And that's official.

Jenny, as I mentioned in a previous post, is my friend and mentor. I did not elaborate on exactly what that entails, so I suppose I will do it now.

For AIM Branson, there are about four "sessions" every year. At the beginning of each session we welcome new members and hold a session training camp, and at the end of each session we hold a Final Presentation showcasing all the songs we have learned.

Last session (spring 2006) there were two older AIM teams. One (the Evangelism team) was directed by Kristi and Jorge, and the other (the Promo team) was directed by Jenny. Jessica, Josiah, and I were all on the Promo team, so I got to know Jenny fairly well and the more I knew, the more I liked her. ;) Then, this session, there is only one team, which is being directed by Jory, Tess, Jorge, Kristi, Jenny, and Kristina - often all at the same time. It's sometimes quite confusing.

Anyway, this session, each SALTeam member is being mentored by one of the members of the HQ Team. The guys are being mentored by Jory and Jorge, and Amy and I are being mentored by Kristi and Jenny, respectively. Each SALTeam member meets with their mentor for a few minutes (in theory about 20 minutes, but in practice about two) at the end of the SALTeam meeting each week, right before the regular practice time. Our mentors ask us how we're doing, what our prayer requests are, and how we have been doing on the character traits and goals that we have been working on. They also (in theory) call us at some point during the week to check up on us.

Through this time and through Jenny being my director, Jenny and I have grown pretty close. I love her to pieces (don't worry, that's a good thing!), and respect her tremendously. So, when Jenny left in mid-June to help lead the month-long North-Central Mission Trip with AIM, I was sad, but consoled myself with the thought that I would see her again in a month.

The final stop on the North-Central was Springfield, Missouri, about 45 minutes north of our house, and the Branson team was invited to see the final presentation from the workshop the team had been leading. However, this presentation was canceled because the workshop students couldn't make it, so we were all invited to come hang out with the team and hear stories and possibly see a couple of songs presented.

Jessica and I decided to go, because we really wanted to see Jenny again (even though we would be seeing her again at practice in just five days), and because Jessica's friend Lizzy, whom she had met at a workshop in Kentucky, was on the mission trip. Several of our friends - Amy, Rachel, and Cody - wanted to come as well, so we picked them up and drove to the church where the team was. I got lost along the way, but that's another story.

When we arrived at the church, Jenny met us at the door. We all screamed and hugged and Jenny said that she was hot and sweaty and we said that we didn't care. She led us into a room where the team members were staying. It was a really neat room. I guess it was the youth room. There were a bunch of plywood steps, each about two feet higher than the one below it, going higher and higher up toward the ceiling, and perched atop the plywood were a bunch of couches. There were quite a few - maybe about 15.

The team members greeted us warmly and we spent a couple hours exchanging stories about presentations gone wrong and receiving letters (not good on AIM mission trips!) and talking on cell phones while riding bicycles and all sorts of random stuff. Cody made himself comfortable with the guys and we girls talked... and talked... and talked... and talked... and - well, you get the point.

Jenny and I chatted for a few minutes. "I didn't know how much I had missed you until I saw you again!" I told her. And it was true. We had missed her at practice, I had missed her as my mentor... but I didn't know it until I saw her. Then I missed her so much... even though she was right there! I guess I had to make up for all those weeks of not missing her when I really should have.

We asked the team if they would be willing to present a song for us. They didn't want to, but they pointed out that they had to do whatever Jessie - Jenny's twin sister and the director of the trip - said. When we asked Jessie she said that they could present one song. Yes! So then we had to choose a song. The final choice was Take You at Your Word, a high-energy, dance-y song that AIM Branson had just started learning two weeks ago.

One of the girls went out to the van to get the prop Bibles for the song, as another helped Jenny, who would be presenting the song with them, remember the song's complicated steps. Jenny knew the song well, but she was accustomed to teaching it - backwards (known in AIM-dom as "mirroring"). It's difficult to adjust from mirroring to presenting normally. Jenny had had to do it once before, in practice a few months before, and it was a complete disaster. Backwards turns, wrong hand forward... you name it, Jenny did it backwards, and almost fell over a couple of times. It was very entertaining.

Anyway, back to the present. It took Jenny a couple of minutes to get the steps down, and as she practiced, we AIM Branson girls climbed up the the very top couch and watched carefully as the presentation began. The team did an excellent job with the presentation, with every movement crisply and perfectly executed - with one exception: Jenny.

Jenny was still in mirroring mode, and we watched, in stitches, as she struggled to present the steps normally. The team spun to the left... Jenny was left standing alone on the right. The team jumped to the right... Jenny ran back from the place on the left to which she had jumped. It was not pretty. It wasn't as bad as it had been that one time in practice, but it was pretty close.

As our clapping for the presentation died down, one of the students informed us that it was now AIM Branson's turn to present Take You. Uh-oh. The 16-member AIM Branson team had begun to learn the song two weeks ago, but still had only a rough idea of exactly what was going on, and had not yet been taught the very beginning or the very end of the song. There were only four presenting AIM Branson members there: Jessica, Cody, Amy, and Rachel. The Promo team, including Jessica and Cody, had learned the song last session, but Amy and Rachel were in the dark, and four was really not enough to do Take You effectively. We needed more people.

First we tried to recruit Kristina, who had been trying to pick up the song as the team practiced two weeks ago, but had not been taught any of it. She said she couldn't do it because she had no earthly idea what she was doing. Fair enough. Next we asked Kristi, who had taught us the song, but she refused to do it. Jorge? An emphatic, "NO WAY!" They even asked me, but I had a very good excuse, seeing as I wasn't a mime! Finally Kristina was forced to participate. The North-Central team settled back, relaxed, and prepared to watch what would be The Worst Ever Presentation of Take You At Your Word.

As the song began, Kristina (remember, she had no idea how the song begain!) walked tenatively onstage and began to mime reading a Bible, as was normally done later in the first verse. The mission trip team members burst out laughing as Kristina realized her mistake, and Cody spun out as he was supposed to. Jessica spun out next, Amy and Rachel trying to follow her lead. Then the first verse began, and so did the spinning and jumping. Kristina jumped the wrong way and had to scramble back into the correct position. Halfway through the first verse, there is a cue where everyone is supposed to freeze (of course, nobody knew that cue) and one person is supposed to step out and start narrating. Thankfully, Jessica knew the narrator part and everybody pretty much froze at about the right time. Then the chorus, which everyone had practiced dozens of times, began. It started off OK, but soon poor Kristina was spinning and jumping every which way. The North-Central team was laughing so hard that I think some of them were crying.

The song continued like this until the bridge, where a complicated "box step," which was learned in groups of four or six, had to be done. There were five presenters. It was a mess. Disaster. Catastrophe. Whatever you want to call it, it was not pretty. I don't think anyone fell over, but quite a few people were bumped around. The end was a lot like the beginning, except worse. Kristina and the others who didn't know what they were doing were relieved to leave the stage, but Jessica told me afterwards that she had a lot of fun. "It's fun to laugh at mistakes... your own or others'," she said. I agreed, and we got to do both!

It was nearly 8:00, so it was time to say goodbye. We went around giving hugs to the team members, and two each to Jenny. As I hugged Jenny, I joked, "Man, I don't know how I'm going to live the five days until practice on Thursday when I'll see you again."

"Yeah..." she began to answer. Then, "Wait. I'm going to be gone to California!"

No way! "I wish someone would have told me that! How long will you be gone?" I asked sadly.

"About a month," she replied.

I thought for a minute, and then said, "Well, I need an extra hug to go that long!" We embraced, and she promised to walk me out to the car so we could hug one more time before I had to leave.

More goodbyes were said, and then more, and then even more. Finally we got everyone out to the car - Jenny had to push the girls into their seats as she hugged them - and Jenny and I shared one last hug. Man, I miss her so much already.

They say you never know what you've got till it's gone, but I think it's more true that you don't know what you're missing until you see it. That's certainly true for me with Jenny. I've never had any really close friends, and I've never had anyone, other than my parents and one friend from my early childhood, that I've really, truly missed as much as I miss Jenny. I miss her so much. But at the same time, it's wonderful to have someone that you love enough to miss them, if that makes any sense. And to think that until tonight I didn't even know it. I MISS JENNY!!! And that's official.