The people have spoken!
There is this theory that everybody on this planet is connected to one another… The theory holds that you can link any two people on to each other with only six other people. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six_degrees_of_separation
I know we all have crazy connections. My craziest one involves my friend Mary Grace. When I finished seminary, I headed off to India in 2003 and began my life after school. In India, through a whole series of random occurrences, I ended up helping a church called the Bangalore International Christian Fellowship. Basically, it was a church for internationals and other Indians who have lived overseas, etc. It was at this church that I built a friendship with Mary Grace. We became good friends really fast. Mary Grace and her friend Robin would come home often and eat with my family. When we had bad days, we’d find coffee shops to veg out at and we definitely included each other in our own network of people. After countless motorcycle, autorickshaw and random van rides, we became quite the posse… JP and Mary Grace and Robin (You really should ask my brother James to read that with his “american” accent). A year later, my time in India was done and I headed back to the States while Mary Grace hung around off and on before she headed back stateside as well.
Mary Grace then began graduate studies in Vermont. She befriended a Michigan girl there, quite randomly, who just so happened to be working at Hope College with Katy! As random as that connection was, a little down the road, this friend Amy set her up with her brother Andrew. Long story short… Andrew and Mary Grace got married this year and they just had a reception here in Michigan. At the reception, I was the only one who really represented Mary Grace’s side and it was fun to hear people ask how we knew Andrew… we had to pause and say… well Katy works with Amy…but really we were there because JP and Mary Grace are friends… they met in India!
It was a great weekend. We got to know Andrew quite a bit. He comes from a family of artists. Quite an interesting story, but his family lived in Germany for about 20 years before opening up their pottery in Charlevoix. The church they attend is pastored by Chip Sauer… who interestingly enough worked with Katy when she was in seminary!:) Chip and Katy basically mentored each other. Andrew has a brother as well.. who lives out in Washington State. He lives in an area that is pretty cut off from the rest of civilization… canoes are a primary form of transport.. and get this… he is friends out there with a guy who’s dad works as my boss at Audio Scripture Ministries!
So yeah… talk about a cool way of getting people connected. This week has also been fun in another way. On thursday, I got to have dinner and coffee with my friend Arthur who I haven’t seen in 12 years! He graduated from high school with me in Chennai. I had since moved to the US. He is now an engineer in the US and just happened to be in Michigan. And in true Indian fashion, he called me the night before to see if he could come up to see me the next day. And in true Indian fashion… I said OF COURSE! Talk about a strange reunion. The last time I saw him, we were in high school uniforms, on a hot summer day in Madras (Chennai was still called that then). We probably still had idlis and vadas on our minds and last Thursday…we had pizza and coffee downtown. A lot has changed in our lives, but for that evening, we rewound that clock and talked in English and in Tamil about things that nobody else in Holland could really understand! Here is a picture of our evening. Arthur is on my left… and his friend Sahil is on my right.
I hope you have some cool stories like that too. I am always excited to hear of reunions or crazy connection. Email me or leave a comment here if you wish to share your story! 
