It has been a challenging week. A few highlights.
Sunday: go to church with Japet, one of my Mexican friends who works on the base. Four hours of singing, dancing, preaching, more singing, shouting, and general enthusiasm. Intense.
Monday: Start our week of classes. Speaker is Randy Bixby, who runs a House of Prayer. For the uninitiated, a house of prayer is a place devoted to 24/7 prayer, worship, and fasting, accompanied by faith healing, prophecy, and an emphasis on the supernatural. It promises to be an interesting week. Class and meetings all day, culminating with an meeting on fundraising for India, and then rehearsal for worship the next day. Spend 40 minutes trying to get the keyboard to play, without success. I miss real pianos. I miss things that work.
Tuesday: Tired. Frustrated. Lonely. Calling home keeps things in perspective.
Wednesday: We experience what Randy Bixby calls “soaking worship”: people get up with guitars, play the same chord progression, and then loudly proclaim what they think God is telling them or what they want to tell God into a microphone that has been set up for that purpose. After about another half hour, I think that I might explode if I hear another “We just love you, Daddy God!” or C-G-D-e minor chord progression.
Thursday: Not an auspicious beginning. My roommate Iván set his alarm for 5:30 so he could get up and pray. He went back to sleep. I didn’t. For about 45 minutes, I felt like God was telling me to get up and pray. You’re nuts, I told him. I’m crabby enough without any additional sleep deprivation. Try me, he said. Fine, I said. You’ll be sorry. So I got up, and spent about 20 minutes telling God just how I felt about him and this whole venture. He didn’t say anything. That I could tell, anyway. I started to sing hymns. Twenty minutes later my soul felt restored. As I finished, I thought I felt God telling me to fast. You’re crazy, I told him; you may have gotten me this far, but a whole day without food? Not even you do that. Try me, he said. Okay, I said. But you’ll be sorry. Sure enough, he’s right again. The day winds up being the best I’ve had all week.
Friday: We wrap up our week of Randy Bixby discussing the kingdom of God. We wrap up a week in which we have gotten a crash-course on faith healing, prophecy, and other supernatural things that are supposed to accompany the coming kingdom of God. I’m not sure what to think. On the one hand, I have to believe that such things are possible, and I have heard enough testimonies that I have to believe that they still happen. Still, the only thing I can think of when trying to pray for a girl with a hurt back is the Far Side cartoon “Appliance Faith Healers.”
So, like I said, it’s been a challenging week. I believe that this is where I need to be now. There’s not really anywhere else I would rather be. I miss people in Salem, Dallas, Seattle. I miss them a lot. But I don’t have any desire to be there. And days like Thursday put things in relief: I can realize that God is near, that God is working, and that it’s exciting. I realize that here is where I want to be. I just find myself torn because I wish simultaneously that I had some time alone and someone to talk to. On one hand, our days are so full of meetings and activities that for an introvert like me, it gets very draining very quickly. And after four weeks, I feel that I’m running on empty. On the other hand, while there are many wonderful people here, there’s not really anyone that I could call a kindred spirit. Preferred group activities are card games, dance parties, and social drama. Unfortunately, none of these are my strong suits, and there is not any particular demand for deep melancholy philosophical discussions. I know: “If you want to have a friend, be a friend.” Still, I’m not even sure how to start. The closest I’ve come to being able to establish any sort of a basis for small talk is asking the foreign students how to say things in their native language. (“Gib Mir nur eine Umarmung” is “Give me a hug” in German, by the way.) As far as prayer requests: I guess I feel like this entire thing has been one long prayer request. I feel like my entire experience so far has been like putting new strings on a guitar. At first, it goes quickly and smoothly as the slack in the string is taken up. Then it starts to tighten. It gets to a point where it seems very tight indeed. Then, suddenly, it stretches, and tightens more easily again. This repeats several times: always getting closer to being in tune, but not in a smooth, linear, or easy process. And this week has felt like one of the “about to snap” times. I feel tired, discouraged, and lonely. I am deeply grateful to have you guys praying for me; it especially helps right now. Please pray that I can keep a good attitude, that I can maintain perspective, that I will be open to learning all that God has for me in this time, and most importantly that God will use me in the lives of others, whether fellow students, staff, or the people of Ensenada.