1-2-3... etc

The other day, I was hanging out with some friends, and they asked me, "What's your support?" Meaning, where are you with raising support for InterVarsity. Mingling my bad hearing and their southern drawl, I heard instead, "What's your sport?" to which I answered boldly, "Soccer! I played for 9 years." The confusion which reigned was quite amusing...

You know, when kids are about a year old, we start to teach them how to count. For a young year-old, this merely involves the parent or interested adult bending down, and saying in a sweet voice, "Wow! You're a big kid! How old are you?" and holding up the appropriate number of fingers... "You're this many!? Wow!"

As we age, we learn more intricate methods of counting, involving the inevitable succession of numbers, "Yes, twelve does come after eleven." Particularly in the young teens, we learn the phrase "almost" with regard to counting. "Yes, I am twelve, but I'm almost thirteen." ("Almost" being an interesting word, which can mean anything from 2 days to 11 months away).

When we hit sixth or seventh grade, we start to learn about these things called fractions and percentages, tricky little rascals that they are. "If Johnny's sister is 6 and Johnny is 12, what is the ratio of their two ages?" "If we have 12 apples together, and I take 3 of those, what percentage of the apples is left?" Etc.

Well, the last few months, I have been employing all of these tactics of counting:

At the beginning of the summer, I could count the dollars of my fundraising attempts on one hand.

Then slowly, we merged into consecutive numbers... "Yes, $10 does come after $5."

And dollar by dollar, we went into a percentage count, always ticking towards the magic percentage that I needed to move to campus. Sprinkled liberally with the "almost" percentages. Each week, my friends and family would ask me, "What percentage are you at now?"

One-third became one-half which became three-quarters, which became almost there....

... the suspense is killing, right?

OK, out with it! I will be moving to campus this weekend! While I still have to raise a considerable sum of money, and would continue to covet your support and prayers, I have finally reached the percentage needed to begin my year on campus at UNC-Chapel Hill!! Praise God! Assuming our apartment application goes through without problems, we'll sign the lease this week, and move on Sunday... !!! At long last, my days of counting are almost over... :-)

Praise God, it will not come down to my soccer skills. :-D