well, it changed my life and my eyebrow.

It's over.
Our internship ended yesterday. I have mixed feelings. I'm excited to go home and apply what I've learned here to my actual life. I'm sad to leave such a great movement behind. MissionWaco is absolutely incredible in how it serves the poor and marginalized holistically. I'm so excited to see its future.

Sorry, my posts have been very sporadic and I've left you out of most of the events. It's mainly that the effort to drive out to a coffee shop or restaurant (usually meaning something had to be purchased for internet use) and endeavor to handle the plethora of internet needs just proved too much. I pushed it off until I could avoid it no longer.

So to make it up (and not bore you with all the details). Let's read a short list of things I've done since my last post.

1) Toured David Koresh's Branch Davidian Compound. (i.e. this was the cult from Waco and the second-most popular response to where I was spending my Summer - next to the heat) Here's a website explaining it all: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Branch_Davidian_Massacre
It was basically a big deal....when we were 5. This is a long story, but the skinny is: I have this homeless friend who moved to Waco to investigate the conspiracy from Philadelphia. He moved onto the compound and was baptized into the church. Then he left after the new "prophet" got too weird. He offered to take some of us interns out there and give us a tour and tell us the run-down of what happened there. It was so cool. I love stuff like that.

2) Supervised the longest StreetCamps ever. Seriously. This camp called 'StudentLife' (which is like MFuge) was at Baylor and their day-service project involved MW's Street Camp. Instead of a two-hour thing, it was from 11-3. It was soooo long. But the youth groups seemed to enjoy it and I got a lot of reading done. Haha.

3) Read two more books: Under the Overpass by Mike Yankowski (which is about a college student and his buddy who decided to make themselves homeless and travel across the US through its major cities) and Theirs is the Kingdom by Robert Upton (which talked about his initial experience in Urban Atlanta and his organization FCS that is a community development organization like MW)

4) Helped more with Baylor Line Camp which this week was taking the students to nursing homes and homes for those with disabilities. This one was a little more difficult for the students to jump right in on. But understandably so. I can't imagine having to do that during freshman orientation...think it would've broke me. Haha.

5) The interns put on a party last night called 'Kathypalooza' for our director Kathy Wise who has been our shepherd in this internship. We made this giant dining experience in our living room with candlelight and good music, spaghetti, games, and fun. It was a great time.

6) Taught a lesson for the chapel at the homeless shelter. It was pretty heavy. I just talked to them about how I felt the church had neglected their responsibilities for caring and loving them. During one friday meeting, someone asked us the question 'Is the poor the church's responsibility or the governments?" And most people answered "Both". That stuck with me and I told the people at the chapel that if the church did what Jesus said, the government wouldn't have to be involved. I appologized for all the offenses I felt the church had commited against them. Here are a few from my notes:
"I'm sorry for the way the Church...
...neglects you.
...for any time we made you ashamed.
...for when we didn't feed you.
...for when we gave you no shelter.
...for when we told you to 'get a job'.
...for when we made you feel worthless.
...for when we ignored you.
...for when we oppressed you.
...for when we laughed at you.
...for when we made you a statistic rather than a human being.
...for making you a political issue.
...for lying to you."
I have read a lot of books, witnessed a lot of things. The Church needs to wake up.
"How can you worship a homeless man on Sunday and ignore one on Monday?"
Birds have roosts and foxes have dens but the son of man has nowhere to lay down his head. Matthew 8:20
It was great experience for me to just talk with them. I'll never forget it.

7) Then a few days later, another intern had the chapel service (she came to mine and used it to jump off on her's and invited me to come along). She read the Scripture where Jesus washed His disciples feet and commands us to do the same.
¹²So when He had washed their feet, and taken His garments and reclined at the table again, He said to them, "Do you know what I have done to you? ¹³"You call Me Teacher and Lord; and you are right, for so I am. ¹⁴"If I then, the Lord and the Teacher, washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another's feet." (John 13:12-14)
Then with tubs of warm water with lavendar bath salts, she and other interns washed the feet of those in the homeless shelter. And in turn, they (their idea) washed the interns feet. It was beautiful and more like the "Church" than I have ever seen.

So now, we're done with our internship responsiblities. Everybody's doing little fun things today for our last times in Waco. We all go to Church Under the Bridge tomorrow for the last time together and then Monday night is the intern-appreciation dinner. Then Tuesday, Kaitlyn and I will hit the road...back to Carolina...oh how I've missed you.

Probably won't write anymore about my experiences here in Texas. This has truly been a journey for me. Thanks for reading along and I hope that God can reveal as much to you in the future. As always...
Thanks for reading, Peace to you.

O what a day.

I am so incredibly tired, but as I sit here drinking a free sweet tea from McAlister's in Waco, I feel the need to update you. I know that my posts are fewer and far between now in the end of this internship. The only excuse I can give is that I am trying to soak up all I can. There is a lot to mention so I will be brief (and yet profound...i'm just that good).

I visited an Eastern Orthodox church this past Sunday as a part of my exposure to different cultures and religions. It was very very interesting. It made me want to travel to the East, but not worship there. It was still staunchly conservative and exclusive. In spite of all that, it was beautiful and ornate. The ornate-ness was overwhelming. I just kept thinking...how many people could they feed by selling that gold cross? The incense was intoxicating (not really) but it made me feel relaxed. We stood and sat for about an our doing the traditional liturgy which is a lot of prayers read from a book and we would say some in english and then repeat it in Greek (i opted out of that one). So it was educationally wonderful.

I was almost stabbed at a Baylor Line Camp (see previous posts for explanation of the camp) by a mentally retarded 13 year old girl who was very violent and verbally abusive. It was so disheartening to see a girl who with adequate resources to behavioral therapy and medication, she could function and be safe. However, she was a horribly difficult kid who tried to steal everything, beat several people up and at one point went back to her apartment to retrieve some long scissors. She held them like a knife the whole time, and me (acting as MW security) just thought, well if she stabs me, then I'm okay with being done. But I called the head director of the Camp and he did a great job 'shadowing' her the whole time in spite of her yelling 'rape', calling him every name in the book, and slapping him once and trying many more times. At the end, he said how unfortunate that it is that because of her poverty, she will remain this way until she seriously hurts someone and is in prison. All because of poverty.

I was also in a car accident today (my first substantial one ever). In the ghetto of our neighborhood where we live, a car ran a stop sign at an intersection at the same time i chose to drive through it. I slammed on brakes and still succeeded in t-boning their car. It is really surreal how little damage there was to my foreign little honda and the chevy cavalier I hit was in bad shape. I took an immediate picture after it happened just going through the mental list of things to do after an accident. So once calling the police frantically, I tried to take the following lame picture of the accident. If you look at the far right side, you can kind of see the big dent in the side of the cavalier. Their passenger side window shattered and cut the two people in their car up. Flattened their back tire. I'll just say they are in much worse shape than I was. I hit my knees pretty hard on the dash and I was by myself when it happened so I was freaking because of that. I hit this car where the driver looks like a Hell's Angel and the passenger looks like a thug (what do you expect in Waco) and THEY ran the stop sign in the FIRST thing. Geeeez. So the police came and I called a fellow intern to come stand with me and I was the cause of half the neighborhood coming out and standing.

(That's the car on the right that I hit and the poor silver honda on the left)

Now my car looks like it has a lazy eye with the head light shoved up in there on the right. Check the fender too, it covers like half the grill now.
(Those scrapes and completely through. You can see on the other side)

Here are some, an intern Jill took with her real camera. (PS I hit the BIG guy standing there. Hell's angels I tell ya)


I am so blessed to have nothing but some sore knees.

I finished 'The Irresistible Revolution' and it was good every page until the end. Read it, it should change your life.

Here are some pictures I took from Baylor Line Camp today:

(This one's my FAVORITE)

All in all, things are great. Time is winding down. We have intern meetings all day tomorrow. And I'm teaching at the evening chapel service at the homeless shelter tomorrow.

Here's this for fun:





Thanks for reading. Peace to you.

one step closer to being a pirate.

Oh yeah. I forgot...





Yep. i love it.

Kingdom come.

Hello from Wacko.

So, since we last met some exciting things have happened. It is amazing how even though my life might be in pieces elsewhere, the call to be cognizant and active in this mission and need in society is still so compelling. I just keep asking myself ‘what is happening in America today?’ I am so discouraged to the point of hopelessness when I see the facts and repercussions of our actions and ignorances. I have spent the last few days trying to get motivated to keep up with the pace of life here. Its difficult and I really just want to hang out all the time. But the time is urgent and its just like me, a typical American, to be selfish and apathetic. However, the last few days have been great.

Baylor University, that is located in Waco, is the largest Baptist University in the country. I mean it’s huge and it’s incredibly expensive. Something like a population of tens of thousands of people and a tuition close to $40,000. They call it the “Baylor Bubble” because with so many “Christians” in the 11^th poorest city in the country, that relationship doesn’t really make sense. They are known as the “Baylors” to the local project kids and they are presumed to be white and rich; just as much as we expect the project kids to be dumb and dangerous. Anyways, MissionWaco and Baylor have paired up for an activity that their incoming freshman take part it. It’s basically a Street-Camp (going in to the projects, to play with kids, give them a snack, etc) in the morning which the new Baylor freshmen do. So every Wednesday and Thursday for the rest of July, we will have 200 new freshmen each day to take to a different project site in the city. Me and Emily (the work group interns) are the “security” (no joke) at each site to make sure everything goes smoothly and any needs are met. It has been incredible. The freshmen are true freshmen through and through. They’ve never seen anything like these kids…or the drunk men carousing around the picnic tables at the parks, or the beggars asking for rides, money, anything, or the poor women walking the streets with no shoes and ill-fitting, dirty clothes. To see it through fresh eyes has renewed my passion for what I’m doing here. One girl approached me and was astonished that MissionWaco does StreetCamps all the time. She was eager to get involved when she finally got to Baylor in the fall. It’s been so great and I’ve really been enjoying facilitating and being a part of these freshmen’s experiences.

So other than that, I’ve been doing a lot of administrative tasks around the offices which basically means organizing and running errands for the staff. I was invited by some staff members to go see Harry Potter and LOVED it, especially getting to hang out with non-interns for once.

This past Friday we had a “Friday Forum” with this guy from the Waco CDC (Community Development Corporation). It’s an organization that’s affiliated with CCDA (Christian Community Development Association). They work in the poor communities with substantial crime problems and terrible appearance and revive the community. They have really been concentrated in the neighborhoods around our office (15^th street). They’ve built 30 new homes and made 100 new homeowners. They offer financial counseling to families and to date, they’ve counseled more than 900 families. Remarkably, Waco CDC has had no foreclosures on their homes due to the economy. They attribute that to the counseling and making sure their residents can actually afford the mortgage. They work with the schools to use those as cornerstones of community improvement. And the two schools in the neighborhoods have improved exponentially. They also work in improving the conditions of the government housing complexes. It was really neat to meet in a small setting and just pick their brain about what they believe community development means and needs. Here are pretty impressive pictures of their work:

BEFORE

AFTER

Other than that, my actions have been predictable and not really spontaneous. On the other side of things, my philosophy in life is changing drastically. You can not spend time in this environment for long without it changing your life. I’m having to read my last book for the Summer and we get to pick our own. I’ve chosen “The “Irresistible Revolution” by Shane Claiborne.

I highly recommend it, the most of any of the other books I've read and I'm not even finished. Go out, buy it.

Shane Claiborne’s a good friend of Jimmy Dorrell (the Director of MW) and came to speak at the Church Under the Bridge with David Crowder leading worship last fall (HATE I missed that!). Also, the proceeds of the book all go to certain organizations of "ordinary radicals" that are working to change what the church means and does. Church Under the Bridge is one of those recipients.

Anyways, I’m only 70 pages into it and can’t stop the passion that is igniting in me to be a part of this revolution in America. Seriously, WHAT IS HAPPENING IN AMERICA TODAY? I have now committed to not ignoring the shortcomings and failures of the church today. But as Claiborne says I need to “stop complaining about the church I see, and set my heart on becoming the church I dream of”. I mean can’t you feel it? Can’t you feel how the American church doesn’t seem to GET it anymore? Can you even compare the current state of the “church” with the house church in Acts where “there were no needy persons among them”? On any given night, there are 700,000 to 2 million people homeless on the streets of America. 20-25% of these homeless are mentally ill and 40% are veterans of the US military machine. My home church spends 100,000 dollars on an awning to shield its members from the rain for 30 seconds when 700,000 are sleeping in it. Wake up, because I surely am. I’m tired of just feeling moved. I want to move. I will move.

“Don’t the Bible say we must love everybody?”

“O, the Bible! To be sure, it says a great many things; but, then, nobody ever thinks of doing them.”

Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncles Tom’s Cabin.

Thanks for reading. Peace to you.

The Return

So here I am back at Common Grounds after an almost 4 week separation. There are no words that can adequately express everything about the time in between. Just know, that I am a wreck on many levels. I have lost the only figment of real family I had left. And God and I are working some things out.

Now I'm back in Texas, sharing in the love and fellowship of these amazing interns and staff. Still diving deep into the education I want to get in community, poverty, and the call of Christ. I haven't done anything too incredible since I got back. I worked at the World Cup Cafe, waiting tables and such on Saturday for the first time and then served at the Poverty Simulation that night at the World Hunger Banquet. It has not been that hard getting back into the swing of things. It's been really slow too since I got back and that's what MW has been expecting. Once July 4th passed, it would be a slow decline to the end. We haven't had a work group since I got here but I have loved sharing so much time with the interns. Living together has been incredible. A great source of support and 'family-feel' when I've really needed to be around people a lot.

I did get the visit a Mennonite church on Sunday called Hope Fellowship. It was very interesting. Started at 9 with breakfast. The church built its structure on the principles of the house church in Acts. They meet in an old old green house. After breakfast, they have like an hour of worship music that is incredible and yet very simple, like half in Spanish. Then a little fellowship/coffee break and a Bible lesson. However, this Sunday one girl (probably my age) spoke on her experience living in a modern Mennonite community in Chicago. These aren't the bonnet-wearing, long dress wearing people. Very modern, just liberal-minded and earthy. Lots of chacos and hairy legs around.


All in all, I'm so glad to be back. I will cry when its over and hope to milk it for all its worth in the last days.

revelation

I'm back. Hope to write a more personal entry later, but for now: Here's a few excerpts from the book UnChristian: What a New Generation Really Thinks About Christianity...And Why it Matters. I got back on Tuesday and read this book by the deadline today, so its pretty much all I've done during my free time.

The book is based on a three-year long study that the Barna Group did on the image problem Christianity has with young adult-America (basically our generation). They asked people to name the first things that come to mind when thinking of Christianity and each of the top 6 answers is a chapter in this book (hypocritical, 'get saved!', antihomosexual, sheltered, too political, and judgmental).

In the Hypocritical chapter:
"Our passion for Jesus should result in God-honoring, moral lifestyles, not the other way around."


In the 'Get Saved!' chapter:
"Myth: The best evangelism efforts are those that reach the most people at once.
Fact: The most effective efforts to share faith are interpersonal and relationship based. When we asked born-again Busters (name of our generation) to identify the activity, ministry event, or person most directly responsible for their decision to accept Jesus Christ, 71 percent listed an individual -- typically their parent, friend, another relative, or a teacher. A majority of those decisions were described as conversations and prayer, while about one-third were instances in which their friend or family member took them to a church service or an evangelistic event. In an era of mass media, it is easy to believe that the more eyeballs, the more impact. But radio, television, and tracts accounted for a combined total of less than one-half of 1 percent of the Busters who are born again."

"One of the things I do when I meet people is ask them, 'What is Christianity?' Undoubtedly half will respond, 'A relationship with Jesus.'
That is wrong. The gospel cannot be merely a private transaction. God didn't break through history, through time and space, to come as a babe, be incarnated, and suffer on the cross just so you can come to him and say, 'Oh, I accept Jesus and now I can live happily ever after.' That's not why he came....Jesus came as a radical to turn the world upside down. When we believe it is just about Jesus and yourself, we miss the point."

In the Antihomosexual chapter:
"'Nothing that we despise in the other man is entirely absent from ourselves. We must learn to regard people less in the light of what they do or don't do, and more in the light of what they suffer.' - Dietrich Bonhoeffer"

"I am not asked to impersonate the Holy Spirit but to live a life that gives off God's fluorescence."

In the Sheltered chapter:
"We were made to be lovers, bold in broken places, pouring ourselves out again and again until we're called home."

In the Judgmental chapter:
"When Donald Trump becomes the poster boy for second chances and the church is viewed as a place of judgment...we have a serious problem."

Then finally the last chapter was on the hope for new perceptions in the future:

"I have faith that in the future we will make better decisions on what issues we think are important. When we stand up for something and draw a line in the sand we will know that it is clearly for the cause of Christ and not for some political, religious, or self-serving agenda. We will pick the hills we die on more wisely and choose to go to battle a little less often. And when we stand up for something, we will take our two favorite companions: grace and love. They will stand on the left and right of us. And we would never be so foolish or unwise as to ever journey without them."

Sweat

I'm on a little break in the office. Enjoying some pandora music, facebook, and of course blogging for a little while. I've been working with a youth group here from an episcopal church from something like "Waxahachee" Texas. I really have no clue...I just pretend I understand what they say. There's a park in the neighborhood with a sand volleyball court that was completely infested by weeds. It was like a jungle.

We cleaned it out today :]

Then water-sealed some of the wood around the park. Replaced some wood that keeps the sand in around the volleyball court. I hammered "ree-bar"(?) that was like the size of my femur into the ground. It was hard work, but I learned something new. Next step, lawn care.

Let's do another fun list of things on my mind:

1) Alls I gotta say is I'm getting an excellent tan.....on the back of my neck. Blisters and all. Maybe i'll fashion myself a swag-rag.

2) Aaron, a fellow intern, is currently driving me insane by slowly moving the door to this office back and forth on purpose as it squeaks. It sounds like a monkey dying. I'm going to punch him in the neck.

3) Got a Waco City library card yesterday and it's easier to get into college than get a library card in Waco. Checked out the Poisonwood Bible.

4) We're going to go see 'Seventeen Again' at the 50-cent theater tonight and then get $1 ice cream at Basken Robbins. [Notice, creepy cat ice cream picture. i have no idea why its in here. Just the fact that someone probably finds it cute.] YAY cheap intern outtings. Is it sad that i'm more excited to see chandler in the movie than zac shmefron?

5) I'm having such a good time.

6) I miss everyone back home.

7) Chiggers - have afflicted almost half of the interns...I'm an exception so far. First, swine flu, west nile, then I'll get CHIGGERS.

8) Okay, I gotta go to Street Camp now.

Love you all!

Thanks for reading, peace to you.