MEET ELIZABETH

What does community mean to you?

Community has played an extremely important role in my walk with Christ, especially growing up in a non-Christian family and not having the chance to attend church regularly until this year. For me, community has always been a place I could call home. It’s a place where I could learn and be surrounded by like-minded brothers and sisters. It's a place where I could share joy and my burdens of simple things like school, or the brokenness and hurt weighing heavily on my heart. It’s a place where people can worship together, laugh together, cry together, pray together, and grow together. You can hold each other accountable. Most importantly, you are there to love and support one another just as the Lord has commanded us (John 13:34). Community was something I found in my high school fellowship and it was something I was eager to find in college.

On the night of the first AAIV large group, my fears of commuting home (to Renton) alone in the dark and the anxiousness of being a socially-awkward person, having to actually SOCIALIZE, almost kept me away from attending, as it did the day before for a different fellowship. All throughout the day I wrestled with my thoughts saying, “I REALLY want to go but—”, and then it clicked “but what?!” I realized I was letting my fears and anxieties keep me away from something so important to me. While praying that afternoon I could hear the loving voice of God reminding me to trust in Him, and He will provide for me. So, I took His cue and went that night, and He really did provide for me—He brought me to find a new friend and sister who I could commute home with on those late nights, as well as led me to find community within the Commuter’s Small Group Family.

This year God has really been reminding me the importance of community and to seek Him out even in the smallest of trials. He has also really opened my eyes to the amazing people He has placed in my life so far (like friends who spam my texts making sure I’m home safe or my gracious parents who pick me up late at night), and I’m excited to deepen old friendships as well as I continue to make new ones through AAIV this year!