Wednesday, April 25, 2012
Don't Mess with Texas
Alllrighty. April 17th was the last post and we had just gotten into Dallas. Weeeelll, we are still here. This week has essentially been a time of much needed rest & re-cooperation. On Wednesday we pretty much went to every thrift store in town looking for skirts or summer dresses that I could wear because I have discovered that jeans are not friends with summertime or the south....I happen to be painfully near both of these! We stumbled upon "Plato's Closet", pretty much the most awesome thrift store I've ever seen! I guess they pay people for their clothes so they get a lot of nice stuff. Anyways, I found a couple of dresses but there were like $8 and $16. Eight isn't bad, but for $16 I might as well just go to Target and buy a new dress! It's funny how that would have been a good deal back home but now, $8 might be too much! Oh priorities. This whole "summer heat" thing was never a problem back home-all I had to do was throw on some basket ball shorts but out here I feel a little strange going up to people looked like a bum. I guess it's not that big of a deal since technically I am, but they don't know that.
Anywho, the dresses were a no go. Next step-church! Calvary Chapel Plano! Plano is a small city just north of Dallas. We got there around 6 and ate dinner (which they serve for free!) with our friend Sabrina Pagenkopp.
Ok, backstory-2008 Marc & the homie Aaron Pagenkopp went and did hurricane relief in Texas/Louisiana. Marc only stayed for 2 weeks but Aaron was there for a month. During this time he met Sabrina, who was from Calvary Chapel Plano. They met, they hit it off, they fell in love (that might have happened later, but it's more romantic this way). Eventually Aaron moved to Texas where they dated & fell more in love & got married! That was 2 years ago, which brings us to the present.
Ok, back to the mainstory-eating dinner with Sabrina! The dinner was a disgusting mush of nastiness! It has ham, rice, pineapple, peas, & corn....I think. It really was the most interesting food....ever. Like leftovers meatloaf, but I ate it cause it was free! After church the 4 of us & Teresa & Nolan Rising went out to Taco Cabana! yummy!
Another backstory is needed! Back home a few months ago, Marc went to a friend's house (Jennifer Negrette, perhaps you know her! lol) to pick up her son (Gabe) so they could hang out. Just so happens, her sister (Teresa) was in town from Texas. Marc told her about what we were going to be doing so she said to look her up when we get to Texas! Turns out she goes to the same church as Aaron & Sabrina! So we all went to dinner!
Thursday was a bunch of doing nothing...it was great :)
Friday was another day of doing nothing :) I think actually...I don't really remember lol. In the evening we went to church & afterwards went out for frozen yogurt. The people we met at the church were really cool.
Crazy story! The pastor was leaving the next day (Saturday) to go out of town to teach at a different church. Then he was coming back and on Monday flying to Haiti! Then coming back for the youth lock in on Friday! (I think anyways.) Either way, crazy schedule!
Saturday was an experience and a half! Teresa picked us (Marc, Sabrina, and I) up and we headed to Fort Worth for the rodeo! As we pulled into this town it really did look like it would be a Universal Studios backlot. Old town cowboy look. Sweetness. It was crazy-there were cowboys everywhere! So we get down to the main street and see this sign:
Fort Worth Stockyards!
Where we saw this:
a cattle drive! Marc was a little bit worried about the bulls going crazy and attacking me, but Sabrina assured him that they were "Disney cows" and just did what they were told. We walked around, looked in some shops, and then headed over to Riscky's to have some Texas bbq. I had a chicken sandwich that would've been great if they had normal BBQ sauce but Marc, Teresa, and Nolan all had All You Can Eat beef ribs for $9.95! Crazy price! After dinner Aaron met up with us and we headed to the rodeo! It was awesome, no lie. When it started off they played "The stars at night are big and bright, down in the heart of Texas" then everyone would clap 4 times. It was SO sweet!!! It made me love Texas even more! The rodeo was sick! Bull riding! (Which nobody successfully accomplished). Calf roping! Bronco riding! Barrel racing! A really awesome thing was that I won a pair of boots in a raffle that Teresa bought us a ticket for! The Lord is good! :) I actually really wanted to win, too.
After the rodeo, we headed somewhere I hoped to never be! A honky tonk! Not just any honky tonk....Billy Bob's. The world's biggest honky tonk. (We got in free with our rodeo ticket stubs-definitely wouldn't pay to go to a glorified Branding Iron!) Rich (from Big & Rich) was performing, not that that mattered much to me. We were only there for about 10 minutes. Everyone else wanted to line dance but nobody was dancing so we bounced. (phew)
Sunday was church! Then we went to Cabela's (basically Bass Pro Shop) and Cavender's Boot Barn to try on boots :) Welcome to Texas! Cabela's was kinda crazy because of all the semi-automatic weapons they had for sale. Sick. That night we headed over to Marie's house. (Teresa is staying with her until her house is ready....long story). A few of the high schoolers & young adults & regular adults were there and we had a time of eating, worship, and good times. This was when I discovered Duck Dynasty...best hick show ever. It is SO funny & fantastic! Watch it! They're even Christian! haha so far anyways
Monday we hung out by the pool.....marvelous :) then headed over to another couple's house (Christine & Brandon) with Aaron & Sabrina for a couple's get together. There were 7 couples there altogether! In a one bedroom apartment! Geez! But it all worked out and it was a blessed time with tons of food (phase 1)! At one point Marc got up to go to the bathroom & looked at a picture on the wall and he knew one of the guys! He was Christine's brother! Small world.
Phase 2 was worship with a short devo & phase 2 was Oodles, a trivia game we played. Boys vs. girls. Of course, the girls won :) I have a new nickname-ninja! Haha it was a ton of fun! We left at 1 am which was not so great for Aaron, who worked the next day.
Tuesday was another pool day :)
Today was pretty cool! Marc, Aaron, and I caught the train down to Dallas. We walked around downtown and saw the grassy knoll & the X on the street where JFK was shot. That was some pretty crazy stuff!
Our time in Dallas is coming to an end. Tomorrow we are making dinner for Aaron & Sabrina then going to Nolan's last baseball game. Friday morning we will be leaving for Oklahoma City! The vacation is over!
Tuesday, April 17, 2012
constant "pick me ups"
Alright, I know I just updated yesterday.....two updates in two days is unprecedented! haha but this is important so hear ye, hear ye!
If you know Marc & I you know that he is definitely the outgoing one, always starting conversations with strangers, a very social guy. I, on the other hand, usually let him do most of the talking while I pray in the "background". I don't jump in more than I do jump in.
A little bit of background, Marc & I have been feeling really drab.....this week has just not been the best for us, really weary & tiresome but for no apparent reason.
Recently I've been kinda feeling like I need to be more outgoing, willing to start more conversations but I really like letting Marc do that. A little bit because I'm fearful and partly also because I know that if a stranger came up and started talking to me, I probably wouldn't want to talk to them. Another part because I felt awkward in not knowing how to start conversations. (All of these dumb, especially considering why I/we are here & what we're doing right?!) Despite feeling like I should be talking to more people, I still just relied upon Marc & let him do all of the work. Consequently, it's been more than a few days since I really felt like I had heard from the Lord, despite reading and praying everyday. What was wrong? In the back of my mind, I had a sinking feeling that it was because I might have been being disobedient in not wanting to talk to people on my own. Sigh. So we set aside a day of fasting for other reasons as well as my desiring to hear clearly from God. So as we were sitting outside of a Starbucks (I told you we spend a ton of time there!) mooching off of their internet (because outside you don't have to buy anything), I was transferring what I had just blogged from the blog to my journal and thought, "What am I doing? This day is supposed to be focused on hearing from God & I'm not even trying." So I prayed to hear from God through His word and started reading where I was at in my devotionals, Ephesians 5.
As I read, nothing really happened....it was just reading. Then as I read verse 16, it seemed to scream off of the page at me.
"redeeming the time, because the days are evil."
Right when I read that, these three girls walked out the door and sat one table away from me. Well, there it was. That was what I was supposed to do....start a conversation with these girls which, of course, I fought. I kept reading and nothing else happened, nothing stuck out or anything. Then I really knew I was supposed to talk to them buuuut I still didn't want to. I liked having my crutch...aka Marc. Then this other guy came and sat at the table in between us which made me even more hesitant to talk to them but as time wore on, I just knew, I had to do it so I tried to talk myself into it. It's so funny writing/"admitting" this because I'm on the road as a missionary, an evangelist, and most of the time I just let Marc do most of the talking. But anyways, I eventually was ready to go, I had the conversation starter, I had my transition, I was good. Now I just needed to get up and go. Oddly enough, the hardest thing to always say to somebody is "Hi". Seriously. Once you start talking, the Spirit takes over or you just find a way to keep the conversation going but I think that the enemy just so easily gives you this fear of talking to people but that totally goes away right after they say hi back and you realize, "they are humans too!" But anywho, I had everything ready to say but I did NOT want to get up. Time went by and the other guy got up (one of my excuses gone) and I knew that if I didn't do it soon I would lose my chance. I told Marc that we should get going and he got up to go to the bathroom.
It was go time. UGH lol. So I got up went over & just started talking to them. Conversations almost never go as planned! My transition was gone and I had no good way to go from small talk to "God talk" so I just said, "One other thing-the reason we are traveling is to spread the gospel and I wouldn't feel like I was doing my job if I didn't tell you about God." Turns out they are the daughters of southern baptist preachers so they know what's up but we got to talk for another 5-10 minutes. It was so rejuvenating and awesome, especially just being obedient and not having to feel guilty about not doing it.
While I was talking to them, Marc came out and started talking to the other guy who had switched tables to the other end of the patio. After I was done talking to the girls, I joined their conversation which was fantastic. He was asking all of the questions that people are skeptical about. We talked for at least half an hour. What an amazing night!
So this morning we left for Dallas. After walking around for a little while, we happened upon our favorite place :) Starbucks. While ordering, Marc told the worker a little bit about what we were doing and half an hour later, she took all of the food they were going to throw away and gave it to us!!! DUDE. Blessings rain down from heaven. Thank you Lord for the constant "pick me ups".
If you know Marc & I you know that he is definitely the outgoing one, always starting conversations with strangers, a very social guy. I, on the other hand, usually let him do most of the talking while I pray in the "background". I don't jump in more than I do jump in.
A little bit of background, Marc & I have been feeling really drab.....this week has just not been the best for us, really weary & tiresome but for no apparent reason.
Recently I've been kinda feeling like I need to be more outgoing, willing to start more conversations but I really like letting Marc do that. A little bit because I'm fearful and partly also because I know that if a stranger came up and started talking to me, I probably wouldn't want to talk to them. Another part because I felt awkward in not knowing how to start conversations. (All of these dumb, especially considering why I/we are here & what we're doing right?!) Despite feeling like I should be talking to more people, I still just relied upon Marc & let him do all of the work. Consequently, it's been more than a few days since I really felt like I had heard from the Lord, despite reading and praying everyday. What was wrong? In the back of my mind, I had a sinking feeling that it was because I might have been being disobedient in not wanting to talk to people on my own. Sigh. So we set aside a day of fasting for other reasons as well as my desiring to hear clearly from God. So as we were sitting outside of a Starbucks (I told you we spend a ton of time there!) mooching off of their internet (because outside you don't have to buy anything), I was transferring what I had just blogged from the blog to my journal and thought, "What am I doing? This day is supposed to be focused on hearing from God & I'm not even trying." So I prayed to hear from God through His word and started reading where I was at in my devotionals, Ephesians 5.
As I read, nothing really happened....it was just reading. Then as I read verse 16, it seemed to scream off of the page at me.
"redeeming the time, because the days are evil."
Right when I read that, these three girls walked out the door and sat one table away from me. Well, there it was. That was what I was supposed to do....start a conversation with these girls which, of course, I fought. I kept reading and nothing else happened, nothing stuck out or anything. Then I really knew I was supposed to talk to them buuuut I still didn't want to. I liked having my crutch...aka Marc. Then this other guy came and sat at the table in between us which made me even more hesitant to talk to them but as time wore on, I just knew, I had to do it so I tried to talk myself into it. It's so funny writing/"admitting" this because I'm on the road as a missionary, an evangelist, and most of the time I just let Marc do most of the talking. But anyways, I eventually was ready to go, I had the conversation starter, I had my transition, I was good. Now I just needed to get up and go. Oddly enough, the hardest thing to always say to somebody is "Hi". Seriously. Once you start talking, the Spirit takes over or you just find a way to keep the conversation going but I think that the enemy just so easily gives you this fear of talking to people but that totally goes away right after they say hi back and you realize, "they are humans too!" But anywho, I had everything ready to say but I did NOT want to get up. Time went by and the other guy got up (one of my excuses gone) and I knew that if I didn't do it soon I would lose my chance. I told Marc that we should get going and he got up to go to the bathroom.
It was go time. UGH lol. So I got up went over & just started talking to them. Conversations almost never go as planned! My transition was gone and I had no good way to go from small talk to "God talk" so I just said, "One other thing-the reason we are traveling is to spread the gospel and I wouldn't feel like I was doing my job if I didn't tell you about God." Turns out they are the daughters of southern baptist preachers so they know what's up but we got to talk for another 5-10 minutes. It was so rejuvenating and awesome, especially just being obedient and not having to feel guilty about not doing it.
While I was talking to them, Marc came out and started talking to the other guy who had switched tables to the other end of the patio. After I was done talking to the girls, I joined their conversation which was fantastic. He was asking all of the questions that people are skeptical about. We talked for at least half an hour. What an amazing night!
So this morning we left for Dallas. After walking around for a little while, we happened upon our favorite place :) Starbucks. While ordering, Marc told the worker a little bit about what we were doing and half an hour later, she took all of the food they were going to throw away and gave it to us!!! DUDE. Blessings rain down from heaven. Thank you Lord for the constant "pick me ups".
Monday, April 16, 2012
Keep Austin Weird!
Once again, I have waited too long to blog so I'll try to remember as much as I can.
So we left off at Good Friday....that night we went to a turntable fellowship type thing. There were a few people from the young adult group who get together every other Friday and just kinda jam on the turntables then have a study. Afterwards, we went to Rick's house with everyone where we had pizza & played "Bible Baffle" (I think) shortly. It was funny because everyone there said they stopped wanting to play with this guy, Mike, because he was too good. Well, you know me, this sounded like a challenge so we had Marc read the questions while him and I went head to head. Man oh man, I felt like I had never read the Bible! I don't know if I've ever been so humbled so quickly! He knew the answer off the top of his head to questions like, "Who was the king of Babylon when so and so died?" as if I was asking him, "how many commandments are there?" But it was really cool, you could tell that he doesn't let all of that knowledge go to his head. He always has a smile on his face & has a warm, loving heart. We will definitely miss him! Later that night, we had a bonfire & Marc did worship. It has been such a blessing to see my husband being so used on this trip, not only in talking to non-believers but in being able to use his gift of worship to fellowship & bless others.
Saturday we just kinda relaxed & took a recoop day. We had gone to the University and done a ton of walking everyday that week, so we decided to just hang out & watch tv at the home of our gracious, awesome hosts, Lindsey & Jesse. Later that night, we said bye to them then went to Walmart that was closest to where sunrise service would be & knocked out. Funny sidenote, Calvary of Albuquerque's sunrise service starts at 7:30 in the morning.....when the day has already dawned. Before we went to sleep, we set an alarm on Marc's watch for 5:50 a.m., but that dumb thing almost never works so when I woke up and it was light out, I started freaking out! The only reason we had stayed as long as we had in New Mexico was so we could go to sunrise service! I looked at the clock & luckily it was only 6:45. phew, we were gonna make it! So we get there & meet up with Rick & co, and enjoyed awesome worship from Phil Wickham & a great message by Skip Heitzig.
(Phil Wickham-obviously the one with the guitar-try to look past the large head in the picture)
(Pastor Skip giving the message)
(2 pictures of the 24,000 people who showed up!)
After service, we headed back to Rick's house where we had breakfast. What a blessing! I was just telling Marc a couple of days before that I was a little bit sad that we were going to spend all of Easter driving and not able to hang out with any family or friends but Rick & his wife (who's name unfortunately has escaped me) had a bunch of people over for breakfast so we went along. Eggs, potatoes, waffles, fruit, pastries, candy! What a perfect breakfast :) We hung out for a bit, Marc played some bones, I ate a ton of food :) then we went to take off. Rick & everyone prayed for us and we said bye. As we were getting ready to leave, we were checking the levels (since we have leaks) and this guy who was previously there, had just gotten back. He asked us about what we were doing & we got to talking. Come to find out, he grew up in Moreno Valley for a little while! Crazy! If you have a second, check out his clothing/skate company/ministry "unrvld" aka unrivaled. He has a pretty cool story.
Moving on, we began the SUPER long drive to Texas. Heading south, we went through Roswell, NM which was definitely weird. There were alien statues EVERYWHERE. No joke. Outside of KFC there was like an 8 foot, green alien. They were all over the place! They seriously embrace the tourism of aliens there.....even one of the hotels at the entrance said "Aliens Welcome".
(see what I mean?)
Continuing south, we got into Texas around maybe 5 or 6:00 and stayed the night in Fort Stockton, a small town where the 285 & I-10 meet. So small in fact, that there was no internet data reception but not too small that there wasn't a McDonald's & Wal-Mart. It's so funny where we find ourselves, especially at night. Wal-mart has proven to be pretty much the best spot to sleep, (ironic if you know me because I refuse to shop there or support it). Most of them are 24 hours & there are always big rigs & RVs staying there and there is security! Wonderful.
We drove for about 8.5 hours that day. It's exhausting doing nothing for so long lol. The next day we woke up and continued the drive. Five and a half more hours and we were finally in San Antonio! Our first stop was to look for a church but all of the Calvary's we found in the area were either closed, not in a permanent location, or super in the ghetto where I was not comfortable so we decided to wait till the next day and just go sight seeing. Next stop: the Alamo! Haha it was so funny, I told Marc, "we can go see the alamo!" and he says, "I forgot about the alamo!" Get it? "Remember the alamo!" haha anyways.
So we saw the Alamo:
Then continued walking around the area, where we stumbled upon the San Antonio Riverwalk:
(also known as "stinking gorgeous!")
and then we stumbled upon a family of ducks! One of the cutest things in the world :)
After a gorgeous (but long) walk, we headed back to the car & found our favorite place to sleep. Thus ends day 1 in San Antonio! Waking up, we headed to Calvary Chapel San Antonio, which is actually in Universal City. We got a few church flyers & they gave us a couple boxes of Bibles to hand out, which is super sweet :) We headed out! I wasn't feeling well so while I took a nap in the van, Marc went to go play soccer with this guy. They got to talking & he already went to church. He actually used to go to the church we just came from & informed Marc that the school they run out of there would be coming soon to have P.E. with them. So they came & this guy recognized Marc so he told him his story & what he was doing. The guy ended up telling the pastor, who wanted to talk to Marc to make sure he was legit (since we were promoting his church), and somewhere in this process someone gave our number to this guy named Robert who does a lot of evangelism. So Robert called us & invited us to breakfast the next day & then to go out evangelizing. So the next day (Wednesday) he treated us to breakfast (thank you Jesus! and Robert lol) and then we headed over to the University of Texas, San Antonio. We got to have about 4 or 5 really good conversations with everyone from jocks, to frat boys, to science "nerds", to the average joe, and even with a Christian club. We were there for a couple hours but because we drove with Robert & he had to leave for work, we left too.
That night we went to church where we met Pastor Ron Arbaugh who said he used to t.a. for Pastor John Milhouse! (my pastor back home) What a small world! Robert & Olivia (his wife) invited us over to hang out that night so we went & talked for a bit then they said we were welcome to stay at their house & eat their food. I do love eating people's food! haha so we slept there & in the morning had waffles. Oh, delicious waffles.
The next day we headed back to the University by ourselves. I started to feel really weird that day (Thursday). It was like I was starting to get sick but I felt something beyond the physical, almost like an oppression. I was just not feeling being there, but I knew that was where we should be so we went. It seemed like everyone we met that day was a believer! When we first got there, the first guy we met was actually with a Christian club (Chi Alpha) and was about to open air preach! So we watched him for a while....him and this other guy traded off & it was really cool to hear him share his heart. He had a very appealing presence about him, like you wanted to listen to what he had to say....I guess Charles Manson did too, but that's another story haha. Most of the time he was talking, Marc was talking to this guy who ended up being a Messianic Jew. One of the girls from the club (also a missionary) approached me and we talked a lot about witnessing and serving God. Moving on from there, the next couple people we talked to were Christians.
One thing that we always wanted to do but never really knew how to ask, was to record our convo's with people so you folks can see what we do. So we just asked this girl, "Hey, we're kinda documenting our trip around the country, would you like to be in our video?" And she was down! Turns out she was a believer and was able to answer all of our questions. Because so many people we meet say they believe in God, one thing that Marc likes to ask people is "if you died today would you go to heaven or hell?" The people who are really honest mostly say, "I don't know, most likely hell" but we get a lot of people who also think they are going to heaven but when you ask them why, the overwhelming majority say something to the effect of "because I'm a good person". This girl however, gave the right response" it's all because of Jesus! Either we met a lot of legit Christians that day, or people in the Bible belt pay attention during church and know all of the right answers. When it comes to that, we've done our part. It isn't for us to judge who is really saved or not, just to share truth as much as we can. So we moved on.
Originally we were planning on leaving San Antonio on Thursday morning but Wednesday night after church Robert had hooked us up with a mechanic who was willing to look at our van & fix it if he could, for the cost of parts.(Amazing, because the last mechanic told us that it would cost $1,100 & only $200 of that was for parts!) The only catch was that he couldn't see us until Friday afternoon, so we stayed. So Friday morning came & we waited for a call from the mechanic, Scott. His meeting that morning ran longer than he thought & he was going out of town that weekend so he was going to look at the van but wouldn't be able to actually fix it until Tuesday. Weeeeell, it had already been 5 days in San Antonio when we were only planning to stay for 2 or 3 so we said it's ok, and got ready to leave. The next day, Saturday, we left for Austin. We said goodbye to Robert & Olivia & their 4 awesome kids with awesome names (Athena-15, Acacia-7, Apollos-4, & Alexander-2). Funny side story, one day when we were there, Apollos came up to Marc out of the blue, put both hands on Marc's belly, and started shaking it. Funniest thing to happen so far!
On to Austin!! It only took about an hour to get here, THANK THE LORD! :) We stopped by the church & said hi, got some info & headed out! Our second stop was the capital!
We went to the visitor's center then over to the capital building.
Funny story, we actually ran into the girl who we recorded!
Moving on, we chilled at Starbucks for a few hours. Usually by the end of the night, we have nothing to do & nowhere to go but it is way too early to go to sleep so a lot of times we'll go use our Starbucks gift card and take care of business. (blog, make videos, read, write, etc.) Then the usual, off to Walmart to sleep.
Sunday morning was church at Calvary South Austin where the head pastor is named Bungee. Cool right?! After we walked up & down Congress St. where there are shops & vendors & all of that cool stuff. It's funny, a lot of the shops you go in have memorabilia that says "Keep Austin Weird" which is so stinkin fitting. There are a bunch of characters here, but it is really cool. I suppose the nice way to say it is that people here are really "unique". Here is a good example of something weird in Austin:
One cool thing we noticed is that all of the graffiti that we saw has a positive message. None of it is just throwing up your name but a lot of it is stencils or has a purpose or something interesting. For example:
We saw these in the river area, where we walked around for a couple of hours. It was super beautiful!
Pray for us because the past few days have been pretty wearisome. I don't know if maybe we have been too "on the go" and not had enough rest time, but we just have been kind of struggling the past couple of days. We don't have a lot of push to go out but even in that, God keeps bringing people to us. Yesterday we helped this guy get his car out of the road then gave him a ride to his house. While he was parking, these 2 girls came up and asked us for a ride to the grocery store. The guy was a believer but the girls, who were 17, didn't really feel like talking. I was trying to get them to open up a little bit because I think they were living on the streets, but they seemed almost afraid to talk to us, which just gave me a bad feeling about what was going on in their lives. Please pray for them, they wouldn't talk, but I feel like they have some serious issues.
Here, also, is a big issue that we need prayer for. We were planning on staying in the south and knocking out the southern part of the country then heading up the east coast but now we are not so sure. As terrible as it would be to be in the summer in the south, it would be nearly impossible to weather the north in the winter so we are praying about going north to Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, Iowa, Minnesota, Michigan, and on eastward. This is a huge deviation from our plans and we really need to make sure we are in God's will. Please pray that God would confirm & show us clearly where He wants us to go. :)
That's all for now. We should be leaving Austin on Tuesday or Wednesday and heading to our friends' house in Dallas, where we plan on resting & recooping.
Until next time :)
So we left off at Good Friday....that night we went to a turntable fellowship type thing. There were a few people from the young adult group who get together every other Friday and just kinda jam on the turntables then have a study. Afterwards, we went to Rick's house with everyone where we had pizza & played "Bible Baffle" (I think) shortly. It was funny because everyone there said they stopped wanting to play with this guy, Mike, because he was too good. Well, you know me, this sounded like a challenge so we had Marc read the questions while him and I went head to head. Man oh man, I felt like I had never read the Bible! I don't know if I've ever been so humbled so quickly! He knew the answer off the top of his head to questions like, "Who was the king of Babylon when so and so died?" as if I was asking him, "how many commandments are there?" But it was really cool, you could tell that he doesn't let all of that knowledge go to his head. He always has a smile on his face & has a warm, loving heart. We will definitely miss him! Later that night, we had a bonfire & Marc did worship. It has been such a blessing to see my husband being so used on this trip, not only in talking to non-believers but in being able to use his gift of worship to fellowship & bless others.
Saturday we just kinda relaxed & took a recoop day. We had gone to the University and done a ton of walking everyday that week, so we decided to just hang out & watch tv at the home of our gracious, awesome hosts, Lindsey & Jesse. Later that night, we said bye to them then went to Walmart that was closest to where sunrise service would be & knocked out. Funny sidenote, Calvary of Albuquerque's sunrise service starts at 7:30 in the morning.....when the day has already dawned. Before we went to sleep, we set an alarm on Marc's watch for 5:50 a.m., but that dumb thing almost never works so when I woke up and it was light out, I started freaking out! The only reason we had stayed as long as we had in New Mexico was so we could go to sunrise service! I looked at the clock & luckily it was only 6:45. phew, we were gonna make it! So we get there & meet up with Rick & co, and enjoyed awesome worship from Phil Wickham & a great message by Skip Heitzig.
After service, we headed back to Rick's house where we had breakfast. What a blessing! I was just telling Marc a couple of days before that I was a little bit sad that we were going to spend all of Easter driving and not able to hang out with any family or friends but Rick & his wife (who's name unfortunately has escaped me) had a bunch of people over for breakfast so we went along. Eggs, potatoes, waffles, fruit, pastries, candy! What a perfect breakfast :) We hung out for a bit, Marc played some bones, I ate a ton of food :) then we went to take off. Rick & everyone prayed for us and we said bye. As we were getting ready to leave, we were checking the levels (since we have leaks) and this guy who was previously there, had just gotten back. He asked us about what we were doing & we got to talking. Come to find out, he grew up in Moreno Valley for a little while! Crazy! If you have a second, check out his clothing/skate company/ministry "unrvld" aka unrivaled. He has a pretty cool story.
Moving on, we began the SUPER long drive to Texas. Heading south, we went through Roswell, NM which was definitely weird. There were alien statues EVERYWHERE. No joke. Outside of KFC there was like an 8 foot, green alien. They were all over the place! They seriously embrace the tourism of aliens there.....even one of the hotels at the entrance said "Aliens Welcome".
Continuing south, we got into Texas around maybe 5 or 6:00 and stayed the night in Fort Stockton, a small town where the 285 & I-10 meet. So small in fact, that there was no internet data reception but not too small that there wasn't a McDonald's & Wal-Mart. It's so funny where we find ourselves, especially at night. Wal-mart has proven to be pretty much the best spot to sleep, (ironic if you know me because I refuse to shop there or support it). Most of them are 24 hours & there are always big rigs & RVs staying there and there is security! Wonderful.
We drove for about 8.5 hours that day. It's exhausting doing nothing for so long lol. The next day we woke up and continued the drive. Five and a half more hours and we were finally in San Antonio! Our first stop was to look for a church but all of the Calvary's we found in the area were either closed, not in a permanent location, or super in the ghetto where I was not comfortable so we decided to wait till the next day and just go sight seeing. Next stop: the Alamo! Haha it was so funny, I told Marc, "we can go see the alamo!" and he says, "I forgot about the alamo!" Get it? "Remember the alamo!" haha anyways.
So we saw the Alamo:
After a gorgeous (but long) walk, we headed back to the car & found our favorite place to sleep. Thus ends day 1 in San Antonio! Waking up, we headed to Calvary Chapel San Antonio, which is actually in Universal City. We got a few church flyers & they gave us a couple boxes of Bibles to hand out, which is super sweet :) We headed out! I wasn't feeling well so while I took a nap in the van, Marc went to go play soccer with this guy. They got to talking & he already went to church. He actually used to go to the church we just came from & informed Marc that the school they run out of there would be coming soon to have P.E. with them. So they came & this guy recognized Marc so he told him his story & what he was doing. The guy ended up telling the pastor, who wanted to talk to Marc to make sure he was legit (since we were promoting his church), and somewhere in this process someone gave our number to this guy named Robert who does a lot of evangelism. So Robert called us & invited us to breakfast the next day & then to go out evangelizing. So the next day (Wednesday) he treated us to breakfast (thank you Jesus! and Robert lol) and then we headed over to the University of Texas, San Antonio. We got to have about 4 or 5 really good conversations with everyone from jocks, to frat boys, to science "nerds", to the average joe, and even with a Christian club. We were there for a couple hours but because we drove with Robert & he had to leave for work, we left too.
That night we went to church where we met Pastor Ron Arbaugh who said he used to t.a. for Pastor John Milhouse! (my pastor back home) What a small world! Robert & Olivia (his wife) invited us over to hang out that night so we went & talked for a bit then they said we were welcome to stay at their house & eat their food. I do love eating people's food! haha so we slept there & in the morning had waffles. Oh, delicious waffles.
The next day we headed back to the University by ourselves. I started to feel really weird that day (Thursday). It was like I was starting to get sick but I felt something beyond the physical, almost like an oppression. I was just not feeling being there, but I knew that was where we should be so we went. It seemed like everyone we met that day was a believer! When we first got there, the first guy we met was actually with a Christian club (Chi Alpha) and was about to open air preach! So we watched him for a while....him and this other guy traded off & it was really cool to hear him share his heart. He had a very appealing presence about him, like you wanted to listen to what he had to say....I guess Charles Manson did too, but that's another story haha. Most of the time he was talking, Marc was talking to this guy who ended up being a Messianic Jew. One of the girls from the club (also a missionary) approached me and we talked a lot about witnessing and serving God. Moving on from there, the next couple people we talked to were Christians.
One thing that we always wanted to do but never really knew how to ask, was to record our convo's with people so you folks can see what we do. So we just asked this girl, "Hey, we're kinda documenting our trip around the country, would you like to be in our video?" And she was down! Turns out she was a believer and was able to answer all of our questions. Because so many people we meet say they believe in God, one thing that Marc likes to ask people is "if you died today would you go to heaven or hell?" The people who are really honest mostly say, "I don't know, most likely hell" but we get a lot of people who also think they are going to heaven but when you ask them why, the overwhelming majority say something to the effect of "because I'm a good person". This girl however, gave the right response" it's all because of Jesus! Either we met a lot of legit Christians that day, or people in the Bible belt pay attention during church and know all of the right answers. When it comes to that, we've done our part. It isn't for us to judge who is really saved or not, just to share truth as much as we can. So we moved on.
Originally we were planning on leaving San Antonio on Thursday morning but Wednesday night after church Robert had hooked us up with a mechanic who was willing to look at our van & fix it if he could, for the cost of parts.(Amazing, because the last mechanic told us that it would cost $1,100 & only $200 of that was for parts!) The only catch was that he couldn't see us until Friday afternoon, so we stayed. So Friday morning came & we waited for a call from the mechanic, Scott. His meeting that morning ran longer than he thought & he was going out of town that weekend so he was going to look at the van but wouldn't be able to actually fix it until Tuesday. Weeeeell, it had already been 5 days in San Antonio when we were only planning to stay for 2 or 3 so we said it's ok, and got ready to leave. The next day, Saturday, we left for Austin. We said goodbye to Robert & Olivia & their 4 awesome kids with awesome names (Athena-15, Acacia-7, Apollos-4, & Alexander-2). Funny side story, one day when we were there, Apollos came up to Marc out of the blue, put both hands on Marc's belly, and started shaking it. Funniest thing to happen so far!
On to Austin!! It only took about an hour to get here, THANK THE LORD! :) We stopped by the church & said hi, got some info & headed out! Our second stop was the capital!
We went to the visitor's center then over to the capital building.
Moving on, we chilled at Starbucks for a few hours. Usually by the end of the night, we have nothing to do & nowhere to go but it is way too early to go to sleep so a lot of times we'll go use our Starbucks gift card and take care of business. (blog, make videos, read, write, etc.) Then the usual, off to Walmart to sleep.
Sunday morning was church at Calvary South Austin where the head pastor is named Bungee. Cool right?! After we walked up & down Congress St. where there are shops & vendors & all of that cool stuff. It's funny, a lot of the shops you go in have memorabilia that says "Keep Austin Weird" which is so stinkin fitting. There are a bunch of characters here, but it is really cool. I suppose the nice way to say it is that people here are really "unique". Here is a good example of something weird in Austin:
One cool thing we noticed is that all of the graffiti that we saw has a positive message. None of it is just throwing up your name but a lot of it is stencils or has a purpose or something interesting. For example:
We saw these in the river area, where we walked around for a couple of hours. It was super beautiful!
Pray for us because the past few days have been pretty wearisome. I don't know if maybe we have been too "on the go" and not had enough rest time, but we just have been kind of struggling the past couple of days. We don't have a lot of push to go out but even in that, God keeps bringing people to us. Yesterday we helped this guy get his car out of the road then gave him a ride to his house. While he was parking, these 2 girls came up and asked us for a ride to the grocery store. The guy was a believer but the girls, who were 17, didn't really feel like talking. I was trying to get them to open up a little bit because I think they were living on the streets, but they seemed almost afraid to talk to us, which just gave me a bad feeling about what was going on in their lives. Please pray for them, they wouldn't talk, but I feel like they have some serious issues.
Here, also, is a big issue that we need prayer for. We were planning on staying in the south and knocking out the southern part of the country then heading up the east coast but now we are not so sure. As terrible as it would be to be in the summer in the south, it would be nearly impossible to weather the north in the winter so we are praying about going north to Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, Iowa, Minnesota, Michigan, and on eastward. This is a huge deviation from our plans and we really need to make sure we are in God's will. Please pray that God would confirm & show us clearly where He wants us to go. :)
That's all for now. We should be leaving Austin on Tuesday or Wednesday and heading to our friends' house in Dallas, where we plan on resting & recooping.
Until next time :)
Friday, April 6, 2012
still in New Mexico. shmee shmexico.
Ok, so today is Friday, Good Friday to be exact. Over this past week we have pretty much done the same thing nearly every day, which is to go down to the university and walk around talking to people. Most of the time the people are pretty open to having a conversation with, of course, a couple of exceptions. We met this Muslim woman who said she didn't want to discuss beliefs because everyone can have their own beliefs and even though she thinks hers is the right one, she doesn't feel obligated to tell anyone because she doesn't care if they go to heaven or not. That was a big pill to swallow. Selfish much? That was the most notable negative conversation that we had. On a (kinda) positive note, we talked to this guy, Norm, for about an hour. He believes in God and reads the scriptures (more on that later) but hates organized religion. First let me brag about this man-he was probably the most interesting man I've ever met.
He was in the Marines for 8 years, a SEAL, retired from working for the gov. for 25 years (at the end he was making 70k a year), lived in the Middle East/India for 7 years, studied Hinduism in Tibet for a year and a half, has owned 4 businesses (one being a record shop for 17 years), has flipped 14 houses & had 200 employees currently owns 20,000 vinyls. He has mutliple degrees & is currently going back to school to learn how to do cancer/alzheimers research. He & 10 of his closest friends backpacked Europe for 7 months.
When he was in India for those 7 years, he & his wife were doing humanitarian aid. One day, he saw a man beating his wife in the streets so he grabbed the whip and hit the man! Immediately, he was arrested for not only breaking the law by stopping this man from beating his wife, but also because he hit him for it. It cost him about $20,000 to get out of prison! Years later, when his wife died, she wanted her ashes spread in one of India's river so he had to pay another $25,000 to be let back into the country!
Another story from India-while they were there, they stopped by Mother Teresa's orphanage and helped out. While there, they met a man from the Vatican who gave them his business card and told them to call if they were in the area. Years later they did and they were given a tour of areas of the Vatican that are closed to the public and given a special seat behind the bishops at a mass performed by the pope. Crazy!
But anyways, I fear that he has a bit of an inadequate or incorrect grasp on who God is. He sounds so much like a Christian, but is skewed. He disagrees on two issues that are pretty divisive already, but definitely has a non-Biblical perspective. He understands that it all comes down to your relationship with God and even encouraged us to be strengthened in our faith and keep seeking God, but he talked a lot about a higher level of enlightenment than what most people will ever experience and how, when he was young, he did drugs to try to attain it. A true hippy. He even sought advice from a Native American medicine man. Trippy. Oddly enough, his mother is a minister, but she is one of the ones who gave him a bad taste for religion in the first place. (Which I could see making sense.) Unlike most people, he didn't take another Christian's hypocrisy to mean that there is no God, just that she wasn't acting as He intended. So as to the state of his walk, who knows. We can only know what we see/hear, as many times people aren't completely honest, but it is not my job to judge it.
Another fantastic convo that we had was at Jack-in-the-Box. We went to use our gift card (thank you Alicia) and I felt before we got there that there was going to be someone we were supposed to talk to, but while we were there, nobody hung around, it was just the 2 of us. Towards the end these two guys sat down who were probably late 20's, maybe early 30's. They were cussing up a storm and talking about smoking and all this junk. Which definitely isn't to say that we shouldn't talk to them, but we've had bad run ins with this "type" before. Usually they want nothing to do with us, but nevertheless, my brave husband walks up and starts talking to them. One of them worked there so he got up pretty quickly and found other things to be doing, but the other guy (the really profane one) was really invested in the conversation. He grew up Catholic but knew that that wasn't the right way. He knew there was a God, he just didn't know what or who He is, basically an agnostic. He & Marc got to talk for about 15-20 minutes and the guy said a few times "that's a good point." Marc brought up a lot of things that really made him re-think his stance on a few things. I told Marc afterwards that it was the best conversation that I've ever heard him have with anyone. Praise the Lord! I love knowing that seeds were planted! Pray that the seeds would fall on fertile soil.
Last night we went to Calvary of Albuquerque's young adult service. It was in an old, small theater that is on the college strip. Super awesome. The people there were all really nice but we just haven't made as many friends here as we usually do. The people we are staying with are definitely awesome. They go to a church a little ways away so we don't see them at church and their schedules are usually opposite ours so we don't really see them much either.
Pray for me because I don't really like it in New Mexico but I'm praying that that wouldn't hinder our work here or make me want to rush out of the state (which I really want to lol). If Easter wasn't coming up this week, I think we probably would have left on like Wednesday.
Sigh. Ok, I'm done complaining :) The Lord is good and He provides as always.
Oh! We are going to be in Texas very soon at a friend's house, so if you are interested in sending us a letter telling us how much you love us or a winning lotto ticket or a million dollar Starbucks gift card, text me and I'll send you the address of where you can send us mail :)
He was in the Marines for 8 years, a SEAL, retired from working for the gov. for 25 years (at the end he was making 70k a year), lived in the Middle East/India for 7 years, studied Hinduism in Tibet for a year and a half, has owned 4 businesses (one being a record shop for 17 years), has flipped 14 houses & had 200 employees currently owns 20,000 vinyls. He has mutliple degrees & is currently going back to school to learn how to do cancer/alzheimers research. He & 10 of his closest friends backpacked Europe for 7 months.
When he was in India for those 7 years, he & his wife were doing humanitarian aid. One day, he saw a man beating his wife in the streets so he grabbed the whip and hit the man! Immediately, he was arrested for not only breaking the law by stopping this man from beating his wife, but also because he hit him for it. It cost him about $20,000 to get out of prison! Years later, when his wife died, she wanted her ashes spread in one of India's river so he had to pay another $25,000 to be let back into the country!
Another story from India-while they were there, they stopped by Mother Teresa's orphanage and helped out. While there, they met a man from the Vatican who gave them his business card and told them to call if they were in the area. Years later they did and they were given a tour of areas of the Vatican that are closed to the public and given a special seat behind the bishops at a mass performed by the pope. Crazy!
But anyways, I fear that he has a bit of an inadequate or incorrect grasp on who God is. He sounds so much like a Christian, but is skewed. He disagrees on two issues that are pretty divisive already, but definitely has a non-Biblical perspective. He understands that it all comes down to your relationship with God and even encouraged us to be strengthened in our faith and keep seeking God, but he talked a lot about a higher level of enlightenment than what most people will ever experience and how, when he was young, he did drugs to try to attain it. A true hippy. He even sought advice from a Native American medicine man. Trippy. Oddly enough, his mother is a minister, but she is one of the ones who gave him a bad taste for religion in the first place. (Which I could see making sense.) Unlike most people, he didn't take another Christian's hypocrisy to mean that there is no God, just that she wasn't acting as He intended. So as to the state of his walk, who knows. We can only know what we see/hear, as many times people aren't completely honest, but it is not my job to judge it.
Another fantastic convo that we had was at Jack-in-the-Box. We went to use our gift card (thank you Alicia) and I felt before we got there that there was going to be someone we were supposed to talk to, but while we were there, nobody hung around, it was just the 2 of us. Towards the end these two guys sat down who were probably late 20's, maybe early 30's. They were cussing up a storm and talking about smoking and all this junk. Which definitely isn't to say that we shouldn't talk to them, but we've had bad run ins with this "type" before. Usually they want nothing to do with us, but nevertheless, my brave husband walks up and starts talking to them. One of them worked there so he got up pretty quickly and found other things to be doing, but the other guy (the really profane one) was really invested in the conversation. He grew up Catholic but knew that that wasn't the right way. He knew there was a God, he just didn't know what or who He is, basically an agnostic. He & Marc got to talk for about 15-20 minutes and the guy said a few times "that's a good point." Marc brought up a lot of things that really made him re-think his stance on a few things. I told Marc afterwards that it was the best conversation that I've ever heard him have with anyone. Praise the Lord! I love knowing that seeds were planted! Pray that the seeds would fall on fertile soil.
Last night we went to Calvary of Albuquerque's young adult service. It was in an old, small theater that is on the college strip. Super awesome. The people there were all really nice but we just haven't made as many friends here as we usually do. The people we are staying with are definitely awesome. They go to a church a little ways away so we don't see them at church and their schedules are usually opposite ours so we don't really see them much either.
Pray for me because I don't really like it in New Mexico but I'm praying that that wouldn't hinder our work here or make me want to rush out of the state (which I really want to lol). If Easter wasn't coming up this week, I think we probably would have left on like Wednesday.
Sigh. Ok, I'm done complaining :) The Lord is good and He provides as always.
Oh! We are going to be in Texas very soon at a friend's house, so if you are interested in sending us a letter telling us how much you love us or a winning lotto ticket or a million dollar Starbucks gift card, text me and I'll send you the address of where you can send us mail :)
Tuesday, April 3, 2012
New Mexico-the land of desert. and snow apparently.
So I realized that I didn't end my last post with where we were or anything like that. Whoops, how silly of me :) So here it is: We left Littleton (Denver), Colorado on Friday afternoon around noon-ish. Our first stop was in Castle Rock, about a 20 minute drive, where we got to see the Dead Sea Scrolls. Super awesome!
Something we learned while we were there was that most of the pieces of these scrolls were in little tiny pieces. They likened it to getting three different, large bags of potato chips from the grocery store, crunching them all up, mixing them together, then trying to put them all back together. There was something like 19,000 fragments. Holy Moly!!!!
So from there we took the 25 south to pretty much the bottom of the state then headed West on the 160. After about 9 hours of driving we stopped in Durango and slept in the Wal-Mart parking lot. Dude. Too much driving for one day! (Look it up on the map...so dumb). Also! Side note! We went around a curve and almost hit these pretty big rocks that had fallen in the road. Praise God He steered us right between them but we went back to move them and one of them was so large that together we still couldn't move it! Needless to say, my heart was PUMPING!
In the morning we got up and washed the van and finished our trek to Four Corners, which took another 2 hours but was super cool. Marc made a really good point about people that were just kinda sitting there, doing nothing-people feel obligated to stay for a while because you drive so far to get there then you pay (only $3) to get in, but really, you can do everything there is to do in about one minute. You can go from New Mexico, to Colorado, to Utah, to Arizona and back to New Mexico in the time it takes you to take 5 steps. If you go "the long way" around the outside of the circle, it will take you about 30 seconds, but it was really cool.
(the actual "Four Corners")
(notice the inscription, "under God", just like it should be!)
(photo requested by my Mother)
From there we headed Southeast through this little town called Farmington where we were supposed to meet up with a friend but it just didn't work out so we drove on...and on and on! Another five hours to get to Albuquerque. Our routine when we get into a new town is to first go to the church where we plan on sending the people we talk to and getting business cards or invitations or brochures, just basically whatever we can use to give to people to send them to church. By the time we got into Albuquerque, the church was closed until their service that night so we went to their bookstore/coffee shop which was HUGE!!! Holy cheesoly it was gigantic! But super cool. I'll put up pictures if I ever remember to take them. So eventually the cafe was closing and we had nowhere to go so we decided to go use a gift card that we were blessed with and chill at Starbucks to finish up our business. We were there for like two and a half hours and then they closed so we just sat in the van while Marc put the finishing touches on the video.
As the workers finished up and came out, one of them gave us a thumbs up for the huge "Jesus Saves" sign we have in our window so we got to tell him what we were doing. That was pretty cool. Five minutes later he scared the daylights out of us by knocking on the window when neither of us were paying attention, but he invited us to go with him, his wife, and some friends to Buffalo Wild Wings just to hang out, so off we went!
We had just eaten so we just hung out but we got to tell the group about what we were doing (they were all believers too). Then when we were just about done, Jesse (Starbucks worker) and his wife (Lindsey) invited us to stay in their spare bedroom. I swear I've had more sleepovers in the past 7 weeks then most girls do in their life! Haha but that concludes Saturday.
Sunday we got up and went to church at Calvary of Albuquerque where Skip Heitzig pastors. (Side note, on Easter-this Sunday-Phil Wickham is doing worship for their sunrise service! Tiiiight!) That church is ginormous but really pretty. The message was about evangelism and why we aren't doing it and how to do it successfully. He gave it in four steps, modeled after Jesus:
1-take the initiative. Jesus came down from Heaven, He didn't wait till we asked Him to. Don't wait for people to come up to you and ask you for the gospel. Find a way, an open door to talk to them.
2-open your mouth! use words! P. Skip spoke of the old quote that many of us have heard, "Always preach the gospel and when necessary, use words." "What a dumb quote," he said. If people see you living a good life but don't know why then it doesn't matter. Not to demean the importance of living a glorifying life, but we are to open our mouths and speak of God, just as Jesus did.
3-What you proclaim with your lips, practice with your life. Jesus' message was radical because His life was radical. If He didn't live as He did, His message would have been to no effect.
4-Brace yourself for opposition. They killed Jesus, do you think they'll just accept what you have to say because you believe it? We will be laughed at, we will be ridiculed and looked down upon for our beliefs, but remember that they are not rejecting us, but God.
People choose to suffer for many reasons, why not truth?
After church we went out into the city, first to a small park we found. There weren't that many people there but as I was getting something ready in the van, Marc struck up a conversation with a man nearby who happened to be traveling and an atheist. I hurried what I was doing and made my way over. He was talking about the world and that it has always existed and will always exist. Sweet, I thought, I know this answer! haha. I told him that according to Einstein's theory of relativity, the world is coming to an end, to which he replied, "Well, that's just his general theory of relativity." This is when Marc chimed in with a fact that I had missed : "He's a physicist." Gulp! That's pretty much all I know about Einstein but this man was schooled! There went that route. We talked for a while longer and then we all went on our separate ways. He was really super nice though and very willing to talk, which was awesome. He wasn't condescending or anything, which can happen a lot with educated people such as him.
Next we went to the university. Marc struck up a conversation with this guy who was tagging up the ground with chalk to promote his show, Poets vs. Emcees (which sounds awesome). He grew up Jehovah's Witness and his gf is Christian so he goes to both churches sometimes but isn't really sure what he believes. We got to share the truth of Jesus with him and leave a tract and a "How Can I Become A Christian/How Can I Grow In My Christian Faith?" flyer. Pray that he would see the Lord for who he is. Something that he told us, which is more honesty than most people will admit to, is that he doesn't really want to be "religious" right now, but when he gets older and more mature he will go to church. This is such a huge tool of Satan! Tomorrow is not promised! How many people do you know who knew the day they were going to die? Almost nobody! The Bible says that today is the day of salvation. Tomorrow may never come for you and then it will be too late.
Moving on, we walked the university area for a little while but because it was Sunday there weren't too many people. After some grocery shopping, we headed back to Jesse & Lindsey's house. On Monday we did laundry (yeah!) and went back to the university. We handed out a good number of Easter service invitations and got to talk to a lot of people but it started raining so we bounced.
That night Jesse & Lindsey had friends over (Megan & Jared who we met at Buffalo Wild Wings also) and Lindsey made us New Mexican food! I never knew there was such a thing! I'm sure I'm going to spell this wrong, but she made us sopapillas which are kinda like sopitas, but a little bit different. Either way, they were super yummy!
We're not sure how much longer we will be here in Albuquerque. It started snowing this morning and we want to go out but we feel like nobody will be out so we're unsure of what to do. I feel as though it is a wasted day, like we should be out talking to people, but we're not! Although I REALLY do not like it here in New Mexico, I want to be here for sunrise service, but first and foremost to be in the Lord's will and to know where He wants us to go/when. Pray for direction for us, and that we would be led by His spirit.
Until next time :)
p.s. total side note-this picture is HILARIOUS! I didn't want to put it on Facebook cause I have young people on my friend's list but since this is a little more private, I thought I would put it up here.
Something we learned while we were there was that most of the pieces of these scrolls were in little tiny pieces. They likened it to getting three different, large bags of potato chips from the grocery store, crunching them all up, mixing them together, then trying to put them all back together. There was something like 19,000 fragments. Holy Moly!!!!
So from there we took the 25 south to pretty much the bottom of the state then headed West on the 160. After about 9 hours of driving we stopped in Durango and slept in the Wal-Mart parking lot. Dude. Too much driving for one day! (Look it up on the map...so dumb). Also! Side note! We went around a curve and almost hit these pretty big rocks that had fallen in the road. Praise God He steered us right between them but we went back to move them and one of them was so large that together we still couldn't move it! Needless to say, my heart was PUMPING!
In the morning we got up and washed the van and finished our trek to Four Corners, which took another 2 hours but was super cool. Marc made a really good point about people that were just kinda sitting there, doing nothing-people feel obligated to stay for a while because you drive so far to get there then you pay (only $3) to get in, but really, you can do everything there is to do in about one minute. You can go from New Mexico, to Colorado, to Utah, to Arizona and back to New Mexico in the time it takes you to take 5 steps. If you go "the long way" around the outside of the circle, it will take you about 30 seconds, but it was really cool.
From there we headed Southeast through this little town called Farmington where we were supposed to meet up with a friend but it just didn't work out so we drove on...and on and on! Another five hours to get to Albuquerque. Our routine when we get into a new town is to first go to the church where we plan on sending the people we talk to and getting business cards or invitations or brochures, just basically whatever we can use to give to people to send them to church. By the time we got into Albuquerque, the church was closed until their service that night so we went to their bookstore/coffee shop which was HUGE!!! Holy cheesoly it was gigantic! But super cool. I'll put up pictures if I ever remember to take them. So eventually the cafe was closing and we had nowhere to go so we decided to go use a gift card that we were blessed with and chill at Starbucks to finish up our business. We were there for like two and a half hours and then they closed so we just sat in the van while Marc put the finishing touches on the video.
As the workers finished up and came out, one of them gave us a thumbs up for the huge "Jesus Saves" sign we have in our window so we got to tell him what we were doing. That was pretty cool. Five minutes later he scared the daylights out of us by knocking on the window when neither of us were paying attention, but he invited us to go with him, his wife, and some friends to Buffalo Wild Wings just to hang out, so off we went!
We had just eaten so we just hung out but we got to tell the group about what we were doing (they were all believers too). Then when we were just about done, Jesse (Starbucks worker) and his wife (Lindsey) invited us to stay in their spare bedroom. I swear I've had more sleepovers in the past 7 weeks then most girls do in their life! Haha but that concludes Saturday.
Sunday we got up and went to church at Calvary of Albuquerque where Skip Heitzig pastors. (Side note, on Easter-this Sunday-Phil Wickham is doing worship for their sunrise service! Tiiiight!) That church is ginormous but really pretty. The message was about evangelism and why we aren't doing it and how to do it successfully. He gave it in four steps, modeled after Jesus:
1-take the initiative. Jesus came down from Heaven, He didn't wait till we asked Him to. Don't wait for people to come up to you and ask you for the gospel. Find a way, an open door to talk to them.
2-open your mouth! use words! P. Skip spoke of the old quote that many of us have heard, "Always preach the gospel and when necessary, use words." "What a dumb quote," he said. If people see you living a good life but don't know why then it doesn't matter. Not to demean the importance of living a glorifying life, but we are to open our mouths and speak of God, just as Jesus did.
3-What you proclaim with your lips, practice with your life. Jesus' message was radical because His life was radical. If He didn't live as He did, His message would have been to no effect.
4-Brace yourself for opposition. They killed Jesus, do you think they'll just accept what you have to say because you believe it? We will be laughed at, we will be ridiculed and looked down upon for our beliefs, but remember that they are not rejecting us, but God.
People choose to suffer for many reasons, why not truth?
After church we went out into the city, first to a small park we found. There weren't that many people there but as I was getting something ready in the van, Marc struck up a conversation with a man nearby who happened to be traveling and an atheist. I hurried what I was doing and made my way over. He was talking about the world and that it has always existed and will always exist. Sweet, I thought, I know this answer! haha. I told him that according to Einstein's theory of relativity, the world is coming to an end, to which he replied, "Well, that's just his general theory of relativity." This is when Marc chimed in with a fact that I had missed : "He's a physicist." Gulp! That's pretty much all I know about Einstein but this man was schooled! There went that route. We talked for a while longer and then we all went on our separate ways. He was really super nice though and very willing to talk, which was awesome. He wasn't condescending or anything, which can happen a lot with educated people such as him.
Next we went to the university. Marc struck up a conversation with this guy who was tagging up the ground with chalk to promote his show, Poets vs. Emcees (which sounds awesome). He grew up Jehovah's Witness and his gf is Christian so he goes to both churches sometimes but isn't really sure what he believes. We got to share the truth of Jesus with him and leave a tract and a "How Can I Become A Christian/How Can I Grow In My Christian Faith?" flyer. Pray that he would see the Lord for who he is. Something that he told us, which is more honesty than most people will admit to, is that he doesn't really want to be "religious" right now, but when he gets older and more mature he will go to church. This is such a huge tool of Satan! Tomorrow is not promised! How many people do you know who knew the day they were going to die? Almost nobody! The Bible says that today is the day of salvation. Tomorrow may never come for you and then it will be too late.
Moving on, we walked the university area for a little while but because it was Sunday there weren't too many people. After some grocery shopping, we headed back to Jesse & Lindsey's house. On Monday we did laundry (yeah!) and went back to the university. We handed out a good number of Easter service invitations and got to talk to a lot of people but it started raining so we bounced.
That night Jesse & Lindsey had friends over (Megan & Jared who we met at Buffalo Wild Wings also) and Lindsey made us New Mexican food! I never knew there was such a thing! I'm sure I'm going to spell this wrong, but she made us sopapillas which are kinda like sopitas, but a little bit different. Either way, they were super yummy!
We're not sure how much longer we will be here in Albuquerque. It started snowing this morning and we want to go out but we feel like nobody will be out so we're unsure of what to do. I feel as though it is a wasted day, like we should be out talking to people, but we're not! Although I REALLY do not like it here in New Mexico, I want to be here for sunrise service, but first and foremost to be in the Lord's will and to know where He wants us to go/when. Pray for direction for us, and that we would be led by His spirit.
Until next time :)
p.s. total side note-this picture is HILARIOUS! I didn't want to put it on Facebook cause I have young people on my friend's list but since this is a little more private, I thought I would put it up here.
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