Youth Rep to EFC-MAYM

Having grown up in Northwest Yearly Meeting, I had never really experienced what it meant to be “a newcomer.” Though I don’t know every person in the yearly meeting, I am comfortable with saying that this is my home; Northwest Yearly Meeting  is my community and my family.

This past June I had the opportunity to travel to Kansas to participate in Evangelical Friends Church Mid-America Yearly Meeting’s (EFC-MAYM) senior high youth program. I didn’t know anyone in Kansas, I had never been to Kansas, and truth be told I didn’t even know where Kansas was, but the experience of going and not knowing anyone was a very freeing and releasing one.

From the moment I touched down, I was greeted with warmth and love in a way I had never experienced. I didn’t know any of these people, and they didn’t know me, but they were still so willing to pour out love and acceptance. That reception extended for the entire week, especially in my cabin group. While other cabins at the camp were made up of individual youth groups, mine was a hodgepodge of smaller churches. The love poured out in cabin times, the laughter we shared during meals, free time and rec, and the community we built in that one week are the strongest things I returned home with. Each of us were different people, each of us had a different story, but the young women I got to spend the week with caused me to return home and thirst for that community again.

It challenged me to come home and examine how I was treating “the newcomer.” It challenged me to be intentional with the community I have been blessed with. In Kansas I was able to open up and be more vulnerable than I had ever been with a community. I want that at home as well.

I also realized that without the community I have in Oregon I wouldn’t have been able to go to Kansas and have such an incredible experience. Northwest Yearly Meeting had been growing and preparing me for that adventure. Thank you for sending me; thank you for trusting me to go; and, most importantly, thank you for nurturing my growth for so many years.

Article by Katie Comfort. Photo by Sage Gregory.