Day 1 of Nebraska was pretty much just chilling out at Starbucks, blogging & reading & doing not too much. While we were there we met these 2 baristas....one who's name I don't remember (sorry!) and the other's name is Megan. As he is so good at doing, Marc made friends really fast. Usually people are pretty intrigued when we tell them about our trip, so that's always a good conversation starter.
On Friday morning, we realized we were out of milk, so we went to three different grocery stores looking for it! (We use small, individual packs of almond milk that don't need to be refrigerated.) Finally we found it at a health food store (duh). So from there we went to find a park to eat breakfast & have our studies, but we ended up at the capitol building.
Nebraska was the first capitol building that we went to that was shaped differently. It doesn't look super tall from this angle because I was trying to fit it all in, but it's higher than 14 floors! Which we totally went to the top of!
the view from the top! When NE was first settled, there was not one single tree!
the creepy padded elevator we took to get to the top
spooky, no?
this is about as close as we got to a normal picture.
we took a tour of the building...with 55 fourth graders!
inside the Nebraska Supreme Court...because I'm a nerd!
the awesome ceiling in the echo proof Supreme Courtroom! This ceiling was built by hand and has no glue or nails, it's all held together with wooden pegs!
a weird angle of a dome ceiling. that chandelier weighs 3,500 lbs! don't ask me how...
Ok, so that pretty much concludes our tour of the building. After some well made PB & J's, we headed downtown to walk around a little bit where Marc got to talk to a homeless man named Bob who has been on the streets since 2003! As we walked back to the van, a man in a car yelled out to Marc about his beanie (this is the 3rd time a convo has been started because of his beanie) so of course, Marc started talking to him. Of course he believes in God because everyone "believes in God" but he started pouring his heart out about all of the drama going on in his life. He had been living out of his car for a little while now because of unfortunate circumstances, but wasn't too interested to hear about God or church. When Marc brought it up it was a lot of "yeah, yeah, yeah, I know". It's hard to see people who so need a touch from Jesus so unwilling to yield to him.
After those interesting convos, it was back to visit our new friends at the bucks....where we live! Marc worked on videos for pretty much forever. We got to talk more to Megan, who is a total free spirited, super sweet girl! She asked us where we shower while we're on the trip & I told her that usually people invite us over to shower at their house (thanks for that by the way!). She gave us her number & said we could shower at her place so after she was off, we headed over there! This is where we met her cousin (Kelsey I think) and her boyfriend, Jason, who Marc played MarioKart with for aboout the next hour. Once I was done showering we all went over to her friend's apartment (Jake) who lived just across the way. It wasn't my favorite scene to be in, it was more like a kickback, which I haven't been into since my partying days but I just prayed that God would use us somehow. I mean, that's why we're here right? To seek & to save that which was lost! We were there for a couple/few hours and made friends. Megan, Jason (bf), & Jake (neighbor) are all super cool, really chill, just nice people.
(Jason & Megan)
It started getting late & I was tired so we left, but we got to the car & Marc realized that he left his keys, so he went back to find them while I waited in the van. This fool was gone for like 10-15 minutes! When he finally came back, he told me that Jake had asked why we were on the road so Marc was able to share about our mission & why we're here. It was cool because he had tried to bring it up a few times before that, but kept getting cut off or the subject changed but now he had an open door. After explaining, Jake & another girl that was there said they would be down to come to church on Sunday morning! Tiiiiight! Then it was off to Walmart to sleep.Saturday morning was more business- we headed to the University of Nebraska (Corn Huskers) to see if we could find people, but being Saturday, nobody was there so we stopped at the highly acclaimed Dairy Store on campus because the capitol tour guide told us that they have CORN ON THE COB ICE CREAM! How nasty does that sound?! Lol. Well, they didn't have it in stock so we couldn't try it...bummer. So we took some update footage & of course, went to Starbucks, to edit it. It's weird, usually we don't spend as much time at Starbucks as we did in Nebraska, but we always found ourselves there, which actually worked out really well this time.
When we got there, Megan told us about how Jake was excited to go to church with us, so we invited her & Jason as well, but they didn't really seem interested. So we were there, editing, writing, reading....you know, the usual. Jason was there also, so we played a couple of games, then Megan got off & was sick so they left :( shortly after, we left as well & went to Walmart. When I came out of the restroom Marc had made a friend. Surprised? Haha, me neither. So we stood there and talked to this guy for about an hour about everything! Movies, music, his band, work, family, but always bringing it back to God. It really was a sweet opportunity to plant seeds. I'm not sure how many penetrated the soil, but God is bigger than circumstance, so we'll see.
We got a text at some point that night from Megan, that said that they were down to go to church with us in the morning! Suuuper sweet! Jake didn't end up coming...I think he spent Mother's Day with his mom....who does that?! Haha JK! So we picked them up for church the next morning and boy oh boy was this an experience!
Alright, here goes. We get to church at about 9:50 & there is literally one car in the parking lot for the 10:00 service. No biggie, Calvary's have a tendency to run a little behind, so we get in and sit down. There were 2 guitarists (1 electric, 1 acoustic) practicing for worship and they sounded so good! Things were looking up! So we started at about 10:15 and worship was, as expected, good. And then the pastor came up. Pastor Loren (assistant) and this is where it all went out the window. First he introduced himself & talked about the role of an assistant pastor & what his job entails & what it could be likened to. Then he talked about Mother's Day and said that a lot of times, churches like to give a Mother's Day message but because we're at Calvary we like to go verse by verse through the Bible, so we'd be sticking with that, but just as an example of something a church might do, turn to Genesis 21. Then he rambled about I honestly don't even know what for about 10 minutes, then got to Genesis. He proceeded to start to tell about 3 different stories & would say, "but you know how that story goes" and then ramble about nothing having to do with the Bible. One time he even started talking about a time when he had to take a break from ministry & how his wife was so strong & how his autistic son helped him grow, followed by multiple stories of raising his son. Again, all nothing that had to do with the Bible. Just when a beacon of hope appeared on the horizon, he had us turn to 2 Timothy, where we would be studying, but immediately corrected himself saying, "well, since we're here, let's look at Exodus whatever and gave another sample Mother's Day verse and of course, more rambling! I was super upset the whole time. We brought guests to church & told them that we like Calvary because they teach the word, and this was literally the biggest waste of an hour and a half I've ever spent. (Please don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to demean the Calvary ministry, just this particular pastor has somehow made it past the "screening" process or something.)
When he finally did have us turn to 2 Timothy where we would be studying, he read about 6 verses and didn't expound. He simply repeated what the text said-that Timothy's mother & grandmother had faith, which was something he had talked about in his ramblings. Then time was up. I know what you're thinking because I was there-I thought it too! Ridiculous! He taught his "lesson" for literally 5 minutes, if that. Maaaaaaan, I was SO unhappy.
It's good because Megan & Jason have been to church more than a few times before and they were smart enough to realize that there was a reason that this guy doesn't usually teach on Sundays. It's funny because when he was talking about himself in the beginning, he made a joke about people not being there because he was teaching. They say behind every "just kidding" is a half truth, I think this one was a whole truth. Hopefully Megan & Jason weren't totally put off by this guy!
After service, Jason treated all of us to breakfast at Village Inn (which is basically a nicer, yummier Denny's). I was super happy :) and full! He also filled up our tank! Thank you Jesus! And Jason! God is good! Please pray that God would bless Megan & Jason, they were super good friends to us while we were there. Marc & I were talking about all of the people that we've met and how awesome it will be if they come to visit us when we get home. It would be cool for everyone back home to meet all of these people that they've heard about and (hopefully) prayed for, and for us to be able to see them again!
So after breakfast, we showered one last time at Megan's, then bounced out to Omaha! When we got there we headed downtown & kinda walked around for a second. Marc stopped this guy & was asking him questions about the city, then he brought it back to Jesus & was asking him if he was a believer & they got to talking. He was, but they had a really good conversation on things that he was misdirected about. He also said hi to this homeless man that we walked by and then after a minute we realized that he was behind us & yelled out, "hey, you wanna see something weird?" Ugh, I don't know, do I?! lol, but he showed us this crazy body contortion that he did! Weiiiird indeed. Marc started talking to him, asking him about church & God & his beliefs, which were totally crazy! He's kind of agnostic, kind of new agey, just a weird mix of stuff. Well, we weren't really feeling Omaha, so we decided that in the morning we would leave, and leave we did. So here we are in Des Moines, Iowa, which I will blog about in the next few days.
Hope you enjoyed my Nebraska update!
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