Peter in the Garden by Melinda Selmys

"Christ’s action in the Garden is radical. When Christ reaches out and heals the High Priest’s servant, He does not see Himself as healing the enemy. That’s our category, our perspective. He saw Himself as healing the ear of the beloved: He had come to give His life for this man, just as much as He had come to give it for Peter. This is where we find the scandal of the Cross in Gethsemane. I suspect it’s also part of the reason why Peter got into such a funk in the courtyard outside of the High Priest’s house. Peter was ready to die for Christ, and to die with Christ: he had declared this publicly, and he proved it when he stood to fight at Christ’s side. To conceive of Peter’s denial in the courtyard as an act of cowardice is to miss the psychological unity of the narrative: Peter denies Christ here because something happened to his courage between the moment when he drew his sword and the moment that he said “I do not know him.” These words have a particular poignancy if we consider that, in a sense, Peter may really have meant them. Not “I don’t know the man” in the sense of “I don’t know who he is,” but “I don’t know the man” in the sense that He is not who Peter thought. In Gethsemane Christ confronts his most ardent defender with a mystery that Peter cannot understand, and that he is not yet ready to accept. The mystery of a lover who is willing to lay down His life for the sake of those who persecute Him.

… 

So what does the story of Peter in Gethsemane teach us? First, that our way is not Christ’s way. We are to sheathe our swords. Specifically, we are to sheathe them in order to provide an opportunity for Christ to do His healing work. So long as we are fighting against the LGBTQ community, or for that matter any opposing group within the culture war, we are wounding their ears: we are preventing them from being able to hear the message of Christ’s love. Not that Christ’s love for the servant of the High Priest comes in the form of a word. Christ says nothing to this man. He heals him. It brings to mind a saying of Francis of Assissi “Preach the gospel everywhere, and if necessary use words.”


Second, that if we sheathe our swords there will be a terrible darkness. Why do we take up the sword, why fight the Culture Wars in the first place? For obvious reasons. We want to defend America. We want to defend Christianity. We want to defend our children. We want to defend our way of life. These are all things that we love, and we do not want to watch any of them get nailed to the Cross. We feel about the death of any of these things much as Peter felt when he took Jesus aside and rebuked him saying, “God forbid it, Lord! This shall never happen to You.” To which Christ replies “Get behind Me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to Me; for you are not setting your mind on God’s interests, but man’s.”


When Peter sheaths his sword, and Christ tells him “Do you think I cannot call on my Father, and He will at once put at my disposal more than twelve legions of angels? But how then would the Scriptures be fulfilled that say it must happen in this way?” Peter is plunged into a state of spiritual darkness and confusion. Up until this point he had a solid identity: he was a follower of Christ. He thought he understood what that meant, and what it demanded of him. Now he doesn’t know what to do. His courage has come to nothing, his saviour has been taken away from him, his desire for martyrdom has been denied. He is asked about his Christian identity, and he is in no condition to give an answer for the faith that is in him. Instead, he says that he doesn’t know what the people in the courtyard are talking about, the cock crows, he realizes his denial, and he weeps.


This is a very accurate psychological portrait of what it looks like to stop fighting the Culture Wars. It’s hard. So long as you have that sword in your hand, you know who you are. You have an identity in Christ: an identity forged and tempered in violence. It doesn’t matter that the violence is the violence of a com-box war, or a letter writing campaign, or a series of articles. The pen, after all, is mightier than the sword. We can imagine Christ in the Culture Wars crying “Peter, sheathe your pen.” He who lives by the pen, shall die by the pen? If we look at the state of the Mass Media traditional Christianity certainly seems to be dying by the pen.

Third, Peter’s story teaches us that there will be faith beyond this darkness. It provides us with a way forward, a way to be Christian beyond the Culture Wars. “Feed my lambs. Take care of my sheep. Feed my sheep.” There’s an interesting detail here that you can miss in translation, which is that the first two times that Christ asks whether Peter loves him, he asks about agape, a form of love that is simultaneously more unconditional, but also less personal than philia. When Peter responds, he speaks of philia all three times. The third time that Christ asks, He rephrases the question in Peter’s terms and asks about philia, about the kind of love that we think of when we speak of intimate, personal friendship. It’s also interesting that Peter is hurt only this third time, when Christ throws his friendship, his affection into question.

So how do we feed Christ’s lambs, how do we tend His sheep? We start by listening. What are people in the LGBTQ community hungry for? What wounds do they need healed? What obstacles stand between them and the sheepfold? And then we remove those obstacles, and we heal those wounds, and we provide for those hungers.

This can be addressed to some degree in the abstract. We can talk about general patterns in terms of what LGBTQ Christians need from their parishes and from their faith communities. But the main thing that they need is love. Not just agape, but philia. Not just concern for their good, but comraderie, affection, friendship."

Read the rest here:  http://spiritualfriendship.org/2014/10/18/peter-in-the-garden-of-gethsemane/

Her testimony is CRAY CRAY.  seriously.

so a passing SIL person (the academic side of Wycliffe), who was living at the dorm that I live at and who is not related with the school, apparently saw me and the other gay student here hugging in the dorm kitchen and thought it was "too sexual/more-than-friends" or something and complained to the overall Center (which my school rents space from) and the Academic Dean told us this today and he said that it's apparently still working up the chain of command in the Center and who knows what their procedures are with this and whether they will just tell that person to calm down or if my friend and I will be kicked out of the dorm or if we'll be banned from being on campus (although my school would fight hard for us to be able to stay) and it's like... seriously?  They could do that from extrapolating from a hug?  The Dean doesn't even know the person's name or how long ago this happened.  Apparently the person didn't even know we were gay at the time, but it was just too much affection for two guys to share??

Like, person, you do NOT know our life situations or our sex lives or what's going on or anything about me apparently.

Just try and tell me that homophobia doesn't exist anymore or that it isn't unwarranted.  Part of me feels like it'll probably amount to nothing, but it is somewhat unnerving that something bad could happen.

And the psychological and spiritual manipulation is still continuing with the whole t-shirt fiasco.

i need to get out of here.

T-shirt Update

Thank you all so much for your support!  It really means a lot to me.  I'm still thinking of good things to say to some of you, but I will get there soon. I had a good conversation with the Dean, and it turned out to not be as serious as I thought.  But then, when I left, I realized that a number of things she said didn't quite make sense, so I sent her a follow-up email.  After about three weeks, she sent me a response (today).

Why Being Gay Is Not The Most Pleasant Experience

I haven't blogged in far too long.  As I told a couple of people who asked about it, I guess I reached a critical point where so much has happened that every time I started a post, I'd get overwhelmed by how much I needed to say that I just stopped midway through the post.

But I still do remember Ann telling me that I needed to blog more when I was at her wedding (back in September!  Wow, that was almost a year ago), and Karen has told me to just write short blog posts, so perhaps I'll try and do that more frequently.

I don't think I've mentioned on here yet that my grad school campus is by far, the most homophobic place I've ever encountered.  You would think that the spoken word poem that I shared at the school's talent show would be helpful for people to gain empathy and compassion for gay people, but instead, the school administration just told me that I crossed a line, and many of the older people were upset.  The admin wasn't gonna take any serious action, though, since there weren't guidelines in place for what should and should not be shared at the talent show, and I did do a legitimate art form.  No compliments for the effort and thought I put into my poem though.  =\

(I'm gonna paraphrase a little from what I wrote to someone in January, cause I'm lazy, and want to get to the meat of the turmoil I'm currently in)

"In my time here, I've had people be really scandalized when I wear Rice's gay-straight alliance shirts, question me about calling myself gay,  think I have a "spirit of homosexuality" in me that I need to get delivered from, and show me video after video of ex-gay people who claim that they are no longer gay (and when they say they're no longer "gay," I'm guessing they're just defining "gay" as being in a same-sex relationship, not defining it as having same-sex attractions). 

Not to say that I don't like my new grad school--I do. And I can tell that it's where God wants me to be, not just for the chance to learn more about linguistics and Bible translation, but also for the chance to be able to speak into people's lives about what being gay means, and to encourage Christians to be more open and vulnerable about what they're going through. Thankfully, God has provided me with another gay person on campus, and he has been a tremendous blessing to me." (which has become a hot mess in of itself, but I think is more resolved now, hopefully)

Recently, though I've just been praying that God would give me the strength to follow through with the vocation he's given me.

-------

In late March, I sent an email to Wycliffe (the major Bible translation organization on campus, although there is a smaller, newer one that grew out of Wycliffe called Pioneer Bible Translators), in regards to their Code of Conduct page, where they state that "Unacceptable behaviors include, but are not limited to, the following: . . . Inappropriate sexual identification and activity including, but not limited to: . . . Homosexual and/or cross-gender orientation."  Other gay person on campus decided to alert me to this because heck, I want to know sooner rather than later whether I can even join their organization if that's the case.

Here's part of the response:

 David, I appreciate your honesty. And I am happy to see that you are trying to be celibate from same-sex relationships and sex. But any homosexual activities or behaviors are violations of Wycliffe’s Ethics & Conduct Policy and prohibit you from applying. I do pray that God will give you great strength as you pursue holiness and endeavor to please Him in everything. I do not struggle with what you are dealing with, but am tempted in other ways. I am so glad that His Spirit lives in us and helps us in our weaknesses.

I would encourage you David to seek professional help, and set up sound, biblical accountability structures as you deal with these behaviors. May God's presence continue to lead you in discerning His purposes and plans for your life.

That's... great.  I mean, what does "professional help" even mean?  Do they realize that that the American Psychological Association discourages against reparative therapy, and even the American Association of Christian Counselors has taken out their mentions and encouragement of reparative therapy in their code of conduct this year?

To be fair, I could probably get a couple of different responses depending on who I talk to, and a couple of my professors who are with Wycliffe were really surprised that just having a "homosexual orientation" was prohibited.

I really should dialogue more with this guy, because I feel like he might be confused about something.  But I just haven't quite gathered the energy to do so.  Especially now, as I'm involved in yet another fiasco.

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Remember when I said that some people above have been really scandalized by my Rice Queers & Allies T-shirts?  I've attached a photo of both of them below:

The black one has gotten the most attention, and I guess it's what's gotten me in trouble this time.  

Today, the professor that I've mainly been in contact with about all these things (the cultural anthropology teacher who let me have a day in class to show a powerpoint that I compiled about sexuality during our couple of days about Gender & Sexuality!  That was a good day at least.) has told me that the administration doesn't want me to wear those shirts anymore. Their complete words that he gave me about it were: 

“ . . . we will be adding an administrative . . . policy statement to the effect of ‘Clothing must be free of pictures or slogans with sexual references, drug references, or anything else the administration deems inappropriate’ (although it may not end up exactly that wording). 

We also believe that the student’s wearing of the shirt in question was also in violation of the Student Handbook (1) Expected Standards of Conduct: ‘…conduct should honor Christ in all activities on and off the campus’ and (2) Modesty Standards: ‘… students are expected to dress in a manner that will reflect Biblical standards for modesty and purity. All students are expected to encourage each other in accord with 1 Corinthians 8:9 (“But take care that this liberty of yours does not somehow become a stumbling block to the weak.”)’

This paragraph on Modesty Standards also contains the clause that ‘faculty and staff are… encouraged to approach any student dressed inappropriately and request a change in attire or behavior.’”

This is frustrating and upsetting in so many ways. And painfully ironic, when you consider the fact that I go to a linguistics school, and they don’t like the way I use language to describe my experience.  Maybe they're worried about conservative donors pulling their funding (a reason they gave me after I shared my poem about why they were upset) or something.  I guess I'll probs talk to the Dean of Students about it tomorrow in the first step of the appeal process.

I can't really think of a totally rational response without tearing up or just getting emotionally distraught, so we'll see how the talk goes. I started writing a response so I'd have something to say, but all I have is below:

"As upset as this whole situation makes me, I am not some angry, radical queer guy who’s trying to offend everyone. I am your gay brother in Christ. I am just trying to let others know that people like me exist. The primary message of my t-shirt is that gay, bisexual, and trans people are human too, which I am pretty sad to see that the administration deems that message as inappropriate. My t-shirts don’t identify myself for me; I've seen straight people wear those t-shirts, and it has no bearing on their sexuality.

I have lived years of my life believing that no one else struggled with this and that I was alone in all of this. While I had come out in college, I still never had anyone I could share life with about this struggle. I spent the last semester of college wishing I was dead almost every day, imagining myself drinking bleach and dying in my dorm room bed. I would prep my teaching for Sunday School with my friend, and then just sit in the room in the dark by myself for an hour after he left. I felt hopeless. Life isn't sustainable when your only role models and companions are internet blogs. I came here, expecting that God was bringing me to an environment where I could be open about my struggles and to talk with other Christians and receive their helpful feedback in how to cultivate a life of celibacy and being gay.

The only feedback I get from this situation, and the administration’s response to my spoken word poem, however, is that I am unwanted. Being gay is too messy, it’s too much, it’s crossing lines and it’s upsetting people and it’s too much of a liability. At all the conservative churches and Christians I've been around, I've never felt as marginalized as I do here. I understand so much better now why there have been so many gay teen suicides. They feel unheard and unwanted because they are. So how many more queer people have to die before more Christians listen and reach out to them?"

Like I said before, this response doesn't actually address the issues very well, but I still don't really know what their problem with it is.  I guess I'll find out tomorrow.  I've compiled a looong list of excerpts of gay chaste bloggers for reasons why I identify as gay as opposed to "having same-sex attractions," thanks to all the people who've asked me that question here, and I expect I'll probably have to pull that out tomorrow.  

In the end, it might just come down to the fact that they want to preserve some conservative image of their school that supporting queer people (regardless of sexual activity) is not a part of.  If it comes down to that, I don't know whether to be a good advocate for queer people by trying to stand my ground, or just giving up and letting them have their way.  Either way, it's hard to envision myself walking out of this mentally, spiritually, and emotionally unscathed.

Please pray for me.

"Westboro Was Right" -- My First Spoken Word Poem!

I severely need to write and document what's been happening in the last few months.

But just so you kinda know what I'm up to, I performed the first spoken word poem I've ever written on Saturday at the talent show at my school, and I just uploaded it to youtube (my first ever [and potentially only ever] video on youtube!).  Results were really positive for the most part, and I got second place out of 16 acts! (although I did also perform Neil Hilborn's "OCD" which I actually memorized, and which is really good and you should definitely watch that one too.  The first place winner was expected... one of my friends made a skit that took scenes/lines from Princess Bride and made it all about phonology.  Too many people here who love phonology/linguistics and Princess Bride that I just couldn't compete!  If I hadn't voted for them and had voted for myself, the votes would have been 12 - 14.  Glad that people liked it!)

Here's the transcript:

In 1991,

I was born in Laramie, Wyoming.

Population: 27,000.

In 1998, a year after I left,

Matthew Shepard was studying in Laramie at the University of Wyoming.

That was the year Matthew was robbed, beaten, tortured, wrapped around a fence post and left to die because he was gay.

That was the year Westboro Baptist Church picketed his funeral with signs that said

"No Tears for Queers" and "God Hates Fags."

That was the year I turned seven.

That was the year he would have turned twenty-two.

Fifteen years later, it's 2013.

This is the year I turn twenty-two.

This is the year I graduate from college.

This is the year my life begins and I wonder what it would be like if this is the year my life ends.

But I don't have anyone to assault me as I beg for my life.  

My skull isn't fractured from the end of a gun smashing into my head.  

My face isn't completely covered in blood except for where I've washed the blood away with my tears.

But I am gay, like Matthew was.

And I can't help but wonder:  if there's no one to take my life,

then will I end up taking it myself like countless gay people before me?

Because Westboro was right:  there are no tears for queers.  

There are only tears from queers.

And there are tears for the nation when gay people no longer lose their jobs for what they find beautiful. There are tears for our media when queer people are represented on TV.  There are tears for ex-gay organization Exodus closing down, but there are no tears for people Exodus has hurt.  There are no tears for queers.

There is only the word no.  

There is only the vocation of no.  

The vocation of no-gay-marrying and no-gay-sex.

Queer means a calling to no family and no friends because everybody is too busy in their own straight relationships and families that there is no one left for queers but themselves.

Three years ago, I came out to my Christian fellowship, and for months there was only no.

No talk about homosexuality.  No asking about how I was doing with it.

Only silence.

Nothing.

When I remarked that in my church of over 900,

just statistically-speaking,

there had to be other gay people, there had to be someone like me, someone I could relate to,

I was silenced by others saying, "No, we are not a representative sample."

Last year, someone in my fellowship told me, "We would probably never talk about homosexuality if you weren't here."

Because there are no tears for queers.  

There are no tears for queers because there are no queers.  

Queer has no place, it's not real, it doesn't exist in the Church--we never talk about the queers except for when they are ruining our world.  

The Christians and the queers never mix except for when someone like me comes along and messes up everything. And if a gay person does somehow come into the Church,

and they aren't celibate,

then they might as well be dead--no, they better be dead.

They better be dead.

It is no longer 1998.

It's 2013.  I have turned twenty-two, and I am still alive.

But I find myself robbed, beaten by loneliness, tortured by the Church's disregard for people like me and wrapped so painfully around the posts whose only words for queers are how disgusting and disappointing we are.

And I am left to die because I am gay.

But this isn't just about me and what I feel.

I have always been the celibate gay Christian, the flavor of queer most accepted by the Church.  So I don't want you to tell just me that I belong in the church.

I want you to tell that gay guy down the street with the STD and stranger in his bed that he belongs.

Tell the girl with the wife and baby on the way that they belong.

Tell that genderqueer person, this lesbian trans woman, that pansexual man.

Tell them you want them with you, that you want them beside you to worship our Creator together.

Tell them Jesus doesn't say, "Get away from my church until you're no longer in sin, you fag." He receives them as they are.

Tell them Jesus forgives, and then says "Go and sin no more."

Never the other way around.

Tell them they're needed.

Tell them the Church isn't as strong without them.  The Body isn't complete without them.  We're not at our best without them.

Tell them God loves them simply because they are His.  They belong with Him.

We are all His.  We all belong with Him--even the gay people.

So thump your Bibles over that, shout that from the pulpit, scream that from the choir, have your words and actions rob us queers so fiercely of our doubt that we can't help but hope again.

Because if the Church isn't here... if you're not here, to show God's love to us... who will be?

I know Westboro was right about No Tears for Queers, but show us that they're wrong about God Hates Fags.

FYI

What is the percentage of people who identify as LGBT in the United States?

Think of a percentage before you move on--and write it in the comments too or let me know somehow what you thought!  I'm curious.


One person I talked to today--they did admit that they were ignorant about these sorts of things and knew they would be wrong--thought it was 30%.


Which would actually be crazy.  like nearly 1 in 3 people are gay?  But they weren't that far off from what most of America thinks.

Just for the sake of other gay people, for the consideration how same-sex marriage will impact straight couples, and for general knowledge, the actual percentage is more like 4%.  FOUR percent.  11% of people may experience some same-sex attraction, but the actual percentage of people who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender is more like 4%.

I just consider it absolutely hilarious that a lot of people (like 35% of America) think that at least 1 in 4 people are gay (52% of America thinks it's at least 1 in 5... and I'm saying it's hilarious not in a derogatory way... just a... my goodness, I would NOT be so alone if that were truly the case), and yet they act like there are no gay people in the Church?  how does that even.

That would basically mean that we are so incredibly bad at ministering to a QUARTER of the population that none of them exist in the Church.  That would be so ridiculous.

The sad thing is that some people believe that there are that many gay people, and they apparently don't care that none of them are in the Church.

So I guess in some ways, it's good that the number is much smaller.  Good job media representation of gay people (actually queer representation in the media is pretty sucky, buuut, something must have gone right for people to think that over 25% of people are LGBT)!  But still, the number of gay people that people think exist in America is rather important for how people deal with LGBT issues and how much they think these issues will affect them and the U.S.

Just something to keep in mind and maybe try asking people what they think the percentage of people who identify as LGBT in America is.

My First Week in Dallas! (non-GIAL)

Kinda jumbly at parts because I just wanted to write things down since I have basically not written anything about my life in a public space for months.  oops.  Anyway...

A not-so-good introduction to Dallas, as it took a while for my luggage to come, and I was worried I wouldn't make the 2 hours of public transportation in time to arrive by 5 p.m. and talk with the office people about whether they had received my check payment and if they had any other info for me. So I took the Super Shuttle, which initially they estimated was gonna cost ~$30 which I thought wasn't terrible.  Then I found out that since we were going to a residential area, that was gonna cost ~$50 but i nope'd the heck out of there when we got to Downtown and spent just $20.  Then I took a 2-hour pass for $2.50 to get to GIAL.  It was still another mile away from the bus stop, and as I reached the last .6 miles or so, the road that led to GIAL did not have any sidewalks.  I started laughing at the utter patheticness of my situation as I was in around 95 or 100 degree heat, mild humidity (less humid than Houston for sure) but with the sun beating down on me as I dragged 40 and 60 lb luggage with a 15 lb backpack on the dirt and grass on the side of the road and the only sleep I had gotten last night was the few hours I was on the plane, and the only food I had eaten was at 6 a.m. CT and this McDouble sandwich at 3 p.m. CT that I had gotten after I missed the first train because both the electronic booths passing out tickets on my side of the tracks were broken.   And I was not going to make it by 5 p.m. because I had like 12 minutes to go and once I was at GIAL, I still needed to figure out where the Guest House is.  Fortunately, a guy pulled over and asked if I needed a ride, and I was like, YES PLEASE.  I made it on time, fortunately, so all was good.  I could see God looking out for me there!  phew.

I also tried to get groceries... too bad the nearest grocery store was 2.5 miles away.  But I lugged all that stuff back with my superglued Bolivian "Puma" backpack and got my workout for the week.  haha.

That was Wednesday, and on Friday, after extensive research, I spent 4 hours on public transportation and 5 miles walking to buy a car. (2 hours of transportation and 2 miles of walking were kinda unnecessary though, as I went to the auto place that had the cars I wanted, only to find out that the address they listed online was a different one.  The actual one was on the other side of town and another 2 hours of transportation/walking.  =\ ) When I got to the place, I tried out two '97 Honda Accords which were $1,600 and $1,800 each and probably sketchiest cars I will ever drive, and probably sketchier than any car you will ever drive.  The $1600 had a broken windshield wiper, the cruise control was broken, it made strange sounds while I was driving it, and even the little button on the gear changer (generally that silver-colored button that you press to change gears from P) was missing, so I dug my thumb in there to find how to change it.  And from the NMVTIDS report (2 dolla here!  but it gives way less info than Carfax/Autocheck... i just didn't want to pay that much for those vehicle reports.  And read this article if you don't know what those are.), which I later confirmed with the auto sale owner, there had been at least a 40,000 mile odometer roll back.
That all I could maybe deal with (bargaining points to drive the price down), even if I felt pretty unsafe already just from test-driving it... but as I was taking it into a shop for a pre-purchase inspection, I happened to notice that there were no keys in the ignition.  I was like.  wut.  I told the person I was taking it for an inspection, how could they forget to give me the keys??? How could I even drive this car back/have an inspection on this car?  Furthermore, how was I even driving this car right now??  Sketch.

So I drove it back and got the white Accord, which likely didn't have an odometer rollback and had good mileage.  It felt safer, but the brake still felt a bit heavy, and when the owner first started up the car, it made horrible screeching noises because the fan belt for the A/C was about gone.  I drove the car into the auto place I was gonna have it checked at (i just looked for the closest one that would give me a reasonable rate/time... $90 and a hour.  there was one place that apparently did a really through job they said, but they charged $250 and spent half-a-day!  I didn't need that kind of quality for my car...) and waited.

They came back to tell me that it was in really bad shape.  Like really bad.  Like so bad that even though there was a state inspection sticker on it, it wouldn't pass state inspection.  So bad that one guy said he was surprised I made it here in that.  The guy who had been handling my transaction began listing off all the problems, and there were so many that I began to zone out (not to mention I didn't understand like most of it).  He later gave me a photocopy of the inspection, and here're the ones I can read, which are half of the problems:  parking lights are out, battery hold down, belt oil soaked and slinging oil, valve over leak, transmission fluid overfilled, check engine light on, possible timing belt problem, cruise control broken, left tire cracked, radiator fan not working, transmission has multiple leaks.
It would probably cost as much to repair the car as it would to buy it.

Great.  That was really my last option, especially as we were nearing the closing times of both auto places, and this would mean that I would have to pay another $90 for another inspection on some other day and that car might not even work out, and UGH.  Maybe I can't get a decent car for such a low price?

Fortunately, after asking for my budget, if I just wanted a cheap car that ran well, he mentioned that they had a car that had none of those problems, and even better mileage than this car.  He showed it to me and it was a 1995 Acura Integra that had about 100,330 miles that they fixed up and were selling for $2500.

So after driving the Accord back, I walked the mile over, test-drove it, looked over the paperwork and bought another 2 dolla report for it, and bought it (my haggling failed, as it was hard to point out anything bad besides the slight dent that the guy had already pointed out to me, and since he had a list of all the repairs they had done on it [new 4 tires, new timing belt, so many new things done just a couple weeks ago], and apparently it wasn't listed yet and he was gonna sell it for $2700 [or so he says...], and that people would snatch that up immediately).
Unfortunately, apparently you need liability insurance already to drive a car, and I didn't have that.  So I couldn't drive it back, but I was at least able to make the last bus back to GIAL, so it was only 2 additional hours of public transportation and 1 additional mile instead of 1 hour of transportation and like 4 hours of walking.  Still, I had been sweaty to that nasty point when your sweat has like dried on your clothes and you have white lines on your shirt from the salt in your sweat--you know what I'm talking about?  Yeah, not pretty.  I had tried to clean myself up when I was at the auto shop waiting for the pre-purchase inspection.  There's my workout for the month, I guess, haha.  
Anyway, I got car insurance and will hopefully be picking up my Acura on Tuesday, today!  (just picked up my car--radio needs a code, but it seems alright... although I just checked kbb.com and it seems to be not a good price for what I paid for.  =\  I could've sworn when I was about to buy it and I was checking kbb.com, that it was actually around the right price.  Ah well.  Fortunately, a new friend and classmate offered to drive me over there, so I saved me a bunch of time.)


Went to a great church on Sunday--Mountain Creek Church, which is pretty much the closest church that I could go to which has its own facility.  I enjoyed it a lot, and was treated to lunch by one of the congregation members.  Although I found out at the end that it's a charismatic church (pretty orthodox in its beliefs though) so that'll be interesting to explore more.

Some highlights were that a couple girls got up to the pulpit and talked about the pro-life bill that had passed (she had been at Captiol praying and listening to the bill) and about the Trayvon Martin trial and just the fact that justice looks different.  Ok, I am absolutely butchering what they said... let me try again.

While I do think that a fetus is a human being and thus abortion is murder and a violation of fourteenth amendment rights for the silenced, I am wary of how pro-life people typically approach this issue.  There's that George Carlin quote that pretty much sums it up, "Boy, these conservatives are really something, aren't they? They're all in favor of the unborn. They will do anything for the unborn. But once you're born, you're on your own. Pro-life conservatives are obsessed with the fetus from conception to nine months. After that, they don't want to know about you. They don't want to hear from you. No nothing. No neonatal care, no day care, no head start, no school lunch, no food stamps, no welfare, no nothing. If you're preborn, you're fine; if you're preschool, you're fucked." And this great spoken word poem:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mOV7RyHjl5c.  I just watched that again--really really good.  The amazing kind of poem that inspires you to want to write poetry that's just that incredible and emotionally-charged.

Anyway, it boils down to, sure, abortion is bad and no one is pro-abortion and wants to kill all the fetuses, but when you don't set up an infrastructure for women with unplanned pregnancies, when the only legislation they have is poverty and no education and terrible jobs and no way out, how can you say that is life?  That is a societal injustice when people cannot take care of their children because of financial reasons.  They truly have no choice.

So the first girl reminded us to look at others with the eyes of God and see them as broken people like ourselves.  She mentioned how she was really promiscuous growing up and that one of the leading causes of that is fatherlessness and how we had to have compassion.  Her underlying message was one not of condemnation, but of love, and that she had been praying and felt that we needed to change how we were viewing and handling things.  Justice isn't how we've been doing things.  Justice looks different.  It looks different because He is different. I liked all of that.
From reading their website, I knew Mountain Creek was big on pro-life, but still not sure if they seriously partner with other organizations which support women with unplanned pregnancies.  Maybe they feel like it's better to focus on the anti-abortion side?  I think i'd disagree there.  It's like focusing on outlawing gay marriage and forgetting about the LGBTQ population.  What she said was a good step though.

Then, a second girl, who was black, asked to speak a bit, and she talked about how the African-American community was on the verge of rioting from the Zimmerman verdict, but how even though it was easy to get angry at what happened, that, like the first girl said, justice looks different.  That willingness to forgive and to not react violently... it brought me to tears and kinda solidified my desire to go to that church.  You could debate as to whether the imbalance that led to situations like the Martin case is "justice," but really at the end, God will judge everything, and He is the only perfect judge.  Looking back, that whole forgiveness deal was a great segue to what this guy who was invited to the church was gonna talk about, which I've written below.

The pastor then gave a pretty brief sermon, mostly for the sake of a guy who came to speak, Peter... something... but he had a really intense testimony.  Probably the most intense one I'll ever hear (the pastor of the church, who's probably around 70+ since he just celebrated his golden anniversary, said something to the effect that it was the most incredible testimony he's heard).

I'll give a short version.  He was born in a Nazi death camp in 1943 and was experimented on, but he doesn't remember that anymore.  Fortunately, he and his mother were liberated, but his mother passed him to this stranger before leaving, a Polish woman who was on the train with them as it was being liberated.  His mom promised she'd be back for him. After camp, life was even worse, as he was raped, tortured, and almost killed multiple times as a child by the KGB, and he eventually met up with his mom, and left his Polish mom (another shocker for him, since he didn't know that he had a German mom), even though his Polish mom was so good to him (she wanted him to go meet his mom though; she was Catholic and she'd made an oath to God to take care of him) and had endured so much persecution for taking care of a German boy (they had to live in the sewers; or maybe that was just their state of poverty), and she even offered herself to be raped by the KGB so he wouldn't get executed by a gun that they put in his mouth.

His mother in the meantime went to a US military base and she had married a black man in the US.  When he went to the US, he was still beat on by other kids (stepfather's race, and probably cause he didn't speak English either at the time).  His stepfather became an alcoholic and he ran away from home and was picked up by a Missouri (or Mississippi?) guy who would eventually become the state representative.  Life was good for a while and he lived for like 40 years in Florida, but then his half-sisters wanted him to spread their mother's ashes over the death camp.  He was like, No way, but eventually he went back.

While he was there, he felt that God was telling him to forgive them so that God could forgive his trespasses (Matthew 6:14), and he was like, What the hell did I do wrong?  But eventually after arguing over it with God, he said he forgave them, and then the Holy Spirit descended on him and he was able to pretty much became a Christian I guess.  Hmmm, I'm a little fuzzy on the details, but in any case, it was some pretty supernatural forgiveness going on, since he didn't sound bitter or angry at all during his testimony.  And he called us each to forgive and also to receive healing and prayer from the hurt that we had received, from whatever abandonment had happened to us.

Like I said earlier, after church, the head of missions pastor took me out to lunch with his wife and their daughter, grandson, and two close newlywed friends joined us.  That was nice to have a hearty meal after three meals of just eating bread (lol), and to have a ride back to GIAL.  As I was walking to Mountain Creek, in fact, someone else had stopped and given me a ride for the last leg up the hill, and offered to take me back to GIAL.  Also really nice.  =)


Finally, today as I was eating lunch with other students, I heard a, "NO WAY!" and looked up and saw Selena Y from Houston!  I had seen her name on the list of Guest House meal people, but I just thought it was some random Asian girl, and thought it was funny that I also knew a Selena Y.  She's apparently doing an internship with Wycliffe and is here until the beginning of August.  She sat with my classmates and we all just chatted for a bit.  Nice to see someone I know.  =)