Fused: Week 2

This week has been good so far. We're doing a program each night for students and then focusing the rest of the day on building relationships with those students. We've got a compassion team who is visiting nursing homes and special needs facilities. There's also a practical ministry team (which I'm serving on) who helps with whatever is needed. We've mostly been working on the teen drop-in center, doing some painting and cleaning up.

Our evening program is being held in a huge festival tent. Setting up the tent was everything that purgatory would be for me - if I believed in it... All (and I mean ALL) of the guys on the team plus wquite a few men from the local churches came together to put it up, and no "leader" had been identified. It was a chaotic process of several older ones posturing for who would lead the operation. After a leader finally emerged, no one could do anything right in his sight. No matter what you were doing you weren't doing it right, even though he would show you how and it was exactly what you were doing before. BUT - it was finally completed.

The program has been good. We had 160 in attendance last night. One guy - S. - left all of his friends behind and came to the event. They were giving him all kinds of stick over attending, but God was tugging at him. He has decided that he wants to check out this Christianity thing. He's connected with some local believers now and I think he's really primed to be discipled.

I had a really good Americano today at Cafe Creme. That hit the spot! Oh, yeah - I preached at the Presbyterian church this afternoon for their midweek gathering. It was about "me" versus "we" Christianity. The pastor said it was a word in season for his people. The churches here are just chock full of conflicts under the surface and most of it comes down to selfishness. We're supposed to get together and talk some more later this week. I've been leading worship on Sunday evenings at the Presbyterian for the past two weekends and for our team at the end of each day, as well. That's been good. My voice is going out, though.

Well, enought random rambling - pray for S. Pray for our health. Pray for strength. Pray for the people of Northern Ireland. Pray for my voice. Pray for Travis as he preaches each night. Pray. Pray. Pray. Thanks.