Hunter Buikema, IVCF staff worker at MSOE during my freshman year, was on campus this afternoon and spoke at our large-group Oasis meeting this evening. I spent about an hour talking to him leading Bible study and my experiences with Lydia. While I don’t know that I ever thought of Hunter as a huge role-model in my life, I have come to realize this evening that I really miss having someone in my life like him that I can look up to. Sure, I’ve got lots of amazing friends and a great family, but there’s something different about having a friendship with someone older yet still relatively close in age (as opposed to, say, my parents :-)) … someone who will challenge me in ways that my friends won’t (regarding, for example, witnessing) and someone who has wisdom from years of experience beyond what my peers have. It made me think back to my involvement in West Chicago Bible Church’s Omega youth group in high school and long talks I had with Bryan Lasky. I know some of my friends, such as Andy Laib and Eric Evenson have “mentors” they meet with on a weekly or bi-weekly basis for this type of instruction and so forth. So, I now think it would be cool if I could do something like that … there’s just the issue of the other commitments that gobble up my time.