The car is packed. Your room is empty. Your parents are crying. You’re gone. It is the truest form of bittersweet that I have ever known. But leaving home wasn’t the hardest part. That was leaving my home church. The building that I spent probably more time in than my own home. Where I made my friends and where I learned how to play basketball, volleyball and dance. Where I first learned how to pole-vault and act. It was where I went to camp and had my first real job as a lifeguard. It was where I fell in love with Jesus. It was home.

When I first arrived in Rome, I knew what my first mission was — find a church. This seemed like a relatively easy task considering the fact that there was a church on every corner, sometimes even two — or so I thought. For the next five Sundays, I would church hop. I would research a church, find out what they believe, then visit (usually by myself).

It is a strange feeling to enter a church that you’ve never been to before, in a brand new city, all by yourself. It's full of mixed emotions between homeyness, loneliness and homesickness. Going into a church filled with people who have the same beliefs as you, however, the loneliness kicks in when you realize there is no social foundation yet, and homesickness after you realize you miss what you had in your home church.

Eventually, I settled down in a church and attended regularly with the same family every week. This worked great for a while. After some time, school started getting really busy and I started training for Track.

Things went downhill.

Sleeping in started to seem like a better option. We started having Sunday meets so I couldn’t go to church. Different events were happening on weekends so I couldn’t make it. Homework started piling up. Life started to get in the way.

I think this is what most Christian college students go through. Now that we have the freedom to choose whether or not to go to church, it is easier to choose not to go. In the same way, it is a lot easier to choose to go to an outreach organization instead of church (nothing against those groups). Even watching services online becomes a better option then the live thing.

Here is the reality of being a Christian in college. It is hard — really hard. Church is essential. It is like going to class before a test or recharging an iPhone. It is necessary to refill us and prepare us for the rest of the week. It is a chance to leave everything that is worrying you or pulling you down from the week for 45 minutes. Not only that, but it is essential to create a community. I could go on and on about how church is good for you but I want to leave you with one simple statement.

You won’t find a church if you stop looking.

You will never find a church that is the exact same as your home church but that doesn’t mean that there aren’t other fantastic churches out there. You also don’t need other people to go to church (unless you don’t have a car but that is another story). Don’t be afraid to branch out and go searching because you might something incredible.