so it rains a lot in the good ol' deutschland come november. in the last two weeks, i believe, i've seen blue sky for a total of 8 hours and the actual sun even less. which causes me to wonder when i will begin to see signs of a declining mental state. growing up in the sunny prairies, i think my mental health is directly related to the amount of sun i get. which is why-even though the my funds are running a little low-i'm planning a trip to Valencia, Spain with some people that work for Campus Crusade for Christ. or rather, i'm tagging along. either way, it will hopefully be twenty degrees with lots and lots of sun. i want to come back with a sunburn. i want to be dried up like a raisin. well, that's actually kind of gross, but you get the idea.
until then, i will just have to pretend that coffee has lots of vitamin A and sit here in this coffeeshop and blog my heart out-which i have resolved to do more often, in case you missed the last post that i just posted seconds before starting this one. and this coffeeshop is pretty nice. pretty servers and good overpriced coffee to pay for the wireless internet. but the fact that it has free wi-fi makes it my favourite coffeeshop...hmm, i would have thought that the quality of the coffee would been the deciding factor. especially since i have been a coffee snob since, well, at least, since i worked in a coffee shop. but no, wi-fi.
anyways, perhaps a little update of my life since my last post, which was too long ago, i admit. i went to the Netherlands, saw Amsterdam, and the North Sea. and come to think of it, that was the last weekend i remember of having sun all weekend long. Amsterdam is beautiful, lots of canals and stuff. and the North Sea. absolutely wonderful. sandy beaches for miles. for i guy seeing the ocean for the first time, it was pretty spectacular.
that was the last trip i took. it was the forth weekend trip i had made in a row and i was a little tired after this last one. so i've been whiling my time here in wonderful Giessen. i haven't done much of excitement.
except i went to a dance club one night with Niguel, the other trainee, and three Hungarian ladies. drinking in the line, tequila shots in the club, dancing to suprisingly decent music till 3:30 in the morning. pretty fun. and then the following night, same ladies and a latino night in the basement of a Catholic community centre. Europeans really like latino music, and i can't dance latino, even if it was required in order to save a small animals life.
work has been intense and frutrating at times. i don't understand why my bosses do things the way they do. it seems that they always take the long way around and then complain about all the work that has to be done. i'm sure it can't be this simple, but they sure don't take the time to explain why they do things the way they do. which would make working so hard all the time so much easier. they also don't like to tell me what they want me to do more than 10 minutes in advance. which i have realized is the number one thing in a workplace that pisses me off. they have a plan for the week, but they don't like to tell it to me all at once. only a day at a time, five minutes at a time. i'm the type of guy, i've found, that likes to have my to do list for the day or week and then do the jobs at my pace as long as i get all of them done. GAiN does not operate like that, which drives me absolutely bonkers.
GAiN recently had their global conference here in Giessen, where i had the opportunity to get a good look at the work that they do, which is a lot. humanitarian aid, orphanages, well drilling, providing health personnel and supplies. they run the gambit and do so usually without trying to evangelize the people that they help. i say usually, because there are exceptions.
but i want to cover this subject tomorrow a long with my living in the office of an organization whose soul purpose is evangelisation. this has been overwhelming to say the least. and to say the most, it can be really fucking annoying. i am usually somewhere in the middle. but i am trying to understand and at the same time be understood. and like i said, i'll think about this and have something to write tomorrow. so...
bis morgen
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5 comments:
hey, good to see you're blogging more, I'm always disapointed when I check the blog and nothing new is there. I'm also curious to hear your reflections on evangelism. especially becuase I happen to be currently living in a christian commune in the very heartland of the evangelical American christian right.
In fact a few weeks ago we had to actively stop someone from prosteletizing at the refugees that are staying here. I say "at" becuase he certainly wasn't communicating with them being as they lack the english language skills necessary to understand what he was talking about. Also, all of the refugees here seem to be either very conservative christians already or very libertal muslims. so preaching at them would either pointless or extremely offensive.
Naturally I have been reflecting some on evangelism - as well as other christian language - what it means, and what it ought to mean. I'll certainly have something to add if you are wishing to engage in some sort of transatlantic conversation.
Mach's gut
Ben
p.s.
also its good to hear that you are sampling the european club culture, one of my few regrets from my time in germany is that I did not really take advantage of the clubing scene.
also..
it sure would be nice if some of that rain could be sent our way, I've seen nothing but blue skies here. Georgia is experiencing the drought of the century, causing a serious water shortage in Atlanta
yeah, i've also had some interesting conversations about converting muslims. i think this is prime objective #1 for some people here. i don't understand it at all. it seems that it would be pretty fricking hard to do. but, i usually say: "i don't condone religious extremism, be it muslim, christian, or jewish. but if we all believe in the same God and i meet someone, a muslim or jew, and they act how i think a christian, I, should act. then how much of a difference is there? and does it really matter?" i think i have stopped one person with this.
lately, i've been tired with all the p&w that goes on that i haven't really participated. mostly because of the music and hands in the air and there are certain people that irritate me with their intensity. but so far, i've thought that the "born-agains" (i hate this word, but what else do you call them using only two words) are the ones that are the most vehement in their evangelism. simply because the've seen the change in their lives and want to share it. but, the ones that have grown up in a church. those are the ones i don't get. i don't get it at all.
for me, i know it all. well, everything that they say, i know. i've known it since i was 6. and they don't go any deeper. at GAiN, at least the German office, they aren't around to convert people. they just want to help. they can leave the prosteletizing to the aussies. it's just a numbers game for them.
mitch
ps. you can have all the rain you want. how shall i send it? don't worry, shippings free!
so, I just tried to post a very long comment, and failed. I guess it was to long and it was all erased.
Since I am not interested in trying to retype the intire post, I will try to write a very condensed version.
It's unfortunate that you are stuck with such a born-agian crowd, when I was in germany I attended a young adult group that was alot like that. they weren't all bad, I really enjoyed playing soccer with them, but when they started singing it nearly made me ill. I still remember the hours of shallow emotional, heart-wrenching and repetetive singing. I remember trying to make up excuses to leave early, or taking lot's of cigarette breaks (not because I wanted a cigarette, but rather because I wanted to leave the room).
the rest of my failed post was a story about the terms "conversion" and "born-again" being given different meanings here at jubilee. but the story is too long and unwieldy for me to write it again on your blog. sorry, I'll tell you about it sometime.
the story was about evangelicals who stoped worrying about converting others and started to be more thoughtful and serious about what there own conversion ought to mean. the point was not to let the evangelicals get you down, there's hope for them yet.
Mach's gut
Ben
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