Oh no you di'nt!

So in Ethiopia I regularly bought two drinks- the Ethiopian Macchiato, and the Spres. (Both of which cost me like 25 cents each! I want to introduce you to the Spres. It is a "drink" that you eat with a spoon, full of different types of fruit ground up to a thick consistency, and layered by color. In Ethiopia they usually serve it with 5-6 types of fruit in a tall, beautiful glass. It's not mixed with ice, mind you, so usually it was room temperature.

I have literally been craving a spres since 2004. I finally attempted it on my own, but only with 3 (technically 4 I guess) fruits. The bottom is whipped sweetened avocado, then mango, avocado again, then peaches, then a few drops of blueberry. I just sat down and devoured this stuff. Oh, and don't let the avocado scare you. Usually it's used with salty food or guacamole, but if you get a perfectly ripe one, it has a natural sweetness to it, and when it's whipped with sugar and water, OH YUM...or is it "MNAM!"

Coffee Shops and Anger (@%*#$%)

What is it about coffee shops that provoke deep conversations with such intense spiritual turmoil? It's a dynamic that I have never seen in any other establishment and I'm pretty fascinated by it. I'm convinced that mixing a coffee shop environment in some kind of ministry effort CAN work, if done properly. I've also seen it attempted and utterly failed, hence the thousands of crappy Christian coffee shops around the country. Anyway, that's a different rant for a different day.

I'm doing a little better I guess. I'm just forcing myself to get over whatever's going on. I'm going to fulfill my responsibilities anyway, no matter how apathetic I am towards everything right now, because I don't really have any other options! Last week during a youth group meeting I attended, we talked about anger and what biblical anger is. The point of the discussion was to prove that it's okay if we're angry about something, but we shouldn't sin while doing it. This got me thinking "How do I sin when I'm angry?" It wasn't till just now as I write this that I realize how I sin when I'm angry. I've been dealing with some anger issues over the past few days and I am sinning in the midst of it because I'm a lazy sloth when I'm angry, I'm apathetic towards everything (inner thoughts, actions), and most of all, I'm not trusting God for whatever reason I'm angry for in the first place. I could keep talking but I don't want to open a flood gate. :)

Make you wanna' smack yo' mama...

I am officially now a fan of peanut butter cookies thanks to Petra...especially eating with a Dr. Pepper like I did on the way home. Wow. I think I never liked them before cause people never made them special, no texture or anything, too boring. We had one in Atlanta that was pretty good, but I decided to try to make some special ones when I got home to satisfy my craving. So these cookies have dark chocolate, white chocolate, peanut butter chips, crushed peanuts, and of course peanut butter. If you'd like the recipe, let me know! I kinda made some of it up...

Flippin' Heck

I'm in a real poo state of mind so I'm not going to write anything important today. I'll catch up some day soon but I feel like crap now.

Planes, Trains, and Automobiles...and Buses

Sorry, I have to complain. So I'm going down to Atlanta this week. About a month ago I had planned to get a ride with a friend cause her daughter lives really close to my friend. Long story short, that fell through because of a scheduling miscommunication between her and her family that was visiting that week. So at the "last minute" I searched for another type of ticket- be it plane, train, rental car or bus. I decided to be a cheap bum and get a bus ticket. What Greyhound DIDN'T tell me was that I would not only be on the bus for 14 hours (a usual 5 hour trip by car), but I would be in the skanky bus station from like 1 am till 5 am coming back.

Needless to say, I wasn't excited about this layover or the idea of carrying my computer and camera in a downtown bus station alone in the middle of the night. I did it anyway though cause it was semi-cheap. Long story short, I needed to cancel the bus ticket and get a rental car because the car we were supposed to use in Atlanta fell through.

Soooo I bought a rental car reservation yesterday and am trying to cancel my bus ticket now (I spent extra on getting a refundable ticket). Well, my point of this entry is to not ever depend on Greyhound Bus Lines to be customer service oriented. They suck. Check this out, I call customer service for a refund- a thick-accented Hispanic chic says, "Jew have to go een da boos termeenal for da reefoond." I wait two days till the terminal opens and I call them. A thick accented rude southern old black man rudely says, " I cain't do nuthin' about it and I ain't even gonna' try to make it work on dis' here computa' cause I'd get in trouble and you shouldn't even come down here to try".

Well, they don't do refunds online. So I find refund info online. It says to POSTAL mail a refund request! HA! So I start filling out a postal request which is ridiculous, but stop in the middle of it to call them to see if it's okay if they get my request AFTER the date my trip was set for.

The hispanic gentleman says I can just call this customer service number. So I hang up and call them, and guess what? An automated recording says I have to go in the terminal or send a postal request!!! AAAAHHHH! So now I'm really ticked off, and I call the customer service number again. She finally gives me a refund but says I have to wait 6-8 weeks for it.

Moral of this story? Make enough money in your job to just buy a rental car or plane ticket in the first place. :)

The Listening Christian / Good Sermons

I used to belong to this small group. It was technically the college group of one of my churches, but since there were hardly any college aged kids there, it was very small. It was the best small group I've ever belonged to and I remember it often in sadness that I don't have it anymore.

Something happened one night that I think about all the time. I think about it in frustration though, not of joy. One night we had a friend of one of the members come to join us. It was a male and most of us were females. He was very open in the fact that he did not believe in God and had many reasons not to. At one point the leader gave him the floor and allowed him to tell us what he was thinking about. He willingly accepted and for about 5 minutes or so he told us all the reasons why Jesus didn't exist and Christianity was a hoax.

We all sat there, diligently listening to him, not interrupting or being pushy. It started to get a bit awkward for a few people eventually because no one was saying anything - we were just thinking. As we were thinking and pondering on such strong words he uttered, the male leader spoke up and said quietly with a face of disgust, "You know guys, I'm honestly really disappointed in you all. You just sat there and let our guest call your faith, your reason for living a complete hoax. You didn't say anything back and you didn't argue with him. I'm just really disappointed in you." This meant a lot to us who belonged to the group because we really respected and loved our leader. (Hard to hear criticism from someone you respect, right?) He then changed the subject to our book study and left it like that. At the time, we all felt like fools and walked out the door that night with our heads held low. We felt embarrassed and defeated. The guest and the group leader felt like he won that battle.

Over the years as I pondered this situation, I grow more and more frustrated with how the leader handled that situation. What frustrated me was that we were shutting up and listening to our guest share his opinion. Though we didn't agree with it, we let him share. We also didn't jump down his back after his last word and tell him why he's going to hell and he's wrong while we shut our eyes and plug our ears saying, "LA LA LA can't hear you, you're wrong, LA LA LA". We didn't gang up on him and throw stones at him or verbal low-blows. We just shut up and listened. Perhaps this dude had never had a Christian, or a group of Christians for that matter, just listen to him.

Though I admit it would have been better if at least one of us had said something reassuring to him, or asked him questions or something, I believe we did the right thing at the time. I believe this because I think bringing people to Christ isn't about winning arguments. It's not about looking good, and making them feel like crap all the time. It's about shutting up, listening, loving and pointing them in the right direction. It's about taking time, sometimes even years to reach out to someone, not looking good in front of your youth group leader for a few minutes.

If I had to go through that situation again I probably would have only done one thing different- I would have not let that guy walk out that door without exchanging contact information and really making an effort to reach out to him...or at least put him in contact with a male friend.

I guess I'm saying this on here because since then, for like 4 years or so, I have frequently thought about that night and tried to figure out what I did wrong and how bad we all looked as Christians in front of that guy. But I've finally come to the conclusion that I'm not disappointed in my group and how that went down, but disappointed in how my leader expected us to jump down his throat like an overbearing Christian. That's not, my friends, what our faith is all about.

By the way, I don't know if I've ever suggested that someone listen to my home church's online sermons, so consider this a historical moment. Lately Gary Hendrix (the Mac Daddy pastor I've grown up listening to) has preached some excellent sermons. Here's the link, look for Gary's sermons, especially towards the bottom. http://www.grbc.net/sermons/ Enjoy!

I'm almost done with the introduction and I couldn't finish it before I commented on it! Even though I've only tasted a small bit of what this book is about, I've already learned a lot. It's surprisingly easier to understand than I thought- but I'm not naive, and I'm sure it's going to get hard.

One mistake I've already made is not taking notes as I read. This book is way old so I can't just highlight stuff like I usually do. The pages are long and dense, so even though I've only read like 15 pages, it's packed full of info. Throughout the book I'm basically going to be regurgitating ideas and even pulling quotes directly from the book that are important. I'll try to make my comments to the point for your sake :)

- Boettner starts off by saying that 20th century Americans in particular don't understand how significant our freedom of religion, speech, press and assembly is. We take our forefather's struggles during the time of Reformation for granted.

- RC's (Roman Catholics from now on...) represent Protestantism as something new that was created after the Reformation. On the contrary, Prot. came from the New Testament 1st century church.

- B/f the reformation, popes controlled Europe- they and the priests held the power, people's rights were taken away, marriage, courts, public affairs, etc. were all in their hands. State revenues paid priest salaries. Anyone who resisted risked losing their job, property or life.

- Important results of reformation- Bible was given to people in their own languages. Before this, it was taught that only the church speaking through the priest could interpret it correctly. Luther translated it into German first.

(By the way, this book was written in the 60's in America. There are a lot of comments regarding communism and how RC and Communism is a dangerous threat to America. I'm curious to know if these are paranoid biased statements or if they're legit. Nevertheless, I'm going to repeat what the author is saying and figure that out towards the end of the book.)

- Communism and RC= totalitarian systems that threaten freedoms. RC is more threatening than Com. b/c it has the cloak of religion over it.

- RC believes they're the only true church, its' right to suppress all other religions, superiority to government, control over marriage and education, and that tax money should support the church.

- Boettner notices that predominantly RC countries happen to have a very high illiteracy rate (30-70% usually).

- He says without the help of US aid and our political influence, many countries like Italy and France would have turned communist after WW2. Anyone know if this is biased or unbiased?

- Really interesting: End of WW1, the Czarist regime and the Ortho. Catholic church was overthrown. The dead, formalistic Russian church lost respect from the people and was identified equally with the govt. that was just overthrown. When people rose up in anger, they threw out the political govt. AND the church too- they then turned against religion alltogether and then to Atheism.

- RC church isn't what it used to be, but has been developing through the centuries. It has a chart, listing the different heresies and inventions and what year they were adopted. It starts in 300 with Prayers for the Dead, and goes all the way up to 1965, ending in Mary Proclaimed Mother of the Church by pope Paul VI...all changes that came to the church AFTER the death of Christ. Described as an anti-evangelical church formed out of centuries of error.

- The RC church claims Semper Idem, or "Always the same", meaning she never changes or teaches new doctrine. Uhhh duh, seriously?

- Protestantism accepts the basic principles of the bible- it is the essence of God stripped down from all the man-made inventions and heresies. It is the 1st century church of CHRISTIANS. The reformation, led by Luther, Calvin, and other men, was considered a (I love this!) "Back-to-the-Biblie" movement- a return to apostolic Christianity.

- Protestant applied to the reformers who protested against false doctrines and practices that were contrary to the bible. But it did not spawn from these men- it spawned from The Gospel! With Jesus Christ- nothing more, nothing less, he says. It wasn't based on the writings of mere men, but of the unchanging Book.

Roman Catholicism is something I need to know something about. Not just something, I want to know a lot about. So I'm publicly declaring that I want to finish this book I found. I'm saying it on here because this book is 460 pages of heavy, lofty writing...not something I would usually dive into, to be honest. So the only way I'm going to get through this is to be able to write about what I'm reading on this thing. I have to regurgitate it somewhere or I'll forget or won't care that much.

So you'll have to forgive my RC ramblings over the next X amount of months. This book seems really legit- it's written from a reformed perspective so it shouldn't be bogus. But if I write something that is just plain wrong, feel free to challenge me on it.

Here we go...

Yesterday I saw the long-awaited Chronicles of Narnia, Prince Caspian in the theatre. (Yeah, I know I'm way behind!). First of all my concentration throughout the entire movie was broken because of 3 little stinking pipsqueak kids behind me talking the ENTIRE movie, adding their own commentary like, "Look! There's the lion! That's a big lion. His paws are huge. Oh and look at that bird too!", etc.

As for the movie: I want to point on the negative aspects of the film that I didn't enjoy first. In general I thought the plot didn't flow, there were many cheesy parts that made me laugh out loud it was so bad, the fighting scenes were dorky, and to top it off the characters were a lot darker then the first one. By darker, I mean I wouldn't let my 5 year old watch the movie cause it would give them nightmares. I don't have a 5 year old, I'm just saying... :)

To me the plot was almost a bit complicated. I understood it all, but the imagery between Christ's kingdom and Narnia wasn't as easy to pick up. It reminded me too much of Lord of the Rings in this way. I was also disappointed that they added a love relationship between the oldest girl and Caspian. The reason I loved the first one so much was because they didn't add or delete too much- it was really close to the book (minus that gay Santa Clause scene!!). So I haven't read Caspian but I've heard that they added this love relationship and that saddens me. It really seemed like Hollywood took over the plot.

Okay, for the good stuff... To me, the redeeming quality of this film was the imagery of our Christian lives. My favorite relationship is between Lucy, the youngest girl, and Aslan the Lion. Through the movie, Lucy has this wonderfully childlike and loving relationship with Aslan, unlike any other character. She believes He's there, never loses faith, SEES him when no one sees him, even dreams about him and risks her life to find him. Then when she finally meets Aslan, the image of this enormous and strong being being so kind and loving to a child and even hugs the girl and laughs with her- that is just so powerful to me. I definitely cried.

Aslan had not made himself known to the 4 kids while they lived him London. They started to lose hope (except Lucy) and thought that Aslan would never come back, or that he had forgotten them. I think what touched me the most was when Lucy asked Aslan, (Don't quote me on this...), "Where have you been? Why didn't you make yourself known? Why didn't you show yourself so everyone would believe us?" and that reminded me so much of us Christians- maybe a question we will one day ask the Lord in Heaven- why didn't you show yourself so everyone would believe us? And in the movie when Aslan came back and ROARED a giant ROAR in front of everyone, the other doubting children and everyone else who had doubted him humbled themselves and fell to their knees in shame. This, my friends, reminds me so much of how I see the Lord returning. All those who doubted will be put to shame. I, of course, am crying throughout this whole scene. Gosh, I'm a big wuss! But it's such a good picture!

So if you have a chance to see it, I'd say go for it- but maybe see it at a cheap theater like me first. Did you see it? Have any thoughts?

25 and Bummed.

Well, I'm 25 now. Whooptydoo. Ya know, I always thought by the time I turned 25 I wouldn't be broke, single, living with my mom and stepdad, without a college degree, driving a nasty $500 car. Yeah, I know all of this is temporary and I'm here to raise funds to go back to Slovakia to serve...but honestly I'm not feeling all that proud of myself lately. Every year that goes by it feels like I lose more and more excuses to not be on my feet. So yeah, that's where I am today. Boo.

For all of you that wished me happy birthday yesterday, thank you. As pathetic as this sounds, it was the highlight of my day. I didn't do anything special except buy myself some presents. I got a tripod and battery for my camera, a Starbucks cup, I bought myself some shoes online and I might buy a shutter release for my camera in a few minutes. Cameras, coffee and shoes- 3 of my loves.

Black Gospel Music, holla holla holla

Most of you probably know I was in a black Gospel choir for a while when I was away at college. Since then, I've become a huge fan of black Gospel music. Not all of it, mind you. Here are some examples of my favorite BG songs.

Favorite BG song...


We actually sang this one in my choir.


Sorry but I love the Sister Act movies! I like this scene especially.


Please excuse the bad dancers, cheesy light show, and terrible silver shirts... good song though!!! We did this one in my choir, oh my gracious it was crazy!


These songs seem to be much more enjoyable without watching them dance :)

I hate to be a downer on all this patriotism- I know how some Americans get carried away with it especially. But I just wanted to say something to those people who are ultra patriotic, and I'll try to make this brief (Hah!).

Two things. You Christians out there, no matter where you're from or how patriotic you think you are: your identity is in Christ alone. Your identity is not in your country, your race, your color, or anything else. Your identity lies in the One that created you, redeemed you and loves you. Satan has a field day with patriotism because it promotes disunity, in my humble opinion.

Secondly, though we are given freedoms by our government to do almost anything we want, let us not forget that Christ is the only One that can really set us free. Politicians can change their mind and renig on laws, they can take our freedom if they want to. But God will never take our freedom from sin away from us!

With that said, I don't think it's sinful to be "proud of your country" per se. I personally am thankful for living in a country where I am free to publicly worship and all the other things we're able to do without persecution, unlike China for example. And heck, I'm "American as apple pie", I like traditional American stuff, sure, why not.

But our home is not here. We are foreigners here in a foreign land, so stop getting attached to your temporary homes and focus on your eternal home!

And by the way, as I am sitting here in my house, I hear both the sound of thunder and rain along with the fireworks across town. (Which I missed because I thought it was canceled cause of the storm! Grrr!) I can't help but snicker at the symbolism that maybe is only relevant to me tonight because of what I'm writing about. While we are here celebrating our country with a man-made light show, God is revealing His awesome power through this own light show of lightning. I think I'd have to say that God won that battle on who's more impressive. :)

So much for brief..

There's been something on my mind for quite some time, really since I've moved back home. I've been processing it for this long though. There's a lot I can't say publicly so I have to filter a lot here. I've grown up in a reformed Baptist church. Over the years I had acquired some 'beef' with it. I won't get into detail but we all feel like after my dad passed away, the church seemed to quickly withdraw itself from our lives...kind of leaving us oblivious kids and a grieving mother hanging.

Anyway, since I was about 17 or so I had been dealing with this and other issues about my church, including the environment of the place. It had become a place I was afraid of, in a way, and a place I wanted to be disconnected from for many reasons. Though I believe I was brought up in a solid theology, my spiritual growth was so incredibly stunted as well, leaving me in a spiritually immature and vulnerable state.

So with all that said... I'm in a place in life where I need to deal with these issues, face them, and get over it. When people ask me about my church here, they usually ask me about our worship service and when I tell them what we do, they usually are very shocked at the fact that we only use classical instruments and no drum sets or electric guitars.

My German friend still clearly remembers the time he came to visit and heard the "hellfire and brimstone" sermon that day. He remembers it to be a place of intense guilt, etc.

But for me, I feel like my attitude is starting to change about it. When people give me these reactions now, my only thought is: Yes, but they're preaching the truth! I have an incredible amount of respect for our pastor, Gary. Since I was a kid he has preached the truth, and has not faltered. He is strict in his teaching, yes, but it is the truth and he's not afraid to speak bluntly to his flock. Now, he's not God and I don't agree with every single word he's ever said--but that's what makes the preacher-to-flock relationship healthy.

When I am under his preaching, I don't feel warm fuzzies inside and feel spectacular about myself. Church shouldn't be about that. It should be about making you a better Christian, and it should mature you in your spirituality. The sermons are on an intellectual level of maybe a graduate college classroom, which for me when I was young was a hindrance of my growth I believe. But now that I am old enough to really understand and follow him, I am finding how good this really is. I find myself maturing in my faith, or at least leaving church feeling very challenged in my testimony.

So do I agree with every single thing being taught? No. Do I love the worship? Definitely not. Do I have issues with some of the members of the church? Absolutely. But are they teaching the raw un-sugarcoated truth? Yes. And that, to me, is more important than styles of worship, past 'beef', and personality conflicts. Maybe this is a lesson I'm supposed to be learning while I'm home.

Can anyone relate to, or disagree with this?