Boston + Cambridge, MA.

The first leg of our Awaken U.S. trip brought us to Boston, MA. I love the Red Sox and I love this city. Three years ago I passed through for a few days before continuing my East Coast exploration and hunt for literary museums and writers homes. I toured a snow covered Fenway park, spent a good chunk of my day at Boston’s beautiful public library, and discovered the city on trains and metros. So, having been here before I knew there would be a certain sense of familiarity, especially as we headed towards Harvard University our first day, a campus I had walked through on my hunt for the home of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

However, it didn’t take me long to realize two HUGE differences that would set this trip to Boston apart from my last one. The first difference is community. This time I was not on my own. This time I walked the city’s streets with 5 others who, after only a few months of knowing each other, have become some of my closest friends. The second is the focus. When I came before it was a very self focused. I went where I wanted and did what was on my heart to do, using only a list of addresses and writer’s names to guide me. This time I was following the heart of God. Prayer and His Holy Spirit becoming my guides. Talk about getting a new perspective.

Our housing was a 15 minute walk from the Harvard campus at the Justice House of Prayer (http://jhopboston.com/). The group there instantly welcomed us into their home, hearts and community. For three days we lived together, ate together, laughed together and prayed together. It was a powerful testimony of the body of Christ, different members with different functions but all working together as one.

The second morning we were there we met up with Eunice Lee, a girl who had done her DTS in Kona a couple of years ago. Eunice is a junior year at Harvard and has taken it upon herself to bring a lifestyle of prayer and continual pursuit of the Lord to this place, meeting each morning to pray in a church on campus with whoever will join her. Although the group maybe small in numbers, varying from 4-10 people, I got the feeling that what they are a part of is bigger than they even realize. There is power in prayer, and as one who claims to follow Christ I began to feel the conviction of a life lacking in that area.

The day we were to leave Boston and head to New Jersey our dear van, lovingly named “Wallace the Tabernacle,” began to make sounds that even I, being ignorant in car-speak, knew were anything but normal. We decided to ask the Lord whether to stay and get it fixed, therefore cancelling the New Jersey part of our trip, or to go for it, trusting that if He wanted us to get there He’d get us there regardless of the noises coming from our van. After a few minutes we felt the go ahead and on a rainy February night we set off for the four hour drive to Jersey.