I'm the first to admit, I didn't want to leave Cedar Falls. I was terrified of leaving everything I knew behind and to restart in a new place.
Cedar Falls was comfortable. Cedar Falls was familiar. Cedar Falls was where I was guaranteed to see old friends who had moved on themselves.
If you didn't already know, on August 1, I packed up my life into a couple cars and made the move up to Mankato, Minnesota, to work at Minnesota State University. A place where nobody knew who I was nor did the local coffeeshops know my go to order.
I was scared.
Everything happened so fast through the search process that I didn't really have a chance to fully grasp the reality of the move.
Then came moving day. The vehicles were packed, the goodbyes had been said, and I was off. We made the 3 hour drive up to Mankato, arrived, unpacked, went shopping, and began to settle in.
What happened over the next several days blew every expectation I had of what moving would look like out of the water.
On Saturday, I found a local coffee shop tucked away in downtown Mankato. I ordered my cappuccino, sat down at an empty table, and drank it for what felt like an hour. Never had I felt so alone in a place that felt so familiar. After finishing my drink and getting up to leave, a table of four young adults stopped me to ask a question.
I was wearing a shirt friends had sold to fundraise for their missions trip to Haiti and the four at the table wanted to know about it. Through that conversation, we discovered that they were good friends with one of my coworkers at MSU and attended the same church that she did. That then led to the invitation to join them for church on Sunday.
The next day, I walked into Hillside Church with the same uncertainty I had felt all week. I again felt so lost in a place that felt familiar, but Lorenzo, one of the guys who had invited me to church that morning, found me wandering around and walked me over to the welcome center. It was there that he introduced me to a gal named Amy, someone who just so happens to have lived in Cedar Falls for 6 or 7 years!
Amy worked at Prairie Lakes Church while in the Cedar Valley and we discovered that we have quite a few mutual connections in the valley.
Over this past week, I had the opportunity to meet my staff of Community Advisors and learn alongside them about Residential Life at MSU. They are a fantastic bunch of humans who have had a really great time making fun of my Iowa roots, even if everything they think they know about Iowa is wrong. :)
I wanted to write about these first two weeks in Mankato, partially as a life update for those I haven't spoken with yet, but also to talk about leaving Cedar Falls.
I was terrified of moving, yes, but Mankato has quickly shown itself to be a place that I can call home. I didn't want to leave the comfortability of a coffeeshop I had learned to love, but I sit here today writing this post in a shop a couple miles north of Mankato that feels so much like home. And while I continue to seek new encounters to build connections with the 20 somethings of Mankato, I am confident that this place is the right fit for me.
With that, Cedar Falls taught me so much but I am excited to welcome anybody to my new home- Mankato, Minnesota. All are welcome.
- Dan