different now. I am in such a different place, in my understanding of Mission Year, of what it actually means to live in community, of God, and of myself.
So to everyone who may possibly be stalking all our blogs: Welcome! Stalk away. And find us on facebook, we will probably talk to you. Oh, and do Mission Year :)
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Halloween is a big deal / Nov 14, 04:06 PM
(Sorry I haven’t blogged on here at all since I got here! You can read my other blog at www.kimberlyrixon.blogger.com)
All our kids were so excited about Halloween, it made all of us get excited too. Actually, Kelly was already excited. If we didn’t even have kids in our neighborhood we probably would have still dressed up and done something. But since there are lots of kids and we spend so much time with them, we have a good excuse for how into it we got haha. I think Kelly started talking about it in her class at the beginning of October, they even had a countdown chain that they took a loop off of everyday. My Kindergarteners were pretty excited as well, even though they didn’t really have a concept of when Halloween actually was (everyday of October is Halloween apparently). The Wednesday before Halloween, we took the Kindergarten class, minus two students, to a fall carnival at Tara’s church in Decatur. They got to go on pony rides, do rock climbing, jump in a bouncy castle, and of course get candy for playing pointless games! I hung out with Marlen and Stephanie, two of the sweetest and best-behaved girls in our class. All the girls wore princess costumes that Tara bought them, and the Crystian and Brallan (pronounced Brian, I love the Hispanic spelling haha) wore GI Joe costumes. They were all so adorable.
Sometimes I feel like what I am doing is so ridiculous, walking around a carnival in a pretty rich, nice area, with two bilingual Hispanic kindergarten girls who live in a trailer park. Someone referred to me as their mom, and I just felt like laughing at the whole thing. Who does this? Seriously, so many of the things we have been doing are things I wouldn’t ever have done at home, and that so many people just don’t have the opportunity to do. That’s a great thing about Mission Year I guess. Tara jokes about how her goal is to take videos of us doing the most random things possible. So far we have video of me and Chelsea driving a Bobcat bulldozer, some of us hitting piñatas, and some of us hanging out in an Emory University frat house, with 50 plus or minus children in costumes making a mess of themselves with college students helping them.
About the frat house thing… So on Saturday, Halloween, we got up and did devos and then rode to the church where we do the afterschool program with some of the older girls to make penguin ornaments for Tara to sell at a missions conference thing. The girls made them, with our help (I was in charge of the hot glue gun assembly line) and then we went back home to prepare for the afternoons Halloween shenanigans. Rachael, Andrew, Joseph, and I left at about one with the 5th graders , because there were too many kids to take all at once. So we went out to lunch at a Mexican restaurant near the college. This was another one of those weird situations that make me laugh and wonder what the heck I am doing. We are in the restaurant with 10+ 5th graders, eating Mexican food and watching soccer on the tv… in Spanish. I took a great video there as well.
When the other van loads got there they picked us up and we went to the fraternity. The kids carved and painted pumpkins and caused general havoc and destruction before going trick-or-treating with the students. It was really fun, both the kids and the students had a great time. And we had a great time because we didn’t have to watch all the kids constantly. They were the college students problems haha. All the kids, especially the older boys, got a crazy amount of candy.
Afterwards the 5th graders had to wait to go home, becasue of the same van probem, so we went trick-or-treating in the neighborhood surrounding Emory. It was a really nice, wealthy area, and it was weird for me… taking our kids there felt so out of place and really made me sad. Those people probably have never experienced the things our kids have, their worlds are so far apart. It made me think a lot. Our kids noticed too, mentioning how nice the houses were and how rich they all were. At the same time though, I don’t think they really understand the difference between their lives and the lives of the kids who live in there, in that beautiful, safe neighborhood. Kinda ramble-y, but these are the things I am thinking about lately.
I didn’t really edit this post, so sorry for the typos and weird grammar. My Sabbath is too precious to spend time spell-checking haha. Love you all.
Instead of going to college next year.... / Aug 17, 03:00 PM
Hey everyone! For those of you who don’t know me and just happened upon this blog, I am 18, I graduated high school in 2008 and just received my Associates degree this winter quarter. I love all forms of art, folk/indie music, the Arabic language, and most of all… Jesus! I have a passion for service and social justice and am excited to try out community living.
If you’re reading this blog you probably already know something about my plans for 2009-2010. Last September as I approached the last few quarters of my time at Bellevue Community College and started making plans about what I would do next, I came across the website for Mission Year. The idea of spending a year in service to some of the poorest communities in the US immediately caught my interest and I think I read every single page of the website in one sitting.. and then read it all again the next day. After a few months I decided to register, after talking about it with my parents, emailing some of the staff with questions, and praying about it.
I hope to learn how to live in community with other believers, understand the viewpoint of the poor, and be able to translate my love for Jesus into purposefully living to serve others. I want to be challenged and pushed out of my comfort zone. I have become so dissatisfied with our culture and the way I see myself conform to its ideas of consumerism and “every man for himself.” I know that isn’t the way Jesus has called me to live and I think Mission Year is a great way to take the time to focus on being counter-cultural and just seeing loving God and others as my main goal in life. I can’t wait for this fall and all the things I will learn as I go through this year, and I hope any of you who read this will enjoy going through them with me!
I don’t know how much I will write here, but you can also follow my other blog at www.kimberlyrixon.blogspot.com
