Surprised by what Penn Says

Last night at BSU we continued our study through the book of Philippians, spending our time in 1:12-18. Paul wrote a lot about his proclamation of the gospel in this short letter, and we discussed what his motivation for doing so was and whether or not it mattered how we went about sharing our faith. In the process, we watched the following video. It was surprising and challenging to me, and I wonder what kind of responses it might spark from the rest of you.

Picking Your Spots

As long as I've been involved at the BSU, we've always taken a mission trip over Spring Break. I'm a big fan of the concept, as it allows students to see sights, experience cultures and be involved in ministries that they might never have otherwise. As a student I went to Winnipeg Canada, Washington D.C. and the southern most tip of Texas. Those were all great experiences that broadened my view of what life is like in other places and how people are seeking to fulfill God's work there.

Once I was responsible for leading the ministry, a new question arose: How do you decide where to go? Planning a trip like that can be a very daunting task, and to this day it still challenges me. Certainly prayer must be the first priority, but at some point it's time to start knocking on doors and seeing which one opens up.

I've developed a short list of criteria that has been helpful in the past, and which was used again by the Lord this year. As I originally began to write this post, this particular section got really long. I'll condense it into a few short sentences with no explanation (hopefully it really doesn't need any): the location has to be a destination students would be interested in visiting and it has to be within reasonable driving distance (you can get there or back in a day).

This year we were planning on going to Chicago. My friend Paul had taken a group there last year and had a great experience with a local ministry there. In fact, they're going back this year as well. Excellent! Chicago fits both criteria, and the ministry itself sounded like something we'd love to join.

It's obvious in hindsight, but I certainly shouldn't have started promoting the destination to students before actually contacting the ministry. But it was October and the trip was over five months away! When I finally got around to calling them some time in November, it turned out the ministry was already completely booked and we wouldn't be able to serve there. So much for my planning ahead.

At that point my life was getting very busy, with Thanksgiving break approaching and then the end of the semester. I was finishing up a seminary class which required writing a research paper* and then was thinking about my upcoming trip to Turkey. In short, I forgot all about Spring Break.

*I'd rather be that guy on America's Funniest Home Videos who gets hair ripped from his body in some horrible hot wax experiment than write a research paper. I'd rather go on a marathon of country "music" concerts than write a research paper. On second thought, that might be going a bit too far...

After getting back to the States, I knew I would quickly have to come up with something different for our Spring Break trip. The very first day of class we had our weekly dollar dinner, and Amber and Jess were both talking about signing up to go to Chicago. Oops! I had to let them know Chicago wasn't happening, even though I didn't know where we would actually end up.

The next morning (Tuesday) I talked with Karin about where we might go. She said Jake had mentioned that it would be great to go back to Smyrna, TN. His freshman year was the last of three consecutive trips we took there. Community Servants is a great ministry and I'm a big fan of John and Bruce, the two guys who lead the ministry. Since we've been there before, all it would take is a phone call and we'd be in business! I talked to John and he was excited to have us come and help them again, unfortunately our week was the only week they were both going to be out of town - so it wasn't going to work out. Doh! Now what?

I emailed Kelly King who had previously offered her services in searching for possible locations. Within the hour I had a Word document with seven different possibilities. The next morning (now Wednesday) I began to go through the list and work through my previously mentioned criteria. Five locations were out of reach of my driving restriction, which left us with two options: Cedar Rapids, IA and Arlington, TX. Unfortunately for Cedar Rapids, it did not meet my "desired destination" requirement.*

* I feel a bit like Benedick here from Much Ado About Nothing. He said, "I may chance have some odd quirks and remnants of wit broken on me because I have railed so long against marriage. But doth not the appetite alter?" Indeed there was a time where I took every opportunity to poke fun at Iowa, but those days are long behind me. I am now a fan of the state and this is not intended to be taken as a shot in any way. Perhaps I should add a third spring break mission trip criteria that states a destination cannot be too close, either.

Now it's time to investigate the ministry a bit and see if it's somewhere we'd like to serve. I check out their website, missionarlington.com, and it sounds pretty good. I decide to email Bill Victor, who used to live in the DFW area, to see what he knows about it. Before giving them a call I really wanted to get a few outside opinions first.

While waiting to hear back from Bill, I hopped on Facebook as I frequently do. Given that I have 471 "friends" on Facebook, I really never know what's going to show up on the home page. On this particular occasion, one item was a note posted by my friend Scott Bryant. He'd written a few blog posts on vision and the most recent one had prompted someone to leave a comment. Their comment was about this great ministry that will leave you "BLOWN AWAY." I'm sure you can anticipate the ministry: Mission Arlington. Before the email from Kelly I'd never even heard of the place, and now I was reading a lavish recommendation for it.

So I just sat there smiling and shaking my head in amusement/surprise/satisfaction as God presented His answer. Of course I then got an email from Bill giving them two thumbs up. I had a great conversation with the volunteer coordinator and enjoyed telling him the story of how God directed us their way. Even though I had to ask if there was availability for us to serve there, I already knew the answer was yes.

So that's the story of how God has directed our plans for Spring Break this year. Obviously I'm excited to see what He has in store for us and I hope to pass that excitement on to as many students as possible!

Forever Amazed

I'm slowly getting back in to the swing of things after my trip out of the country, but it does seem like a fog that is very slow in lifting. The past few nights I've been asleep by 9:30 and yet as I type this I could lay down and take a two hour nap.

I've got a text file on my laptop of various thoughts from my trip that I intend to share in short doses. But before I start on that, I had a minor incident the day after I got home that has once again left me in awe.

Our dryer was making a horrific noise back in early December, something akin to the shrieks of Grendel in the "animated" Beowulf movie. I had really hoped to have it fixed before leaving for Turkey, but the part took forever to get here and finally arrived while I was gone.

It was a simple part, just a piece of felt with some plastic components that attached to the frame above the door via some heat resistant glue. Once it was applied, I wanted to spin the dryer drum and see if the noise had been exorcised. In the process, I managed to slice open two of the knuckles on my right hand as they rubbed across the back metal edge of the dryer.

The two flaps of skin were just hanging there, as I walked back upstairs in frustration to see the resident doctor. The bleeding wouldn't stop until I'd kept my hand above my head for a while, but eventually we slapped some triple antibiotic ointment in there and secured the wandering skin with bandaids and gauze.

Only later that night did I seriously consider getting stitches, but the ER told us that by then it was too late. Right now I'm done with gauze and am just using bandaids to help restrain movement so I don't rip the wound back open. I'm hoping to have complete use of my right hand in a few more days.

Anyway, I know I can make a short story long, but how it happened isn't really the point. What's so amazing to me is watching my fingers heal. A constant recurring theme in my life has been a never ending fascination with how incredible the human body is. What an incredible creation! Given some time and the right conditions, my hand will be fully functional soon. Nothing man has made or ever will (if I may be so bold) will begin to compare with you and me.

It's this awesome tent that I live in that leaves me unable to understand the person who claims we exist as a byproduct of random chance. Your every waking moment is wonder after wonder! How muscles respond instantly. How the eye, in all its complexity, takes in every detail. How the ears can receive sound and the brain can assign meaning to it all. How an apple can be converted into energy. It's nothing short of breath taking, if only we would stop and consider it.

One may disagree with the identity of the Creator, but to say there isn't one is simply beyond me. I don't have the kind of faith it takes to overcome the evidence that surrounds me every day.

A Really Good Day

Today was a pretty amazing day. If there hadn't been any rain involved, I would probably call it perfect. (As perfect as it could be at least... it could never really be perfect without my family being here with me.) The pic of Don Quixote is worth a thousand words, so I think I'll include several pictures in this blog post as well. They'll probably tell the story better than I can.

This morning began with a hot* shower before enjoying the massive breakfast spread that was included in our hotel stay. The usual cheeses and vegetables we were used to in Ankara were available, but there were also plenty of other pastries and concoctions. I had some nice croissants and fresh fruit. I still don't know what they're called, but they're like golf ball sized oranges.

* (It's my very first Pozterisk!) When I say hot, I mean it in the fullest sense. The shower here could get hot enough to burn your flesh, which is about what I have at home. I haven't had a truly hot shower in about a week and it was great. Nearly every time I take a hot shower at home I think about how blessed I am to be able to do that any time I want to.

After breakfast, I took a moment to snap a shot of the view from our hotel room:





We were leaving at 8:30am, and around 8:20 Jon decides to run out and get some quit shots and video footage at the beach. I figured I should tag along, and we were blessed to see this rainbow over the Aegean Sea:





From there we headed straight to the ancient city of Ephesus, which obviously has tons of Biblical significance. Our tour guide told us that the third greatest library of the ancient world was once in Ephesus. Here's a shot from a distance:





I got tons of video there, but my battery died before the end of the day. While we were in Ephesus, we read the story of the riot in Acts 19 while standing in the amphitheater. That was pretty cool. From there we made a quick stop by the Temple of Artemis (who is also mentioned in Acts 19), but there wasn't much to see. There's one standing column and a whole lot of ruins. Not so great anymore, eh Artie?

From there we went and visited St. John's church, which was very large. It's in ruins now, but there was still a large area to roam and explore. We found a really cool baptistry, but somehow I managed not to get a picture of it. I know I have video, maybe I can pull a still from there. After that we spent about an hour at the Ephesus museum, which had a lot of artifacts, including several from the ancient city we'd visited earlier. (I had no idea, but Ephesus is massive. We were told 250,000 people lived there at its height.) The original statue of Artemis was there, as well as a giant head and arm of the Emperor Domitian.

Somewhere in there we stopped for lunch at this tiny little Turkish cafe. I'm not sure you could find a more authentic place than that. Kelly got to sit down with the ladies and help make some food, which was sort of like a quesadilla. Dave insisted that we all have ayran (a drink that is half water, half yogurt, plus salt) ... and even though it wasn't the best thing I've ever had, it really wasn't as bad as I was expecting. I finished mine without any trouble.

Tomorrow we're driving back up to Izmir, which will include a visit to the ancient site of Smyrna.

Jenny requested a shout out to her favorite country, so as a bonus here is a picture I took from the castle in Ankara with my camera pointed directly south:

Don Quixote

It's late Saturday night, it feels much later than it actually is. I got to bed late last night and then spent 11 hours riding in a van from Ankara to Ephesus (although we did stop in there for lunch and to see some ruins at Sardis.) Tomorrow we're going to visit the ruins of Ephesus, as well as a museum that has all the artifacts that are left from the city. In the meantime, here's a shot of our new friend Don Quixote (although he didn't spell it that way). Notice the shield and spear!

Merhaba!

This is day three or four in Turkey, depending on how you count the night we lost flying over here. It's my third morning waking up in Turkey, so we can go with day three.

Last night was one of the funnest I've had in a long time. When you spend an evening with Bill and Jon, I suppose that's to be expected. But when you throw in a real life Don Quixote, now you've got something cooking. I don't think I can type enough to do the story justice, I'll just have to tell you all about it later.

I've heard there are at least 700 mosques here in Ankara, and yesterday we visited one that is one of the largest in all of Turkey. (I heard it was second largest in the country, then top five, so I don't know exactly. And right now I don't remember its name.) It was fascinating, to say the least. We're going back today during their noonish call to prayer, that will be interesting as well.

A few quick impressions about Ankara. There are people everywhere. All the time. Even late in the evening when it's ridiculously cold out, there are still mobs of people out walking around, heading somewhere, waiting for buses. And they don't seem to be too affected by the cold, which is interesting to me because they have a climate similar to what we have in Maryville - irritatingly cold in the winter, but also very hot in the summer. I know how I feel about the cold, but they seem to have accepted it and moved on. Good for them!

This is my first trip overseas, so I certainly don't have much of a point of reference, but I've been surprised at how much drinking goes on here. I don't mean that in the "drinking" sense, I mean literally. We're constantly having chai tea, even after you've already had tea with your meal, and if you finish it they'll bring you more. They don't recommend you drink the water, but bottled water is available at every street vendor so that's really not a problem.

There are people out begging, which I was expecting, but I didn't know it would be children. Some of them out in the cold sitting on the ground without shoes or socks on. Other kids are out trying to sell you kleenex or other small items, and can be rather pushy about it. I was mildly assaulted by a kid last night, but I only had enough change to pay the bus fare, so I couldn't buy anything from him. I don't think he believed me.

There's also a lot of bread consumed here, which is great. I love bread. The meals seem to be a lot of combinations of chicken or beef with bread, whether it's a loaf or a pita or more like a tortilla. Tomatoes, onions and olives are also common, as well as a few different kinds of cheeses... not like what we typically have at home, but still good stuff.

Another interesting thing I've noticed as that there are almost no overweight people here, at least not out in public. The only ones tend to be older folks. I was told that has to do with them walking a lot and also smoking a lot - which I have noticed as well. We have done plenty of walking, I've been enjoying that. Today we're walking up to a castle where you can see the entire city. That'll provide lots of good video/still footage! (And maybe I can get a shot to south for Jenny!)

I'm slowly picking up a few words in Turkish, although I feel like I'm way behind the rest of the group. I definitely want to practice some before I come back in May, at least now I'll have a better idea of what I need to know.

That's about the end of my random thoughts for this morning, now that I know I have wifi here at the hotel I may try and put a few pictures up this evening. If anyone is wondering, the local time here is eight hours ahead of CST. In the next week we'll also spend some time in Izmir (Biblical Smyrna), Ephesus and Istanbul.

I typed so long, now my chai is cold.