"Missippi" or to the rest of the country, Mississippi

So here we are in Arkansas...but I skip too much. Rewind!
Mississippi! Or, as many like to say, Missippi. I guess that extra "iss" makes for just too many syllables!

We arrived on a Saturday afternoon/evening to Jackson, the capital, and we drove a little bit more east to the city where the Calvary was. That night we looked for a nice, populated place to walk around, and we found one, but there weren't very many people there. There were a TON of shops, but not that many people, so we sat at a coffee shop and took care of business. I uploaded pics/videos then Marc made his video & when he was done, I blogged. Nothing too exciting! At one point, Marc stepped outside and this girl stopped him because she recognized his Passion Conference shirt! How cool! So the 2 girls came in and we sat and talked for just a minute, but they ended up coming to church with us the next day! They were already believers, but it's still a cool moment.
Also that night, Marc was able to share a lot with the 2 baristas that worked there. One of them believed in God but she said that she doesn't really go to church because she's gay. Marc shared some of his testimony about how he used to live his life the way that he wanted to, but when he truly realized that God was real, he knew he had to stop these bad things he was doing and choose to live the way God wants us to, not how we want to. It was a really good conversation and nice to see a conversation between a Christian and a gay person that didn't end up negatively. All you gotta do is be loving people!

CC Jackson

The next morning was church so it was off to CC Jackson. It was a smaller congregation, well, compared to home. Compared to everywhere east of Texas, it's pretty average. In their defense, it was the first week of Spring Break and the morning after Daylight Savings Time. The worship was good and the study was great as well. It was a very inviting place-when we got there, a bunch of different people said hi to us because we were new. Sweet. It’s always nice to feel welcome somewhere new.
After study, we were invited to stay with one of the families, so we headed to their house. Interestingly enough, the wife & 2 daughters were Messianic Jews, so Marc spent a pretty good chunk of the day getting her perspective and understanding of different things. It was interesting, I can’t say I’ve ever talked to a Messianic Jew before but it was enlightening.
On Monday we headed into town to see who we could talk to. Turns out, nobody. There were people scattered here and there, but because there wasn’t really a centralized place where people generally hang out, we ended up back at the shops in Flowood. We walked around there for a while, seeing what we could start, but nothing really came of it. Eventually we ended up back at Cups, the coffee shop from the other night. We noticed when we walked in, that nearly everyone in there had a Bible out on their table. It was crazy! You don’t ever see that in California, you’re lucky if you ever randomly meet a real Christian. Eventually, Marc got to talking to the guy who was sitting behind us about how does he evangelize to the people in the South who have more pastors in their family than I’ve ever met? And yet clearly, something is off. So they talked for a little while. One thing that he mentioned that he does (Ryan is his name) is to have them read Hebrews 9:27- “And as it is appointed for men to die once, but after this the judgment,” and then ask them what is going to happen to them at the judgment. It still is hard because a lot of people here have gone to church so much in their lives, that it’s just cultural. You see Jesus quotes everywhere, in every store there is religious memorabilia, and everybody goes to church. You can walk up to a complete stranger and ask them where they go to church, and most of the time they’ll answer you! It’s definitely a different world than what we’re used to back home.
The next day, we got up and had breakfast with the Brogans (the sweet family we were staying with), and then headed out to meet the Cups crew for volleyball. Except we didn’t. It had rained a couple days before and the courts were flooded so when we were already on the way there, he cancelled. We were bummed cause we had been looking forward to volleyball and a chance to talk to them about God more, but they offered to meet up later for bowling so our day wasn’t ruined. We walked around for a bit, talked to a couple people, but we still had a very long time before we had anything planned and we weren’t sure what to do so we headed to the capitol building. We drove around for a but looking for somewhere to park and when we finally found a place, there was a cop kinda lurking around us. So we hung out for a minute to see if he said something, then walked up and down the street looking for a sign that said we couldn’t park there but we didn’t find anything, so we headed in. We got just about to the front when Marc looked back and saw the cop on our windshield writing something down. Greeeeeat. As he ran back to talk to them, I yelled out, “BE NICE!” By the time I got there, they had already been talking. The officer had ran the plates for our Chevy van and it came back listed as a Dodge so he had to call it in. After a couple minutes, everything came back clear and they apologized, so we finally did get to the statehouse.

 They didn’t do tours, just self guided tours and there wasn’t a whole lot to see, so afterwards we left and went to the mall. It was outdoors, similar to Victoria Gardens and it, too, was a ghost town. We walked it for a little while and checked out some shops. We were able to talk to a guy in a furniture store and Marc started a conversation with this guy sitting alone on a bench. It was sad because he said he believed in God but didn’t like to talk about religion because it can be divisive. This is a widely popular statement, not completely unmerited, that people use as an excuse not to tell others about Jesus. It doesn’t have to be divisive if you just show love. Get to know somebody a little bit, talk to them instead of just telling them that they need Jesus. If we truly believe what we say we do, we’ll want to bring as many people with us to heaven as we can because you know what’s permanently divisive? Hell, and it would be terrible if we contributed to someone going there for eternity because we didn’t want to offend them.
After the mall, we left to a bible study at Ryan’s house. (He was the guy who shared with Marc his witnessing techniques at the coffee shop.) It was a sweet time-there were probably 30-35 people there, all packed in, sitting on the floor, standing around, just crammed in to hear the word. Fantastic.

Unfortunately, we had to leave pretty quickly afterwards because bowling with the Cups crew started at 9. So we went and bowled a game. I got 2nd place out of 10 people (woot woot) and Marc came in a close 3rd. While we were there, one of the guys who had heard about our trip and was a believer, asked Marc how he spreads the gospel so they got to talk a little bit. And that was it for bowling!

the Cups crew!

On Wednesday, we decided to head out to Arkansas. Even though we hadn’t quite been in Mississippi for a week, we had pretty much exhausted the “spots” to go and, had we stayed, had no idea what we would do. So off we went to Arkansas!
After about 45 minutes of driving, Marc says, “Oh crap, there’s a cop behind me!” And sure enough, in the rear view mirror, were flashing blue lights. Greeeeeeat. I asked him, “Were you speeding?” “No.” And he had his seatbelt on so we had no idea what was going on. As soon as we pulled over & turned the car off, the cop says from behind the van, “Sir, can you step out of the vehicle?” I was slightly panicky, but I knew we hadn’t done anything, so I just prayed and kept quiet. All of a sudden I hear the cop laughing a belly shaking laugh and I realize he’s looking at Marc’s license. Then Marc gets back in the car and I asked him, “Did you get a ticket? What happened?”
“He said it was no big deal, but I was following some car too closely.”
PHEW.
No ticket, and off we went to Arkansas, but really this time.