Nongeographical Community

I am now in Indianapolis at the Porter's, a family in the branch down here. They have given us a place to sleep and good food to eat now for the last week. Here we are in the upper room above the garage, which has been converted into a study. The bright light is a lamp and below it is Nick's computer, on it are Brian Couch and Thomas Duddy, who are still in Allendale building down there.

The five of us are working to stay connected and present to one another. We use an internet phone service that charges something like $5 a month, and includes a parallel video feed, so you can see who you are calling. It's really sweet.

We started using this cheap mode of communication during last summer with the Allendale Video Project, which used a similar set up that included a chat program so that we could give talks in Allendale to the high schoolers (known as Action Division) who were down there working on houses and neighborhood fix-it projects across the POP. Each week the folks in Allendale would gather in one house and listen to a talk while folks from across the community would tune in on the internet. You check them out at Citybuilder.org (in the links on the sidebar).

Here we are talking with Brian and Duds about what they've been up to and share a little about what we've see thus far in Indy. It was a really interesting experience doing communication this way over the summer as you never felt like you were far away from folks, even though you were actually across the country. When you can talk to someone face to face, even if its through a screen, it goes along way to building friendship regardless of geographical location.