...[insert classical music here]...

So I've been waiting for my friend at starbucks to come back. The man with cancer. Ben. I've been looking forward to our conversations. He came in yesterday. I had just cleaned the bathrooms. It was cool though. however, he went in the bathroom came out, got his drink, and immediately left. He never immediately leaves. I went to the bathroom to scope out the damage.

I guess if I had managed to poop ON the toilet and ON the floor, I would have left immediately too.

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...you cut me down to size...

I haven't written in a while. I blame this on several things.

1) Global Warming. It is a safe bet that somehow or another global warming has contributed to my absence. Need an excuse? Global Warming.

2) I've been on learning/growing overload and I have really struggled to cleanly put it together and explain it all. I think that I've tried on here, maybe not. I've certainly tried to verbalize it, and I feel as though my words failed to capture what I'm learning. My faith is changing. I believe that God is pulling me out of the Christianity that I've lived in for a long time. a christianity that I think I created to pacify myself. An easy christianity. He's pulling me out of it and it is awesome. It hurts sometimes but it is awesome. Sort of like pulling apart a really messed up piece of velcro.

Again, I'm lost trying to explain it. So I'll give up trying again for now. Perhaps God will give me words to express this. Perhaps not.

Class starts again in a week. preaching. I'm looking forward to it. I've been reading Dr. York's book on preaching with bold assurance. I'm not sure how you can read this book and (as I'll find out) take this class and step away from Southern Seminary and still manage to preach crap. But it happens. Crap. Everywhere.

I felt the need to spark a conversation with another customer a few days ago. I think she mentioned the heat. She's old. Drinks decaf coffee. She doesn't like the humidity. So I jumped on the chance to talk about the heat in Cambodia and our conversation took off. Here are the results of our conversation...

1) First thing she does when she walks in is smile and wave at me and say "HEY GEORGE!"

2) She told me that she really liked me and wants to make sure to get our address overseas so that she can mail us encouraging notes.

3) Found out her husband is really ill. Weak. He fell last May while standing in the living room and broke his neck. Her retirement is spent taking care of him 24/7. He isn't paralyzed though which is good. Even better, she is bitter about having to take care of him. She loves him.

People all around me have such interesting stories and such great needs. I'm so blessed to be a place like Starbucks that promotes me talking with people beyond just the typical "hello" and "thank you"...

My cat is so dang lazy. I will give him props as he chanced a lightning bug around the apartment last night. But he just sleeps. All the time. And he only eats when I go into the kitchen. I think he has some sort of separation anxiety. Strange.

My friend Michael shared a conversation with me the other day that went something like this...

**********

Michael: GEORGE! I have something to tell you.

me: ok, whats up?

Michael; I got to share Christ with a friend of mine the other day!

me: thats great! what happened!? Tell me about it!?

Michael: he just called me up randomly one day and asked if I'd like to go out and talk. I said sure. So we went out and he just started telling me about how frustrating life is. He was really down. Really sort of depressed and confused about life and his direction. And I just started telling him about Jesus!

**********

How awesome is it that!? God planned it this way! He's so good. If that conversation happens 6 months ago, Michael wouldn't have had anything to share with him. But Michael did. Michael shared his faith! Shared the hope he has in Christ!

God so knows what He's doing!

i miss my friend nick. He came to visit me again for the 4th. He's been up here to see us more than just about anyone else we know. He's awesome. I heart Nick.

My weigh is down to 213. Just 3 more pounds and I'm no longer considered overweight by the IMB. This is good news. I think that I might actually want to keep going though. I wonder what I'll look like if I dip into the 100's? I hope I will look nothing like Screech from saved by the bell.

Health = same. Experience pain and discomfort but am told I'm healthy as a...something really healthy. So thats good.

Thought about starting to run. Running, I hear, is good for you. Then I remembered that I hate running. My desire to do it faded quickly. The only time that I've ever seriously wanted to run was back in middle school. I bought some gatorade gum and I don't know what they had in it, but it made my legs tingle. Made me feel like I needed to run.

Ok, this is all for now. More later.

oh! PS. I am really afraid of Brock Lesner. that guy is one scary dude.

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...who needs avenues...

I love the fact that my perception of life is drastically changing. It is a change that is necessary for a believer. it is a change that is necessary for someone willing to die for something greater than himself.

I can't help but be completely shocked by Lottie Moon's statement. "I am immortal until my work here is done." What a great understanding of life and work and God. I've been so blessed by the lives of William (don't call me jim) Carey, Adoniram and Ann Judson, Bill (don't confuse me with William) Wallace, Lottie (even better than Warren) Moon, and Jim Elliot. What a strange and wonderful thing God is doing to me.

In other news, if you are a customer at starbucks and the barista asks you nicely to keep your dog outside (because we can actually be shut down by the health department should they find out we had a dog in the store) please do not feel the need to call our district manager and tell them that the barista refused you service. ESPECIALLY if you then buy a drink. Buying a drink and drinking it is not the same as refusal of service. Just something to think about. Consider.

4th of July is upon us. I dont recall what we did last year. Maybe we went out with the Falls' or something. Not sure. this year? We're headed to a cookout with a master chef! Should be really quite awesome. My best friend Nick is coming! He's bringing BEANS!

Current favorite Starbucks drink: Grande Misto. Nothing special or exciting. but tasty and great.

Congratulations to the LA LAKERS for winning the 09-10 NBA Championship! Sure, they haven't played it yet. But adding Ron Artest to an already tough team pretty much ensures it. So congrats.

Michael Jack died. Don't know if you heard. The media coverage has been a little soft. They must not care about him much. Actually he's made so much news that none of us have heard much about North Korea firing more missles.

Not sure if you believed me or not, but GLOBALPOST.COM is the greatest news site out right now. love it.

Just ate one of the new KIND Bars at Starbucks. Mango Macadamia. i really like these bars. Not as much as globalpost, but I like them. Besides, eating globalpost is much tougher. you know.

More later.

Alexis just called.

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...then I realized...

I'll start this post by saying that I greatly appreciate my wife. More than typing letters into a blogger-box will ever be able to fully convey. She's so great. I'm not sure if she realizes that she does this. Maybe she does. Maybe not. But she has pushed me to scripture in a great way over the passed few weeks. I can't explain this next statement right now because I don't really understand it all yet. My faith is changing. Maturing. Growing up in ways that I've not known. And in my attempt to work it out and explain it, she's pushed me to the Word of God and for that I'm more than grateful. She is wonderful!

If I had to try and squeeze what I'm learning into some brief sentences they would look something like this...
1) I've been a man of very little faith.
2) My life is not my own.
3) God is most glorified in me when I am most satisfied in Him.

I can tell you that I've come under great conviction for my lack of sharing the gospel. This is why I hate "relationship evangelism"...I don't actually hate it, but I do hate the apathy it can create. I begin to think that I'll talk with them about Jesus later. And then I feel ok about this because I'm "building a relationship." I wonder if I walk this world as one eager to share Christ with those around me. I'm not sure I look at people and see what God sees. To a degree i think that all of American Christianity has this problem...otherwise we'd actually share the gospel with people. If I truly believe in what the Bible says is true of sin, death, hell, Jesus, salvation, etc...how in the world can I so flippantly live this life? I either don't believe it (which I do) or I'm living in sin (I am). I would venture as far as to say that my heart is truly breaking for people. All people. Not just those I'll serve a few years from now...but those I should be serving who live and work right beside me right now.

You see I thought after Michael became a believer, my mission and purpose at Starbucks was all but done. I did what I was there to do. Michael was the reason I was first taken to Starbucks. And he has an incredible, growing faith in the saving work of Christ. And so I assumed I was done. I'm not. I'll never be.

If I try and explain what I'm learning and how I'm changing it will, right now, sound more like a giant pile of verbal vomit. Unorganized and messy. Unlike real vomit, this pile is pretty much awesome. Also unlike real vomit, this pile isn't pink like that time that girl threw up outside of the library at Summit Drive Elementary School when I was in the 3rd grade. Perhaps one day I will work toward explaining it all. Perhaps not.

I had a conversation the other day with an old friend. Kinjal Poonatar is his name. I knew him back in middle school. I don't remember much from him, just that we were friends and then not friends and then he became a boy scout and checked trash cans at Fall for Greenville. He's smart though. Philosophical. He wasn't fond of my anti-global warming comment on facebook. So we chatted about it a little bit. The conversation shifted quickly into a discussion of religion. He made a statement like "all religion is altered by man and driven by man" and asked which Christianity was he supposed to look at because the Catholics had done a number on Jesus. I agreed with him that man can do some serious damage to religion. Then I agreed with him about religion. All religion is man centered. All but one. Every other religion in the world centers around man. Live better to experience liberation. Do good to build up karma for the next life. Do do do do do do do. Man man man man man. Christianity, as seen in the Bible, is not this way. Rather than being built upon what man can do, Christianity rests in what Christ has done. We talked through this for a while. He doesn't believe my statements. he began listing religions that aren't man-centered. His list, however, was nothing but man-driven religions. I look forward to chatting with Kinjal again. I'm not sure if he is anymore, but he was Jain back in the day. Jainism is an offshoot of hinduism. If followed properly it is a religion of extreme legalism. So much so that those who following closely refuse to farm for fear of killing some sort of life (insects, etc.). I'm not sure Kinjal is Jain now.

in random news, how come when I pet Dudley he quickly cleans the spot I just petted? I wash my hands. He's a cat. He poops in an igloo...he's the dirty one. Whatever.
















The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; His mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness. "The Lord is my portion," says my soul, "therefore, I will hope in Him."

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...something of a niche market...

I've been raving about GLOBALPOST.COM. I LOVE IT! GREAT SITE! It is sort of like worldwide news with greater detail to the many different cultures out there.

CLICK HERE to watch a video I watched this morning about Slum Tours.

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...my heart may fail...

You know those times in life when you someone goes into your bathroom and pees all over the place and makes a giant mess including some kind of ointment packet trash and everytime they leave your bathroom your heart rate sky-rockets because you know they've just made a mess and you get to clean it up? Thats been going on for a while at my store. I used to get angry. But something happened. We are to share the gospel with all who don't know. But sometimes I feel a deeply specific burden to share with someone...and thats what happened. I stopped getting angry and bathroom-destroyer and started praying for him. I decided to sit down with him yesterday. We talked for a long time. Turns out he had prostate cancer and surgery to take it out. The doctors failed to do so and failed to tell him. He got another doctor to go in to check it and found that not only had they left the cancerous prostate in, but the cancer has started to spread throughout his body. As far as doctors in Louisville know, he is the only person to have that same prostate cancer surgery TWICE. He has five to ten years to live. And then he explained his bathroom messiness. **WARNING...THIS ISN'T PRETTY** The second surgery eliminated his ability to pee properly. So what he does is he has a permanent hole in his stomach. He carries a tube around everywhere he goes. He uses the ointment stuff to cleanse the tube and then sticks the tube into his stomach. He pees through a stomach tube. I learned a great deal about this guy and I'm so thankful for it. I'm thankful his honesty and for the doors that God is opening.

In other news, GLOBALPOST.COM (linked on the side) is now my new favorite website. It is a company in Boston that has people all over the world. The people either write in or make videos of news stories. They then send them to globalpost. Good stuff. Quality stories. The reporting, to this point, has been solid and honest and, in some cases, fun.

Will write more soon about spiritual learnings. God is teaching me SO MUCH! Will share soon.

Also, got word from the scholarship. You know, nothing huge...JUST GOD PROVIDING EXACTLY WHAT WE NEEDED! God is way too good to us.

More later.

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...cling. to the mast...

Of the books that I've read over the past few months, nothing has moved me or challenged me like the simple, small book from Dr. Akin called FIVE WHO CHANGED THE WORLD. The book contains accounts of men and women who faithfully gave themselves wholly to the work of Christ around the world.

Bill Wallace, a missionary I had not heard of before yesterday, is now a personal hero of mine.

"It doesn't make any difference what happens to us. The only important thing is that when it does happen, we be found doing the will of God." - Wallace (not the scottish william wallace...)

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