choosing faith

This past week and a half has been a wonderful chance to experience both the German and Turkish cultures here is Duisberg. Our team is great and a pleasure to serve with. So when I say that this trip has been harder then many others in is not in a negative sense. I would come again in a moment and am thankful for the many relationships that we have begun. The thing that has made this trip harder in many ways is that is has been less concrete then other experiences I have been a part of. There is no house that has been build, no clothes given to those without and no preaching in the town square. This trip has been more about taking our first baby steps.

The challenge has been to come into a foreign culture where the faith of Christianity is not at the foundation of the world we are living and moving in. This is the first time I have been in a place where the people around me to be alive means that they are likely Muslim. Therefore I vision from the start has been to foster relationships and encourage those who live here to express the love of Christ through their ongoing ministry. This was not a vision that was hard to buy into but it is hard in many ways to live out. As an American and merely as myself, I like to see results. I like to say point to something or even someone and say, 'this is something we saw happen.' That is not as much the case here.

However as I was reading through parts of the Hebrew Bible I came upon Abraham and was challenged by how he was promised something great in his life. He was going to father a nation. But then, as you know the story goes, he waits and waits and waits and still he does not get what he is promised. His faith, which at times wavers, is what Paul later points to as what made him righteous is what makes him such a model. Therefore I am striving to have faith that does not depend on immediate results. I pray that I would have a faith that realizes that God loves the people around me far more then I do and that in his time and in his way he will work out his good will. I have faith that if we have sought him this past week then things of eternal significance did take place and that by his grace we were used to bring his glory to this small part of Duisberg.

graduation

I have a few minutes for a break from class so I thought I would get some of my thoughts down and write a new blog.

It is 10:45 here which I think would make it about 2:45 a.m. at home. I thought jetlag would not be a big deal but I still feel as if I am recovering and I have been here a little over a week. I continue to enjoy the heavenly activity of napping. Our English class is almost over and the graduation is this afternoon. I will miss these little buggers and their broken English that matched perfectly with my broken German. I think they have learned some very important lessons and now each time they are asked, 'what are you doing?' they can quickly respond, 'hangin with my homies.' They also learned the idiom, you are in the dog house, which is a shame as they have been telling me that very thing about every 30 seconds over the past several days.

Something that I am just coming to terms with is that I must create mocking wherever I go in the world. In Honduras I am 'fat jon' which is really helpful for the ego and now I have become 'jon you are a donkey!'. I am not sure what sin my forefathers committed but it must have been a grave evil. At times I enjoy it and think it is funny but I am ready for an animal upgrade. If I have the chance to build relationships with a new community I want to be known as, "Jon the mighty lion" or even 'the dangerous otter' would be fine. But I am fearful that I have started a lifelong pattern and with have to deal with being connected to the less-then-cool parts of the creation.

This relative silence is wonderful right now but I should get back to the class. It is time to practice our play of Little Red Ridinghood.

Aufweidersprechen.

the homeland

Guten Abend. I have only a few minutes to update the blog but thought I would take the time to share a little about what is going on here in Germany. I have been here since this last Friday with a team from my church and we have begun our work serving a family that is striving to reach out and serve the Turkish population here. They are a significant minority and there tends to be a great deal of tension between Turks and Germans. However I have not experienced that at all at this point, My experience has been people who have been more then friendly and patient with my broken German. It has been a lot of fun using it and expressing things that are similar to what a child just learning to speak must mutter. After having been on a few of these trips I am starting to have more guts about getting out there and making a fool of myself and I really think that is how these trips should be spend. A lot of laughing and all of it at myself.

So I am off to bed. Tomorrow we start our second day of teaching English classes and my hope is that more people come. Today is was a grand total of six but everyone seemed to have a good time so hopefully it will build a strong foundation. Oh and one other thing, I have always dreamed of sitting at those cool European cafes and drinking tea and tonight I had the chance. It was all I could have hoped for. At least until a man came over and started pissing in a corner near where our small group was sitting.

Ich muss schlafen (I think)

woe to the last minute master

So I am taking some classes by mail through a certain seminary so that I can finish a degree and then... I don't know, save the world. Anyways this class that I have taken by mail is extremely open-ended and basically consists of listening to tapes, reading books and writing papers. As a quick aside, who in the world still listens to tapes. I mean if you are paying out of the bootayh, that is spelled correctly, then is it too much to ask for something other then tapes? Come on people move into at least the 20th century.

The problem with this class, and it really is just a problem with me, is that it really doesn't have any deadlines. Just one really and that is the final deadline when everything is supposed to be turned in by. Therefore I find myself about to leave the country and start a busy summer and I am trying to get everything for this class done in about a week. That is not a good thing.

As I scrabble to finish I am the first to admit that this is my bad but I do have one bone to pick. Is it too much to ask a school for which you are paying to get an education to force some accountability on those who are taking their classes? I mean some kind of regular check-in where you have to talk to a professor or advisor would at least keep me honest. And as much as I wish I was driven purely by the deep desire to learn it is just not true. I am driven by the desire to learn and the knowledge that if I don't get something in on time I will get a worse grade.

Now I might not make Maslow and his stupid hierarchy proud but screw that. I need people getting on me. So now that I have blown a little steam and projected my internal frustration upon the 'system' I will go back to work till this is done. Sweet Germany come soon.

my eyes feel like burning

At one point in my life I thought I liked school. It certainly was not in the middle school years as it was very uncool to like school back then. And God knows I wanted to be cool pretty much more then anything in the whole world. I think I might have even sold one of my siblings to have reached that impossible peak of ultimate coolness. Sorry about that Susan.

And then there was high school. Not all that cool to like school then either but I was starting to get more comfortable with the heavy burden of being a nerd. At least then I could do well and find a crowd that was cool with it. Still I covered up the truth by playing cool sports like soccer and assumed that when the football players yelled, 'hey field fairies' they were talking to the truck guys who hung out around their Fords and Chevys after school.

Then came college and I was ready to jump in. I was going to wear it loud and proud and go for that 4.0. Unfortunately I quickly found out that nerd and really really smart are not the same thing. Freshman nerds take note. But I did okay and graduated without making a scene.

...And now here I stand. About 37 years into grad school and creeping ever so slowly towards a degree that will not help me get a bigger paycheck or aid me in playing in the next World Cup, an 8th grade dream that was stupidly supported by overly optimistic teacher. I now sit here taking a short break from writing yet another paper and wondering when I will ever be done. I still enjoy school, I think, but I am ready to take a class on cooking or Kung-Fu death holds. Just anything that does not mean I have to still live in finals world. Okay time to get back to writing...

who am i?

Some say, at least I would think so, that a person can be defined by their taste in music. If this is at all true, and it seems to be, then this past week makes me wonder who I am. I am going to several plays and concerts over the next couple of weeks to seek my identity and also because I like all of them...

First there is the, flirting with pop, experience when I head to Milwaukee to see Guster. I enjoy Guster. They are not my favorite but there is something cool about a drummer that plays with only his hands. That is the non-musician in me talking since whenever I tell my musical friends how cool I think this is they merely shake their heads and sigh. As if to say, 'Really Jon, anyone with arms could do that'.

Next comes Garbage here in Madison. Granted I won the tickets for this one but I still like Garbage and their angst riddled, chick empowered selves. So for one night I will don my leather pants and grunge t-shirt and rock out to a hometown favorite. (They may be that only because there are not all that many hometown bands that have made it big here.)

Then comes some jazz in Chicago or a performance of the Producers, of which is yet to be decided. Either way this time it will be pseudo-intellectual conversations over a micro-brew and preppy clothes. We will talk about how sophisticated we are and how the world just can't seem to get it right while we have had the luxury of coming to all the right conclusions about most things in the comfort of our living rooms. It is sure to be a good night.

Finally, at least I think so, it is off to the Green Day concert at the Alliant Energy Center. For this one I will have to dig deep and bring out the inner middle schooler. Okay this will actually take very little digging since I do this pretty much every week and I enjoy it. I look forward to the chance to combine sophomoric humor with political outrage when moshing with the 14 years around me. I think I have a chance to come out ahead for once with the whole moshing experience, especially if I get that spiked dog collar I have been eyeing up the last couple of weeks.

So there it is. I am not sure what this says about me. Maybe nothing. But I can't settle for that answer with a psychology degree. Now time to get online and buy some of those 50-cent tickets I have been wanting so bad.