Showing posts with label America. Show all posts
Showing posts with label America. Show all posts

Wednesday, May 16, 2012

Able to dream again!

 Yesterday we went to the Magic Kingdom. Amber's mom is paying for all of this as her graduation gift. Amber keeps looking at me saying, "Thank you so much for coming with me! This is so much more fun with you here!" and I keep telling her, 'you keep making it sound like am doing the favor to you! You've got it backwards! Thanks for bringing me along!!'

 We were ridiculous. We spent about an hour and a half just on Main Street looking at stuff and shops and the little hidden surprises Disney has hidden everywhere you look. And we kept looking at each other going, 'Hey! We're GRADUATED! We're ADULTS! We're in DISNEY UNSUPERVISED!!!' and reveling in the freedom, acting like little kids when we wanted and mature adults when we wanted and it was AWESOME. Speaking of little kids, there were plenty of those and we spent a good amount of time just watching them - trying very hard to do so in a non-creepy way of course ;-)
(can you see the ducklings in the picture below?)

 We found Graduation-hat-Mickey Ears. They were overpriced, of course, but we wore them ALL DAY LONG and random people would shout "CONGRATULATIONS!" at us so it was worth it. We are totally wearing them the rest of the week. We made friends with this little girl and her dad in Tomorrowland at the Monsters Inc laugh floor - which was actually very well done and funny. It was a stand-up comedy show. We made her smile while we waited in line by pretending that since she was dressed like Belle from Beauty and the Beast she really WAS Belle and her dad wasn't sure if he was the Beast, Gueston, or just her Bodyguard. So we had fun with that :-)

 We did Tomorrowland last, (my pictures are all out of order. Sorry) and did the Buzz-lightyear ride and I creamed Amber in the shooting competition. Then we went to Space Mountain. Its an indoor roller-coaster almost completely in the dark. I screamed the entire three minutes. I'm usually not a screamer or whatever on rides - I bottle everything in until I explode - but we got off and I turned to Amber and said, 'Man it felt good to just scream for three minutes.' She had screamed occasionally too but mostly just laughed at my squawking and howling. "Dude it feels good to be EXCITED and happy about something!" she retorted. Yeah ain't that the truth.

 Its funny because people will say, 'Wow! You are graduates! you are adults! Time to step into the real world, right?' and then we'll all laugh and say, 'Yeah thats why we came to DISNEY the week after Graduation!!!' But its been awesome. Going to rides I remember and seeing all the fun old characters I used to love and dream about from the Disney stories and remembering the old games my sister and cousin and I would play with our dolls etc. And remembering what it felt like to be carefree and happy and young again. I know Disney is the cesspool of materialism, but quite frankly its been a huge relief to just relax for a couple of days and get my dream-machine fixed up and re-tuned.

 Another funny story: yesterday we went to dinner at Disney Studios and one of the security guards asked if I was a character. I said know but I wouldn't mind being one and then there was this huge crack of thunder from one of Florida's obligatory daily rainstorms. The security guard laughed and said, 'that was God giving you your cue: GO work at Disney World!" We all laughed. I think I would LOVE working as a character for a summer. No plans to pick up an application or anything though ;-)

 Amber has been an amazing tour guide, pointing out 'hidden mickeys' and explaining the histories and back stories of certain rides etc. She keeps asking if she's boring me or ruining things for me and I'm like, 'are you crazy?! No! This is awesome!' My own private tour guide :-D

 The other thing that is so dang AWESOME is that I'M IN FLORIDA AGAIN!!! Grandma used to take me and my sister in the summer to her Condo for about a week per summer but I haven't been in about 10 years due to her focusing on younger cousins which is fine. But I didn't realize how much I missed it. Just the weather, the way the water tastes, the exotic wildlife EVERYWHERE (like we saw a cool lizard at the bus stop and the herons and ibises perching on all the outside vendors) and the way the air is just wet but in a unique humid sort of way. We are planning on going to the beach on Thursday if it doesn't rain us out. Shoot I don't care if it does rain, I haven't been to the beach in 10 years I want to go!!!

 The nice thing about going as an adult is that there is no one to tell you 'no' to things that make amazing memories but aren't technically worth it 1. financially or 2. nutritionally. Like Mickey Head Ice Cream. $3.50 worth of pure goodness, however its about the same amount of money as I usually spend on lunch. Not to worry, simply substitute the mouses head for lunch. You eat a huge breakfast with characters and a huge dinner in a 50's cafe and play play play in between stopping only for ice cream!

 Not sure that this will be our plan of attack every day but for our first day in Disney World it was totally an amazing idea ;-)
 This breakfast was awesome. The food was amazing and the characters did a great job. It was so fun to see the little kids and their reactions to the characters. The babies especially were fascinated and just could not figure out why these huge stuffed animals kept trying to kiss them and hold them and why mom and dad kept wanting their picture taken with them. The characters did enough to keep mom and dad satisfied but not freak the babies out. Then when they got to our table they would kiss our hands and dance with us while the picture was being taken :-) Our waitress was SUPER friendly and nice as well. Did I mention the food was amazing?

Thats all for now. :-)

Tuesday, August 16, 2011

Busy-ness

"It makes me sad that we're too busy to be friends." my classmate said with friendly flippancy as she tried to finish up reading through homework before our class started at 9am this morning. I love this friend. She is down to earth, frank, honest, laughs loudly, loves Jesus, loves friends, and is real about struggles. She's come up to me when I was fuming or trying not to cry, taken one look at my face and wrapped me up in a huge bear hug whispering words of encouragement. And she's yelled at me across the cafeteria in good-natured sarcasm indicating her personal struggles and frustrations with life.
And we have both been saying for several semesters now that we REALLY REALLY ought to hang out. However, we simply don't have time!!!
We both work, take full loads of classes, try to get a full nights sleep (sorta) and are involved in various ministry projects on a consistent basis. And go to church. We see each other in passing and know that if we could just carve out time to sit down, we would be great friends. But our schedules don't allow.

By the same token, I was thinking while reading for my personal evangelism class (shortly before tossing the book on the bed beside me and pulling up my laptop to start blogging about homework instead of actually DOING it... that's me giving myself a guilt-trip in case you were wondering) how long its been since I sat down and just wandered the Bible with a prayer journal in front of me, scribbling out epiphanies and prayers and frustrations and praises and random thoughts to share with the Almighty. Its been a while.
He's been a Faithful Companion and I talk with Him in passing, and I know if I just carved out time to sit down we'd be great friends as always. But my schedule...

I feel like I re-prioritize on a very consistent basis. :-)

I'm hoping that its an upwards line on the graph of sanctification, but other times I sort of feel like I've plummeted a bit as far as Spiritual Disciplines goes. *sigh* But then the Holy Spirit picks me back up and helps me dust myself off and on we go.

In other news: Just saw the trailer for 'Courageous.' I'm pretty excited about it. :-) Although... its been pretty funny recently with friends of mine since I started dating Kyle; whose occupation is in the Police force, and when he's bored he volunteer firefights. For example, I saw a movie with John Travolta about firemen on my friend's coffee table (we were studying together) and I picked it up to read the back cover. The room collectively cried 'NOOOOOOO!' and begged me to put it down.I tried to explain that I could turn my brain off and decide to not relate to the movie characters, but no one believed me and I was grounded from borrowing it or approaching the DVD player. All that to say I'm wondering if I'm gonna have to sneak out to watch 'Courageous' or if I'll be pushed and shoved to the Theaters by my friends. People keep saying, 'you won't want to know what our servicemen go through,' but honestly sometimes finding out what reality is has been a lot better than leaving me and my imagination alone together to concoct something ten times worse. *sigh*
Oh well.
So back to speaking about discipline, I'm off to go finish reading for Personal Evangelism. We have to memorize a Bible passage every week. I thought it'd be no big deal because I was in Awana all growing up. Yeah well apparently the brain's memorization capabilities deteriorates with age. Oh gosh... I just remembered... I'm a grown up. That's another thing that's weird: my friends are getting married and having babies. When did we get old enough to do that?! Shouldn't there be some sort of test or graduation ceremony to announce that? I mean dating is one thing. Matrimony and procreation is a whole 'nother ball game, my friends. Just sayin'.

Okay I'm really done procrastinating now. Well, for now anyway :-)

~Princess Ouch~

Wednesday, October 1, 2008

Speech for Missions class

Well I gave my speech yesterday at Missions class. A couple people came up afterwards and told me it was really good. So I thought I'd share with you all. :-)
It was actually a group project, and there was three in my group including myself. Alyssa gave the introduction and talked about Africa and Scott talked about South America. I talked about Asia and gave the conclusion. Our speech was entitled, "The dissapearing Center." See if you can figure out what it's on.

"Asia: Honestly, the first thing that comes to my mind when I think of Asia is bugs. Usually big ones with a poisonous stinger on one end and really big painful chompers on the other end. Then I think of high humidity, huge rice paddies, larg rural areas and very short people. In actually fact Asia is home to some of the largest rural areas in the world, such as Seoul and Hong Kong. Japan hosts the world's largest city, Tokyo. Cities in Asia today are usually very familiar with Christianity, and the world's largest churches are found in Asia.
While this is the case, Christianity is the majority religion in five of the six continents and Asia is not one of those five. This is partially due to it's huge land mass and very diverse people groups.
South Asia alone is home to 1/4 of the world's unsaved population. The pacific rim has 350 unreached people groups with populations over 100,000. That's not even touching the people groups with smaller populations. 150 of these large people groups are not even being engaged right now by missionaries (at least according to the Baptist Missions convention)
On the flip side, the Philippines are 93% christian. The Chinese church is experiancing phenominal growth. South Korea is 31.6% Christian, and about 12,000 koreans are serving as overseas missionaries.
An interesting thing about Christianity in Korea: Almost all of the pioneer missionaries during the 19th century, when missions first took effect in that country, were American. In 1890 a Presbyterian named John L. Nevius began the "Nevius method' of Evangelism. This method called for "Self Governing, Self Supporting, and Self Propogating" Churches. This made the Korean churches almost virtually independant of foriegn support.
Another helpful dynamic of these American missionaries is that they avoided using an imported word for God. The Roman Catholic missionaries who had arrived earlier tried using a Chinese term for God and this made the Koreans resentful and suspicious of worshiping what they viewed as a foreign Diety. The Americans used a Korean word, Hananim, for God, and this made the Koreans much more receptive and enthusiastic about the gospel.
The fruit of these American missionaries is that today Seoul Korea hosts the largest mainline denominational churches in the world.
The effects of the Asian church on the world today is 1. they've given the world great Evangelists and ministers such as Watchman Nee, K.P. Johannan, and Ravi Zecharias.
2. The Asian church is consulted heavily in major international Christian conferences.

Conclusion: So what do we do with all this information? How does it apply to us today, here, in this classroom?
First, we need to realize that Global Christianity is a testimony to Missionary faithfullness, and try to become that kind of Missionary.
To become this kind of missionary we need to realize that effective missionaries don't do the work, the Holy Spirit does. We're just His vessals.
We also need to realize the very important fact that WE ARE ALL CALLED.
Keith Greene was a hippie in the 1970's who experianced a very interesting conversion and started ministering to the hippies and young people of the 70's and 80's. He said:
"There is a command in the Bible that says, "Go ye into all the nations and preach the Gospel unto every creature and make disciples of men." We like to think 'Well, that was for the disciples. You know that was for the apostles. That's for the Missionaires. That's for humanitarians. That's for real Christians. I mean really, they're so spiritual they can't stay in society, so they've got to go overseas and bury themselves in some tribe somewhere down in the Amazon." But I'll tell you what, folks, the world isn't being won today because we're not doing it. It's our fault. This generation of Christians is responsible for this generation of souls on the earth, and nowhere in the world is the Gospel so plentiful as in the United States! Nowehere. I don't want to see us stand before God on that day an dsay, 'Gut God, I didn't hear you call me." Here's something for you to chew on. You didn't need to hear a call - you're already called! In fact, if you stay home from going into all nations, you had better be able to say to God, 'You called me to stay home God. I know that as a fact." Unless God tells you otherwise, you are called."
One thing that is important to realize, though, is that reaching out to all nations includes our own. A lot of times we think that if the gospel has been preached in that area it's fine and we don't have to worry about sharing our faith.
I was talking with my friend from India and he told me the story about an American Missionary in India. They had set up their headquarters in one of the cities and were reaching out to rural areas. One night God woke up the son of this missionary and said, 'Go to the Hindu temple." So the young man went and was watching behind a pillar, and he saw this old woman start worshipping this idol of a cow. And she was passionately worshipping this idol more ferverently than he had seen some Christians in the church worship. And started grieving in his spirit and praying, "Lord, how can she do this? It's an idol made of stone!" And God answered, 'Because no one told her the Truth."
"How can she not know the Truth, God? We have our headquarters right here near this temple!"
"Someone didn't obey. She has never heard the gospel preached to her."
So even when we think we've got it covered, there are always more fields to be harvested.
Also, Global Christianity owes it's survival to the indiginous churches and believers in the third world.
The persecuted church prays for the American church, because their walk with God and their world is black and white. Ours is very grey. For them, it's either follow God 100% or live in paganism. For us, it's much easier to integrate social norms and unchristian practices into our lives. So they pray for us.
There was a community in India who heard about Communism in Romania, and so they prayed that God would make Communism fall so that Romania could start sending out missionaries. Well about ten years after they started praying Communism fell and a young Romanian woman was sent to Bible college in Hungary. She ended up going on a mission trip to India and went to the same community who had been praying for her country and people. When they found out where she was from they got emotional and said, "You are the first fruits of our prayers. We have been praying for God to send you to us, because you in Romania can get spiritual training that we can't, and we need you to come teach us."
Christians in the third world also keep the peace and reach out to those that others won't. Christians in Bethlehem aren't accepted socially by either the Jews or the Muslims and want to leave. But neither the Jews nor the Muslims want the Christians to leave as they act as a social buffer between the two groups that hate each other.
Also, Christians in the third world restore Supernatural expectations to the church. My friend Joy from India said that Africans are very spiritually aware in their paganism. When they become Christians, they are able to live in Christian spiritual authority over both the Seen and the Unseen worlds.

Application for American Christians: A quote from the book (Changing the face of World Missions)
"As the Church grows globally, the diversity and numbers of believers doing ministry 'from all nations, to all nations' requrie Cooperation, Consideration, and Consultation. This is the only way to bring the incredible resources of the international Christian Community to bear on the challenges and opportunities abounding today."
Oftentimes, Americans think that we will go into the ministry and do the providing and ministering. We've got it covered, and it's almost a pride thing for us.
I remember this last summer God told me to go to Romania, and I had just barely enough money to cover my costs getting to where I needed to go. But I was going to stay with some missionaries there, and they needed me to help them with food costs, and I didn't have that money so I was afraid that I would be a burden. And God said 'don't worry about it. Go." So I did. And when I first got there, I stayed with my host family for a few days. The night before I left my host mom walked up to me and put something in my hand and said, "This is yours." It turned out to be enough money for me to live on for the next week. And for me it was really humbling, because the AMERICAN was being provided for and supported by the HUNGARIAN PEASANT woman! Many times we think we're the ones supposed to do all the blessing but God wants us to be able to BLESS EACH OTHER.
An insight from my friend in India is that as Americans we often go on mission trips with a lot of suitcases. In these suitcases is plenty of supplies to support our comfort zone. We then do the job and go home. Joy said that "the biggest blessing wuld be an American with only ONE suitcase who said, 'I'm not going back'"
We like our comfort zone. Both the book and Joy said that the biggest need for missionaries is NOT in a comfortable or safe place. Joy said, "The places the Gospel is needed most today are places with no electricity."
His dad has a church in one of the cities in India, and once he went on an Evangelist visit up to one of the villages to the north. And one night he shared the Gospel story the cheif of the village walked up to him and said, "Your God cannot be true. How is it that if your God is sovereign, you are JUST NOW telling us this after 2,000 years!!" And it was really convicting to this pastor because he had lived only a few hours from these people with his large church and they were just NOW hearing about the gospel.
An insight from a young pastor in Romania was that we need to redifine Evangelism methods. "Not just preaching in the church and to the many living dead in the church, but to GO OUT and LIVE OUT Christ." We need to be bringing new believers into the Church and discipling them.
Another thing as Americans we need to be careful that we don't let our culture dictate or ruin potential ministry opportunitys. My friend Silvana is a missionary to the Gypsies in Romania and she said,
"About that American thing: you are American, you can't change that. But what is good in you, you have the heart and attitude to let aside your Americanism, and to allow the Lord to do His will in you. It's nothing bad to be an American girl, it is bad when this American girl walks in her flesh and seeks first her interests. Romanian girls can be the same, the same problem but under a different color. Everything is about the relationship with God and how much we allow Him to change us into His image and not into Romanians (or Americans."

So in a nutshell, what the book and the testimonies from our brothers and sisters overseas are saying is this:
No one culture is less than or greater than any other. As iron sharpenes iron, the global Church needs the checks and balances we give each other through outside perspective and insight gained by growing up in a different culture and country.

A man named David Brainard Woodward said,

"To undertsand our mission to witness and our mission to welcome our fellow men to the love of Christ, we must start with the source of missions. They do not begin with men: their origin is found in the heart of God. When we know what He intendsd to do, we can believe and work for the accomplishment of His will, the coming of His kingdom." "

So that was my speech. In case you couldn't tell, the "Dissapearing Center" is the evaporation of Christianity's center in Europe and America, but how it is becoming a Global religion.
Alright well now my hands are hurting from typing all this up, and it's cold outside (I guess fall decided to show up) and I have class in thirty six minutes, and I only had a molasses cookie for breakfast. Hey, I'm in college. ;-D So going to go get something that counts as nutrition to eat and then going to class. Yay.

Cheers,

Princess Ouch.