Tuesday, February 26, 2008

a little backwords

i'm here in australia, near sydney, and to be honest i'm having a bit of a rough go of things. my brand new computer (purchased the day after thanksgiving) decided to kill its hard drive. i'm not too surprised though. the hard drive has never gotten along with the rest of the computer. i guess it was a little arrogant, thinking it could do all the computing itself. well, push came to shove and there was a bit of a civil war which left the hard drive completely dead.

with its untimely death, the hard drive took with it every bit of data i had. it is all, as the rotund gentlemen at the computer repair shop would tell me, unretrievable.

unretrievable.

this is a horrible word, outside of a few crazy exceptions (use your imagination). i've lost many pictures, some music and movie files i had on there. but worst of all, i lost all the stuff i have been writing the last couple weeks. they were all still in progress, but nearly finished and not backed up on anything. it is all disapressing (def. is somewhere in the archives).

thus, i have been trying to retrieve the articles and musings from my head. for the most part, they are unretrievable. i am starting over on a lot of them and trying to write some new stuff too. it is a bit of a pain.

i'm not a very fast writer when it comes to other people. when i get to be introspective and write about what i'm going through, it comes easily (typically). i feel added pressure when writing about other people, because i don't want to misrepresent them or, worse, not show their passion or their heart in it. being a journalist might not be a good fit for me. it makes me feel a bit backwords.

if you didn't know, the street traffic is reversed from america. cars come at me from the opposite side i'm used to. when i'm looking left, i should be looking right. when i'm looking right, i should be looking left. i fear that eventually, i'll be looking at the ceiling of a hospital.

it is unnatural for me. i continually have my head on a swivel in the attempts of not dying. this type of writing is a tiny bit like that. i feel like i'm looking the wrong way. and in the process of being confused, my words don't come out. eventually they will, i hope. but for now, i'm learning to look at things differently, to cross the street safely.

Thursday, February 21, 2008

classic rambling

i just read the last two posts and now see that a trend has begun. i started at 15, then 14. if i continue this pattern i have, i'll only have 13 posts left. the last of these will provide me with only a single minute. what could i say in a minute? probably more than i think.

i've found myself really listening on this trip. in the process of this, i've also started listening to my own words. God has allowed me to step outside myself a bit. He is trying to teach me to be more of a minimalist with my tongue. the things i would talk in circles about for days, God wants me to edit, to be more concise and quit adding to the noise. but, i'll probably still ramble a bit on this thing.

last week was spent in vanuatu. the people at the base we stayed at were really amazing, really driven and ambitious. it is humbling to be around people with the type of passion nearly everyone we ran into had. not only humbling, it is really quite challenging as well.

i've spent the last few days going though the notes i took from the days of conversations i had. trying to make sense of my notes is a bit like trying to finish a crossword puzzle. i am still wrestling with myself as a writer, trying to find my voice. it has proven very difficult for me to tell other people's stories. my nature is so introspective that i find it difficult not to write myself into the story. i'm also not sure if that is or isn't a bad thing.

i definitely feel a bit of guilt for that though, for making everything personal. these stories aren't about me, i'm not confused about that. but i cannot help but look at things with eyes longing for growth. when i hear something, i let it challenge me. i don't know how else to engage the people with which i am having a conversation. in the talks, i'm not constantly trying to shift the focus onto me. it isn't like that. i just have to personally interact with their words, it is how i listen.

it has been a blessing to see that God is using me in these places. that has been a prayer and fear of mine, just to sort of be here not really adding to anything. but God has blessed me with the tangible knowledge that there is purpose in my being here and that i won't have to wait to know what that is. that hasn't been the theme in my last 5+ years and i am really grateful for it. you can see some pictures of a place in vanuatu called black sands paama in the flickr thing to the right (there actually pretty good pictures for ones i've taken -they're usually pretty awful).

i am in wollongong, australia now. wollongong, australia? seriously? i am still a bit humbled that God is taking me to these places. i'm quite a bit humbled by the things i am witnessing. i'll talk about australia later (i'm going to be here a little over two weeks) but for now i've probably said enough (maybe even nothing at all). i just thank God australia is not a sauna.


Wednesday, February 13, 2008

14 minutes or so

time is not a luxury i can afford right now. the time i have at this internet cafe in vanuatu is close to running out, but i thought that i would get a quick post in before i left.

firstly, i cannot stop sweating. i feel like i could irrigate crops with the neverending streams of perspiration. it is hot and humid, i feel like i'm giving the sun a piggy back ride. hopefully, i'll adjust and me and the sun can make peace.

the other day, somebody asked me if my feet were still swollen from the plane ride. study of my feet showed that they were the same size they have been for years now. i just have fat feet. but i decided to use this comment to my advantage. i said yes. in fact i think my whole body is a bit swollen from the plane ride, especially my belly.

thirdly, i've been having a lot of good conversations with the people serving here. the task i have here is a bit overwelming to me, to be honest. i've never considered myself a writer and trying to catch a bit of the passion they have and put it into words seems like a task i'm not up to. but i trust God wanted me, specifically me, here to do this for a reason. at some point, it would be nice to know what, exactly, that is. but this is nothing new for me. i always wonder about that, always ask God what i'm doing here, the world specifically.

i was talking with an austrailian woman here the other day. i'll call her mommy from here on, that is what every body else does. she was going from story to story about the movement of God in her life and ministry. she told a brief story about elijah, when he was lighting the fire to prove our God as the real God. mommy told me that she felt like the fire, that God wanted her to come to these islands and help spread it. and then she looked at me and pointed right through my chest into my heart.

that fire is churning in you, and one of these days it is going to catch.

she told me this, and in doing so summed up how i've felt for the last few years. i have this groaning inside of me and it just won't come out. i don't know how to let it out. it is a fire, churning deep down in my gut. if i don't get it out, it will break me down and make me useless.

i don't really know what i'm doing here. i know i'm supposed to be doing some writing, but there is something more than that. there is something beyond the sweat, the heat and the bug bites. there is a movement here, in these islands and in my soul. i'm supposed to witness one and let it start the other.

with that, i bid you Godspeed. posts will come, maybe not regularly, but whenever i get a chance. thanks for reading and recycling.

Sunday, February 10, 2008

adventure now

in 15 minutes or so, i will head to the airport here in seattle (by the way, i've been in seattle for the last few days) and hop on a series of planes that will take me to the other side of the world. planes are sort of a modern-torture device to me. i have a generous circumference and i am just tall enough for comfort to completely escape me. sky mall, however, i do enjoy. i like seeing the rediculous things they sell on airplanes.

when the plane lands and the torture subsides, i'll be doing some writing with ywam about some of the things they've got going on in the south pacific, and presumably i'll be sweating. hopefully God will use my stammering tongue and chubby fingers to say/write something that will help convey just a part of what He is doing in this world to bring his children home.

this journey will last for about three months, take me to about 8 different countries and dump me into an unknown number of situations for which i fell totally unprepared. but that is kind of the way i like it. i like being a little unprepared. i like having to rely and depend on something bigger than me to put things in order. there is probably a great deal of God's grace that has been missed because we have been too prepared. of course, that works both ways. no preperation can get in the way of God's moving in our lives.

with this adventure coming up, this blog will again take on the purpose for which it was started: letting people like my mom know a) that i am still alive b) what/where in the world i am c) the stories i have experienced. i feel like i've kind of been drifting a bit on this blog, heck in this world, so perhaps this will help it be more consistent. i'll do my best to be forthcoming and honest, because i would hate to waste your time with things that don't have any heart. inevitably there will be the blogs inspired by exhaustion/insanity that will have the same impact as one i wrote about a specific school of cereal eating. but, i'll just hope to be honest enough to maybe make you think a bit.

Godspeed.

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some of you know how much i enjoy the tv show lost. i'm not sure if i'll be able to keep up with the new season. but there is a possibility that one of my planes will crash and i will join the castaways in their mystical and mysterious adventures. so keep your fingers crossed.