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FBC Kids Missions Class

For the last two Wednesdays I’ve gone to First Baptist to talk to the kids’ missions class. First off, I can’t even begin to tell you how cool I think it is that they even have a kids’ missions class that studies missions and missionaries and different countries every week.

Cameron describes her view of missionaries (before becoming one) as people who were “just a little bit too excited about Jesus” and that even among great Christian people in the Church, the last thing you’d ever want to be was a missionary. I have to say that I felt pretty much the same way until only a few short years ago, probably mostly because of my lack of experience with career missionaries and a similar lack of understanding both of what goes into and comes out of missions.

How much more fruitful my two short-term mission experiences in high school would have been if I’d had a better understanding of the whole idea of missions for years by then.

And I hope that those dozen or so kids actually did take something away from my and Jerry’s experiences other than how cool they’re going to think I am because they all think I’m fluent in Spanish and can play anything by ear (I’m translating the postcards they wrote and Heather gave me the key for a 3-chord song that thus was really simple to pick up).

What’s cool is I feel like they did take something from it. And that’s way more due to Heather than to me or Jerry. I taught them a couple songs (I should have videoed all the gringitos doing “Yo Yo” for Sarita) and told them what they meant, but all these well-trained little critters actually asked what it meant, delving a lot deeper into the theological realm than I’m used to for mostly second- to fifth-graders. I told them about eating cuy, and they weren’t any more grossed out than most of the high school seniors on my teams. They seemed to grasp pretty well the idea of people living in the jungle and lacking many of the things people here don’t tend to think they could get along without.

And through that, a bunch of elementary-schoolers actually understand pretty well the purpose and importance of missions, and that we are all missionaries, whether in a foreign land or at the corner of Dyer and Main.

I’m proud of them. I’m a little jealous that they have this at their age. And I’m fueled, hopeful, and desperate for that “active ministry” I mentioned to Dana and Teddy.

Kids Missions Class

🙂

mmmbye

Apparently I have a “getting off the phone voice.” I’m not disagreeing with that assessment, I’d just never thought about it before. A friend told me she needed to go “pretty soon” after we had been talking for a while tonight. That says to me “this conversation is done right here. Everything from this point on is just reminders and fluff.”

Maybe that’s not how everyone looks at it (feel free to chime in on the comments), but I do. It could be that I’m just efficient. It’s probably just that I’m impatient and I don’t like transition (I’ve got a draft waiting for completion that’s about hating transition… you might see it one of these days). But once the thought enters my head that the conversation will at some point end, I immediately reach that point in my own mind. And I just don’t like the rest of that “fluff.”

My “getting off the phone voice,” in my opinion and after only about 3½ minutes consideration, gets more intense the longer the farce of a conversation lasts after any variation of the “I’ll need to go soon” line. As I’ve said before, this reminds me so much of a couple of loathe-to-answer-the-phone relatives of mine that I have to laugh at myself a little. But I feel like you should be definitive about whether you are having a conversation or not. Don’t be unsure whether you’re still really talking about anything meaningful anymore.

Which brings me to another realization. One of those strange things that annoys me is when people get off the phone and instead of saying simply “bye,” it is drawn out into “mmmbye” (You’ll notice now that either you or someone you know does this). I remember noting that several people I know do this sometimes, but I can think of one person in particular who does it every time she gets off the phone with anyone.

Why does it annoy me? I’ve never known until tonight. I actually mentioned this to Riley the other day at work. I was cut off in the middle of a sentence by the person on the other end (like me, trying to get off the phone as quickly as possible once the primary purpose of the conversation was accomplished) and accidentally committed the crime of elongating my adieu by cramming in a “bye” before the click and also before I’d stopped speaking my last syllable. Justifiable, I would say, but still obnoxious coming out of my own mouth.

Another friend of mine has noticed this particular personal pet peeve, but didn’t quite hit the nail on the head. She thought I just hated talking on the phone period, which I do not. I love talking on the phone, probably more than most guys and certainly than anyone as genetically predisposed to avoice tele-oration as myself. But I do enjoy it, particularly with every single one of the individuals that have been anonymously mentioned herein. But say you’re thinking of anything other than staying on the phone for the next six hours and not only am I finished, but I want a three-letter valediction.

Three In One Day?

I know, I know. I’ll scare people away if I give them too much to read. But this one’s a little lighter than the several preceding entries and I just had to write it.

Driving back from class today, I was going down Southern Avenue. For those unfamiliar with Elizabeth City, Southern Ave. is a pretty long street (it’s even longer if you take into consideration that it, Park Street, Riverside Ave., and River Road are all the same road, and really, you could extend that to Pitt’s Chapel Rd. as well) that goes from town through and to a large chunk of residential area and past the main entrance to Elizabeth City State University.

This woman was driving a van down Southern Avenue towards town. She was not up to the University yet, and I was past it already, headed home. I’m not sure what compelled me to glance inside the car at the actual driver, but when I did, I realized that both of her hands were not only not on the steering wheel, but over her eyes! And she wasn’t just coasting along either, I’m pretty sure she passed me doing 35 or 40.

Because of the glare from the sun on the windshield, I couldn’t see if there was some kid in the passenger seat who she was just terrorizing for a couple of seconds on that straightaway. And yeah, I know it’s a little dark that that’s the only explanation I could come up with for that action, but it’s something I would have thought was funny from the backseat while my brother freaked out if somebody had done that to us when we were little.

At any rate, I watched her in my rear view mirror (which means that neither of us were looking at the road) and she didn’t crash either within my field of vision or anywhere back along the course of the road when I went back down it later.

So basically this is a pointless post, except maybe that it’s quite interesting what you’ll see if you stalkerishly peer at people inside their cars.

Probably Blew This One

Adam, Jerry and I were the only ones at Discussion Group last night. I probably didn’t even have to say it out loud, but I suggested, to instant and unanimous laughter and agreement that we go to Taco Bell.

The discussion was actually really good, and went on some tangents, but was originally (and for the most part stayed) about the inerrancy of Scripture.

But, like so many times lately, it wasn’t the discussion or anything else revolving our entire purpose that stuck with me the most from last night. It was the guy that knocked on the glass window next to us and then came inside to talk to us.

It was pretty easy to tell he was going to ask for money as he came up. He was a really good-natured guy, and hilariously creative at that. But you could smell the booze on his breath, and though I could continue, I’ll stop the description of the assault on our senses right there.

Long story short, we chatted with him for a minute (we had to, he sat down in the empty space on the booth next to me, so I was trapped) and eventually got across to him that we didn’t have (or weren’t willing to give, in my case) any money to him and he got up and headed to the bathroom. The three of us had long been finished with our food and had already said our closing prayer, so the second the bathroom door closed behind him, Adam caught my eye with a look that said “Let’s go,” and our trio was out the door and in the van much faster than anyone that full of tacos should be able to move.

I started talking about this on the way back to church with them, and have since continued to contemplate it. It reminds me a little bit of Billy’s story, after reading about us finding the man who had been mugged on the street in Quito. He drove past a guy sleeping outside the old library on Main Street. Wondering if the guy needed help, he threw the truck in reverse, stopped in front of the library, rolled down his window and said “Hey, man, do you need some help?” The figure rolled over and said “Leave me alone, you son of a *****, can’t you see I’m drunk?!” Billy just laughed and drove off, but I doubt he’ll stop again anytime soon to ask someone apparently sleeping on the street if they need help.

Granted, the kinds of situations where people seem to be in need or ask for help are much different in the United States than they are in a developing country. But how easy it is to be discouraged from helping people at all.

I am not going to give money to somebody who I know will spend it on alcohol (though I wonder a little bit about that upon further consideration- he did smell like alcohol, but we were inside a restaurant and I could have offered him a taco to see what he’d say). And I’m actually pretty sure this particular guy has asked me for money before. And his language left much to be desired. But I still have pretty much no excuse except my own discomfort for not asking about who he is, finding out some of his story, and at least giving him an ear and maybe a little bit of the Gospel (which I feared would piss him off, but have since decided that he’d be better off pissed than not hearing it).

Adjusting Your Brain

For the first few days I was back from Ecuador, I kept waking up thinking I was in Quito. That’s really interesting, because I’ve never ever done that before in my life. My mom would always worry about me waking up and freaking out, not knowing where I was if I stayed at a friend’s house or my grandparents’ or my aunt’s. But never in my life have I woken up and wondered where I was, even for a second, until this August 8.

In fact, I don’t think I stopped waking up thinking I was in Quito until the pulled muscle/nonfuncioning lungs incident of August 22, when I’d instead wake up and think “do my lungs work today?” (for days, the answer was usually “not quite”).

I’ve also been really stuck on cars for the last week. My mom got a new car, so now I’m driving hers and Colin’s got mine. Not only do I walk out into the garage in the morning and back in at night and wonder “whose car is this?!” every single day, I actually looked out the front window at work yesterday and thought “what’s my mom doing here?”

Final example: my clock. Long story short, my furniture was rearranged while I was gone and my clock is now on the left, rather than the right of my bed. Not only is it a habit for me to look to the right to see ~~what time it is~~ how late I am each morning, but it’s a strong one. I ran through every room I’ve ever been in since I’ve had a clock in my room. Anderson, Lawrenceville, Clarksdale, Elizabeth City, Greensboro, back to Elizabeth City, Quito. My clock has always been to my right. I laugh at myself because I feel like it’s a gigantic effort to flip over and look at where my clock is now, but no wonder when it’s not in the same place it’s been for just shy of the past two decades. (I can remember two decades. That’s scary.)

I’d like to think I’m a pretty smart guy and that I adapt to new situations quickly. If you ask me what town I’m in or what I’m driving or even where my clock is right now, I’ll spit out the correct answer. But even so, it doesn’t take a huge change in my immediate environment to just totally blow my mind when actually confronted with that situation. It’s ingrained in my mind to look a certain direction when I wake up or seek out a certain car in the parking lot.

The point of this is I hope I break some of these soon. Otherwise the guy at COA that owns the remaining red Maxima will wonder why I keep trying to get in his car.

Real Fake Food

I’ve been noticing this for years now, and I don’t exactly have an essay on it, but it’s an observation nonetheless. And it’ll probably be another where the intro is longer than the main point. Oh, well.

Up until this morning, my mom has actually been home when I woke up in the morning. Between her not having to be at school, or at least not until later without students there, and that I’ve been up relatively early and had no responsibilities whatsoever for the first two weeks back in the States, we’ve actually been having breakfast at roughly the same time, which is totally not normal. It also means as I stare blankly into the pantry for ten minutes as I wake up, she throws out suggestions, or actually makes the stuff that I’m too lazy to put together before 8:00am (which is anything more complicated than a Pop-Tart).

One day last week, it happened to be waffles. I went to the fridge as they were being made, and scanned for syrup. There was the real Vermont Maple from my grandparents in North Hero, and there was the glass container of the special cooking syrup (what the heck do you cook with maple syrup?). So I asked the obvious question, “Mom, do we have any syrup?”

“Yeah, there’s two bottles in there.”

“No, real syrup.”

“That is real syrup.”

I hate real syrup. When I was little I wouldn’t eat it at all. And actually, even today I wouldn’t have had her start making waffles if I knew all we had was “real” real syrup.

Much as I’m not going to attempt to break myself of my attachment to mass-produced high fructose corn syrup style syrup, of which no part has ever come from a tree, I do recognize how ridiculous it is that I’d rather have “fake” syrup than the old-fashioned stuff of which the grocery store kind is a cheap imitation.

My generation just likes high fructose corn syrup. While my parents grew up eating real maple syrup, homemade ice cream, and butter that actually came from a churn (at some point), the “real” stuff for me- what I grew up with and am used to- comes from a grocery store shelf, and before that, some factory that started with imitation ingredients and packed it full of preservatives and flavorings that are giving us all cancer.

First Methodist Church has an annual ice cream social at the homes of two couples from the church. We go down to the river and bring homemade ice cream. Just saying “homemade ice cream” makes my mouth water and I associate delicious things with the idea, probably mostly due to my parents’ appreciation for the substance. But saying its name and eating it are two different things. Five minutes outside and that delicious homemade mint chocolate chip ice cream looks like the Ooze from the Ninja Turtles. I contented myself with brownies this year and scanned the new arrivals hopefully for a quart of Bryers.

Real sugar is supposed to be sweeter than high fructose corn syrup. I can tell the difference in the flavors of Ecuadorian and North American Coca-Cola because of the one change in ingredients. And I like Ecuadorian Coke. But I’d much rather have a homegrown and cancer-infused bottle from the good ol’ U.S.A., full of stuff that will probably kill me and free of extraneous bubbles and that old-fashioned disaccharide that’s too expensive for money-bent U.S. corporations to ship to bottlers and distributors in sufficient quantities to sweeten Coke for North American consumption.

As the nostalgic, purist type, I ought to appreciate “real” stuff more. But say “burger” to my dad and me, and while he imagines grilling out in Cincinnati, Ohio, I picture a nice greasy Big Mac in a cardboard box in Anderson, South Carolina. It’s what I grew up with.

Yes, I recognize the ridiculousness of it. And yes, I’m going to go have an HFCS- and preservative-filled cancer-giving glass of root beer right now.

The Kind of Friends

I went to the beach last Saturday with Jamie and Elizabeth. I know. Took me long enough to write about it. Give me a break, I went to the Emergency Room this week, so I’m behind on the blog.

I’ve known Jamie since middle school, and we were in the same home room all throughout high school (Patterson, Peck). I think it was really around band camp our sophomore year that we started to be closer friends than just two guys who hung out with the same relatively large group. I’ve known Elizabeth since the ninth grade (I think. She probably remembers me from River Road and I’ll get in trouble for this). We definitely didn’t hang out in high school, and I don’t know when it was for her with me, but I can pinpoint exactly the time when my respect and appreciation for her skyrocketed (which I’m not writing about because it’s unrelated to the overall point), and I think of her as a really close friend now.

If I sit and think of it, I go through the evolution of friendships with everyone I know, particularly the friends with whom I’m the closest. Whether it’s the B.R.O.s (new and old), the band geeks, the girls, or any other group or individual, friendships don’t just happen, they grow out of shared time, personalities (that can mesh, balance, or totally clash at different times), and experiences good and bad.

Coming back to Elizabeth City after a day of putt-put, tanning, and swimming was hilarious. The three of us just laughed pretty much the entire way home about the super-loud speaker at Sonic and our super-bored waiter at Outback. I even said at one point, “We couldn’t have done this with anyone else and had it be this funny.” And because of our history and our humor, it wouldn’t have been.

I remember another instance, at Mike’s house one Christmas break. Billy and James walked in, and we hadn’t seen either of them for months. My hair was really long and I had a goatee at the time, and Billy’s first words upon entering the house and seeing me were, “Dan! Looking haggard!” James, behind him, laughed hysterically, if not a little nervously. Anyone else saying that to someone could probably expect to offend the haggard-looking person in question, but I laughed and gave him a hug, knowing exactly what he meant, and how many stories and inside jokes were involved in those three words and his instant reaction.

There’s lots of silly sayings about friends that go on bumper stickers or chain letters or any number of other ridiculous places. You know like the one from that facebook app that says “I have the kind of friends that if my house were burning down, they’d be there roasting marshmallows and flirting with the hot firemen,” or something about how your real friends just walk in without knocking and pour themselves a drink from the fridge (which sounds like me at the Turner house, whether Mike or anyone else is there or not). And while those are mostly really cheesy, some of them hit pretty close to home.
I have the kind of friends that drag me out of bed at 10:30 (as they tell me what an “old man” I am to be in bed at 10:30) to go do nothing more productive than play Halo or drive to 7/11. The kind of friends who wouldn’t ever put an umbrella in someone’s chimney, but still think it’s hilarious. The kind of friends that swim to the channel marker in the river at 5:00 am and jump off it illegally. The kind of friends who will still drive to the I.H.O.P. in Virginia just for kicks, even though we have one in town now. The kind of friends that talk about… digestion… on a “mission trip” and about salvation in a bar.

The kind of friends who actually read my blog. Thanks.

Theology According to Regina Spektor

Lydia, I almost hope you aren’t reading my blog.

I put my iPod on shuffle this morning on the way to work. I have no idea why. I never do that unless I’m headed to the beach or farther. But nothing jumped out at me on the way back from COA and I lazily told the little device to pick music for me.

As I came down the last bit of US-17 before I turned down MacArthur and finally looped back around the other way on Ehringhaus to work, Regina Spektor came on. I’m not a huge Regina fan, and must admit that I once even turned down tickets to see her at the Norva (which is the place to see anyone). The only song I have of hers on my iPod is The Call, the song from the movie Prince Caspian, for which I had to buy the entire soundtrack on iTunes as the song isn’t available as a single.

As a musician, and as a (albeit terrible) songwriter, I don’t like telling people my interpretation of lyrics or even hearing (and potentially being influenced by) other people’s. I feel like part of the art form, and part of any art for that matter, is the interpretation by the individual exposed to the final product. I feel like the best artists of any kind are those who can both convey a specific message and yet leave it vague enough on the surface to be able to connect with and mean something to anyone who takes the time to appreciate and feel it.

So just know how much this struck me, both that I’m even writing this about a Regina Spektor song of all possibilities, and that I’m even writing it.

The lyrics, which probably can’t be legally reprinted here, can be found here (and this post will make a lot more sense if you either know or glance over them).

Driving along in Elizabeth City after being at COA and headed to Albemarle Music, two very different environments than, say, Quito, Ecuador, it was probably the “Just because eveything’s changing…” part that caught my attention. But upon further inspection, the entire thing can be applied to leaving Ecuador and coming here. Which I’m not going to do. I feel like I’ve done enough of that for a fortnight straight, and tend to sound a lot more negative than I intend when I do so.

Just the first part of the song (which is to some extent- musically- hard to listen to and yet lyrically brilliant in its simplicity) I relate it to faith. I’ve seen a lot of comments about the song on the internet, and depending on how literally it’s taken, some people insert what they think the “word” might be, with suggestions ranging from “love” to “Jesus.” And even though I point that whole paragraph (I think of it in written terms) to “faith” I wouldn’t insert it so directly. I think of my word as a perspective to go along with the lyrics, and each line as a step in a journey, and her “word” as one of those steps.

As an obvious, identifiable stage at a specific point in time, I would say (broadly, with no academic backing) all of our faiths began as an emotion. Be it guilt, joy, or wonder, at some point in your life you feel something that points you Heavenward, and should that be or grow to a hopeful sense of assurance, you began to think and know God on your own. The biggest leap here, at least for me, even more so than getting to the personal thought part, is that “word,” speaking Truth to others, and even more so the “battle cry” in strength and confidence.

Much like a lot of her other stuff, this song is way darker on deeper inspection. In a word of extremes and absolutes, forgiveness vs sin, faith vs doubts, the world vs the Church, the Trinity vs the Enemy, (and especially in such terms) it should be so much more evident how important it is to know who your fiends are as you head off to the war. (Has anybody actually noticed the pattern? If you’re really that coffee-deprived, I’m italicizing the lyrics).

The less and less vague you get, the less and less anything I write will mean personally to anyone who reads this. So we come again to my musician’s dilemma, and this is about where that side of me wins and I (as usual) let you connect the dots.

And I said I wouldn’t relate this to where I am and where I’ve been (physically) but I’m the author and I can do whatever I want, including reneging on whatever I like. And I’ve read and listened to the lyrics at least a dozen times in a row now and I’d just like to point out that it says “I’ll/You’ll Come Back” “When it’s over/when they call me/you.” That’s all.

Residual Effects

When I go running, there’s a loop I do around the neighborhood. From the end of my driveway out the back of Winfield around the Rivershore “circle” and back comes to almost exactly a mile. If you want to add onto that, just tacking on the cul-de-sac on Chancey or coming back through Rivershore Estates and making a big circle can change it up.

This morning was the first time in a long time that I actually did the loop with no walking. Thanks to playing basketball several times a week at 10,000 feet, my legs were giving out far faster than my lungs, probably for the first time in my life.

I set out at a pretty good pace running and breathing in rhythm to David Crowder and paying attention to my breathing just a little bit more than all the obstacles “Winslow Acres” can throw at you (dogs, little girls on bicycles, dogs, oddly placed mailboxes, dogs). I knew when I left that I wouldn’t be able to keep running at the speed I started, and after years of Cross Country and running on my own, I know that that’s a bad way to run. But I wanted to see how far I’d actually get with about a week’s supply of extra red blood cells left.

Tons of things go through my mind when I run. Usually when it’s been this long since I’ve gone, one of them is a prayer that I don’t die. Today, that was replaced by one of the few facts I remember from either of my Ben-Stein-teaching-style Biology instructors. I’m trusting that someone will read this and tell me what the chemical is that builds up in your muscles, but the gist of it is that as your body uses the glucose (I think), it leaves this crap behind, which is what makes your muscles hurt.

About here, you’re probably thinking how ADD I am. It’ll come together.

I spent roughly 2½ months in Ecuador this summer and now I’m back home. I can run a lot harder and a lot longer than I could before because my body can soak up a lot more oxygen right now thanks to adapting to altitude. Is that all? I should hope not.

Right now I’m fresh off the experience and trying to be fruitful as I fun and fight and flight and try not to fit. And there are differences in me, some noticeable to me or to others and some not. Oxygen intake is one. How and where I spend my time is another. And even as much as I want to stop waking up and thinking I’m in Quito now that my trip on-field time is over, I want the experience to continue. (Look, I listened to Partnership orientations a lot).

Just like that stuff that builds up in my leg muscles when I run, there are some painful reminders of where I am/am not and who I am/am not. And maybe I’ll build up my endurance as I keep running at sea level every day, but those extra red blood cells from Quito will fade away, as hopefully will any sense of not having a place here. Ready for it or not, I’m Called to be in Elizabeth City right now, residual (and hopefully more of them lasting) effects of Quito Quest 2008 and all.

Beach

Wednesday morning ten Quito Quest interns, two Maestros, three site hosts, five El Refugio interns, four office interns (for lack of a better common denominator), Christy, Laura and the four Jensens left Quito as thirty of the whitest white people who have probably ever been on Fernando’s bus. This evening we showed back up as thirty of the reddrest.

Most of us have browned over a little bit at this point, but Teddy and Lane will probably be their parejas’ examples of why we wear sunscreen in the Republic of the Equator. But other than a few too many UV rays, the five day excursion was just what the doctor ordered.

I find it interesting how much we describe the places and things we do here by what they are not. Partnership orientation gives us just about thirty minutes straight of what we do not want short-term missions to be so as to better explain what we do want. We explain Casa G by what it is not to remove any preconceived notions or misconceptions about what it takes to be there and their goals.

Our time at the beach was not a vacation, though even we described it as such sometimes. Our primary focus was on worship. In fact the only organized anything other than lunch was worship. Matt J. led us in song and prepped us for various individual, partnered, or small-group worship activities each morning. One of the three QQ guitar players (Lane, Teddy, or I) led songs and prayer after dinner and Matt J. gave us a part-sermon-series-part-Bible-study through Luke chapters 12 to 15 (basically where we are in our devotions this week).

We saw God’s Creation. We sang and praised Him together. We prayed individually, for each other, with each other, in groups and as a group.

Something that just boggles my mind the more and more I focus on God is how his plans just come together around me. Jerry and I both found ourselves praying for the same person at home. Five of the six guys in our small prayer group had very similar issues we were working through in preparing for teams again in a couple days, even whether it was on a personal level or with parejas or as far as teams in general. And then my prayer partner this morning was Bryan, and he just seemed to ask exactly the questions to make me honestly say what was on my mind, two particular issues I’ve been working through and praying about this week in particular.

Especially after really wondering before I came here about how much I truly listen to the Lord, I got a lot of the one thing I ask for consistently: to be smacked in the face by God.

I’m ready for our next team to get here (I know all about my team and where we’re going because we are collectively a really nosy, sneaky, gossipy group of interns despite not even getting team packets until tomorrow night). I’m ready to get back to work. But I’m coming back rested in body, mind and spirit. I’m coming back with new friends and maybe a minuscule amount more basketball skill. And I’m coming back ready to continue listening to God and letting him be our true team leader.