Dear Community,

The Jesuit Volunteer Corps is grounded on four values: spirituality, community, simple living, and social justice. Each value is essential to JVC's mission and no one principle is more important than another. They are all interrelated. A year ago, when I was sitting in my JVC Orientation being introduced to these values that would "ruin" my life, a presenter said that the pillar of community would be the hardest to continue to live out once my service year was done.

It has been a little over a month since I left D.C. and my service year. I see what that presenter meant about the challenge of remaining in community, but I find myself disagreeing with him anyway.
Everything in the past month has been about community.

On the morning I left D.C., I hugged my housemates, who I had created a community with unlike any I had ever known. As I walked through airport security, I could not imagine living life without them. I landed in the West Coast a few hours later (traveling through time zones is rough) just in time to join my family at the annual Hawai'ian cultural festival run by the halau hula that I have danced in since elementary school. From community to community.

A week later, I hopped on a plane to LAX. I sat with two older women who listened in eager anticipation as I told them why I was flying to California. They gave me excited pieces of advice on where to go, what to do, and their own favorite memories. The time passed quickly and we all left the plane with smiles. Community.

At baggage claim, I found myself wrapped in the arms of my older cousin, Mile (pronounced "Me-lay"). It had been nine years since we had seen each other and she was visiting the US for the first time from Australia. Hours later, we were with our older cousin Triva and finally together, our trio began a three-week road trip that covered Las Vegas, San Diego, Portland, and countless places in between. Along the way we collected friends who made the trip unforgettable. For the first time in months, I got to speak my first language, Samoan, freely at any time. I was people who knew everything about me, who I didn't have to explain my cultural and ethnic background to. My cousins got me, and through laughter and love, they eased away the heaviness of my D.C. goodbyes. They were my community.

 Now, I'm home and instead of feeling an absence of community, I am aware of how many communities I am blessed to have. It is true, maintaining my relationship with my D.C. communities are harder. I miss coming home every night to my six housemates. It is bittersweet to see pictures from Joseph's House and not be there to celebrate with my community. Being away from D.C. during the 50th anniversary on the March on Washington was awful. But, thanks to modern technology, those communities are only a phone call, a Facebook message, a Skype chat, a live 24-hour news stream away. There are planes and trains and cars to reach that home.

And back in this home, I have my family, West Coast culture, college friends, service communities. They are different communities, but they are still my communities. Both teach me that it is not distance that challenges intimacy, but the intentional effort that you must put into it to maintain closeness. Relationship takes a lot of work. It is hard, yet I know that I need community. I'll put the work in.