Allright lets take this from the top shall we? Last fall I moved into a new "dorm" It's really an old hotel that has been converted into a sort of dorm, but is not managed by the University. So being that its a better deal and has better food the international exchange students at the university are almost all living here. So during the fall of last year I had my first real contact with international students. It turns out I love it. :D They're awesome to talk to, and in specifically the ones from East Asia come with an innate curiousity and maybe a little apprehension as to what the "Western" world is all about. In my new housing arrangment I've been exposed to more multicultural mission work in a semester than I could've in three or four individual mission trips. I love it. :D In my first semester I made friends with a couple of Asian girls. One who was in the intensive English program and the other who was just an exchange student for a semester from Taiwan. I usually spent lunch with her jsut talking about culture and what life was like. In bits and pieces we talked about religion and Jesus, but nothing deep or serious. After that experience I think God decided that I was warmed up a bit and decided to test me a bit. :shock: (my own personal views on that)
This semester within two weeks of the beginning of the semester I met the next group of exchange students. Two young Chinese ladies from Shanghai and Hong Kong. Met them and once again spent lunches or dinners sitting at the "Asian" table in the dining hall. I've spent more time in the dining hall this semester than I have in two years, jsut tlaking to them. They asked me point blank whether or not I was a Christian a couple of times and I said yes. You never realize how hard that is sometimes until someone asks you point blank, eh? So after a semester of talking and finding out things about them one of them asked me to describe where I was from and I told them about the Piney Woods of East Texas and how we get better than 4 feet of rain a year and thanks to the wonderful climate out here in dry ol' West Texas they didn't believe me. They thought I was kidding them completely about Texas even having trees!! :shock: Naturally being the fiercely loyal and proud Texan that I am I could not let this misconception stand. :D So I invited them to come with me when I went home to visit and show that Texas indeed has trees forests and yes even hills!(those of you from Lubbock will catch the sarcasm here):wink: So after Spring Break when I found out that my sister was coming home her birthday, her boyfriend was gonna surprise her by showing up and there was going to be a surprise party as well....I decided to go home and remembered the conversation with Min and Yuk a few weeks before Spring Break. I made a very confusing phone call to my parents(who thought for a bit that I had a girlfriend to bring home8)) I got permission and sleeping arrangements for a couple of communists in a staunchly conservative republican household. :shock: I invited them and they agreed. So after Yuk finished her mock job interview(both of them are international business...cool stuff:D) on friday afternoon we took off from Lubbock for Longview! It was quite the interesting trip. I had to introduce them to some classic Christian music....ya know DC Talk - Jesus Freak and some Audio Adrenaline (yeah the old good stuff). It was quite interesting the first time they said Jesus in the song Yuk got excited...like she couldn't believe that this sort of rock music was Christian(they learned the opposite over the course of the trip :D ) We got in around 11:30 and since all of my siblings were out at the movies or somesuch I had to call my house (while standing at the front door) to wake my dad up to let us in. The girls loved my ferrets and spent a good part of the weekend enjoying their company(although I teased them constantly about not cooking and eating them....we had a conversation about what sort of wierd items each ahd eaten during the trip down....rats, cats, dogs, snakes, crickets and spiders came up :?) That was Friday night. Saturday we woke up at a liesurely 9:30 or so and introductions to my family as well as atlas examining to find out exactly where everyone was from took place. My parents were a hoot the whole time. They've not had a whole lot of contact with cultures or races other than Hispanics and a particular stodgy scotsman I know. So for most of Saturday they were very friendly but at times a bit out of sorts. I think they were expecting in some small way the girls to starting singing the praises of Marx and Chairman Mao, tie red headbands on and rush the police.:lol: After they toured my Dad's Chemical Plant which once again worked the miracle of another Chemistry hater coming out going "I hated chemistry in high school, but this place makes it make sense." (Good Job Dad) we had a nice lunch as a whole packed around the table and then I took the girls to the zoo. They'd been to the zoo before, but the zoo they had been to was apparently much smaller and it was in an odd sort of way a view of a much more innocent time in my own life. Its easy to lose a sense of childlike wonder at the wonderful creatures in God's creation. When was the last time YOU looked at a giraffe and wondered if things looked different up so high, or what the lions do all day(sleep), or why parrots are so gorgeous or why catfish have whiskers? :D It was a very refreshing experience and was very fun as well. After we got back and ate a quick dinner we set up for Laura's party. I went with a vanload of people to pick up my aunt Doris who had foot surgery and couldn't walk that was an adventure in itself. Getting a fragile old lady into a van from a wheelchair is tough. The party was quite the experience. We played a sort of gameshow about laura(good job Mike) which caused an enourmous amount of laughter and then some of the guys played poker in the kitchen and the rest of us watched ghostbusters. :) Everyone left and we cleaned up and went to bed pretty fast after that(although I got about 15 minutes of sword practice outside....I think I might be ready for a real sword instead of my kendo sticks) Sunday morning was Easter! I love Easter. Its the icing on the cake.....Christ dying on the Cross saved me from Hell, but him rising again three days later gave me a ticket to heaven and thats just too cool.:D I had convinced the girls to go with me(by bribery8)), I'm not above being sneaky to get people to God he does the work I'm jsut there to plant seeds) So I got dressed in my new finest clothing(black on black on black...I'll describe it later) church was excellent and pastor managed to keep the sermon reasonably short(he has a penchant for preaching) The girls got to meet my youth pastors from ages past and also got to meet my girls(I have a whole crowd of little girls at my church that love it when "MAT YEW" comes home from college...I love my girls they're a good enough reason to come home all by themselves). We went home and had a wonderful Easter lunch. Ham and cheese potatoes and some other various vegetables(I think the ham is somewhat ironic :wink: , if you don't get it....ask and I'll explain) After puttering around a bit and watching my little brother kick butt at a video game he rented and seeing Laura and her boyfriend Josh off to college again, we headed for Caddo Lake. Caddo Lake is on the border with Louisiana and is pretty much the perfect definition of a swamp and pretty much everything that West Texas is not. So I took them and my buddy Mike to see it. Side note: Mike is a missionary to the United States from Britain, he is a stodgy scottish bum and a pretty good fantasy writer as well, you can read his blog on my links page MDINGRIMSBY...shameless plug I know. :D Anyways we hung out while it was raining on the pier and then went on the nature trail. Absolutely beautiful in the forest around this time of year:D, everything is bright green and just.....lush. So we got back around 5:30 and immeadiately went to the grocery store...for get this...the girls offered to cook dinner for us!!! Actual chinese food...yum!:D :D :D So we shopped around for a bit and got all the stuff she needed to cook for us. And once we got back an old friend who was stopping by for the night was there so as I helped the girls cook I got to hang with my old buddy Will. After an UNBELIEVABLY good dinner of Coconut Chicken soup, Ginger Onion Chicken, and homemade fried rice. We cleaned up the kitchen...:evil:(I hate dishes). And everyone but the girls and Will and I went to bed and we jsut sat around and chatted for a few hours and headed to bed around 2. Got up late and packed up everything planned to head out around noon, but didn't leave the house until around 1 then we went to Chick-Fil-A to get lunch, but the new store had just opend and the drive-thru made an entire lap around the building. So we went inside and finally left town jsut before 2pm(after some very very tasty chicken sandwhiches). I took the southern route home so the girls would see some different scenery and I would avoid some of the Dallas traffic. Played my "Radio Christian" Cd for the long part between Ft.Worth and Abilene it got us all through in style :D. Stopped at my favorite southern truck stop in Sweetwater, TX. I was gonna get dinner but the girls told me to wait cause they wanted to take me somewhere once we got to Lubbock. So I took off on the road home(US84) and during the trip I got to really witness to both of them. I thought for a bit I was jsut talking with Yuk who was in the front seat at the time, but then I realized that Min was only faking being asleep in the back seat. It seems that God has an incredible ability to arouse interest in people;):D. We talked about what Christians were like, what they are supposed to be like, how God sees possesions and owning things, sin, the Passion and all sorts of other things. It was an awesome conversation. I realized about halfway thorugh that it was about a hundred times easier to talk with these girls from China than it was for me to talk to the Americans in my life for one simple reason: the girls didn't doubt the existence of a spiritual world. Western culture has held aloft science as the only truth for so long that they have lost the spiritual side of themselves. Talking to someone from a culture that actually understands a bit when you talk about the soul or a sprit living inside you and not giving you wierd looks is incredibly refreshing. I think if I keep talking to them I'm gonna send them back to Holland(where they study) with a couple of Chinese Bibles. I warned them that I would turn them into subversives;)....lol. It was so great to get to hang with people from another culture and grow to be such good friends with them. We got into town around 9:15 and went straight to a Chinese buffet but the place was gonna close in 5 minutes so we went elsewhere grabbed soem takeout and came back to the UP and ate before splitting up for the night. I have to say that this was one incredible weekend. It was a ton of fun, it helped me grow spiritually, it was Easter and I got to see my family, what more on the weekend could you ask for? Coming from the most excellent side of a GREAT Easter - Ferris :D
8) Allright apologies but this is a teaser blog. I've got an early class tommorrow so I can't write a full post. the teaser is as follows :arrow: "What do you get when you put two cute atheistic communist chinese girls, a Christian with some intelligence, his family, a sisters boyfriend, a friend from a camp 3 summers ago, a British missionary and one Easter weekend?" :shock: The short answer: "Ferris' weekend extravaganza" The Long Answer? Well you'll jsut ahve to wait for tommorrow for that one! :wink: God Bless you all richly in His Will! Coming from the lower end of an AWESOME weekend - Ferris :D :lol: 8)
:oops: Apologies to all the people who read this blog. The end of the semester is rapidly approaching and thereby the amount of crap I gotta handle increases to ridiculous levels:shock: . Between tests that decide my final grade and registering for classes my schedule is pretty packed. This weekend however was quite fun. Friday went to class and then vegged out for most of the day. I built my schedule during the afternoon and registered in the afternoon. That night I went to see Hellboy. It was pretty good fun movie lots of action some pretty good lines too "Go that way red monkey!". Saturday was really really really cool. If anyone has known me for more than a couple of years you'll know that in the fall of 2002 I developed psoratic arthritis and have been on chemotherapy since Christmas 2002 to combat it. The arthritis is in a finger a thumb a little toe and my left ankle. The left ankle got to swollen and immobile that I was unable to run or even walk to classes. So I was forced to pretty much give up my favorite sport for the last year and some change. This semester the ankle has healed enough to let me take a jogging class and I run on my own every morning at least a mile. But for the last 3 months of training and slowly getting back into shape I haven't attempted anything drastic. On saturday however, I ran a 5k! I finished the race in 23:21 which is jsut about a 7:31 mile so for my first race back I average a 7:31 and if I keep working out it can only go down. It was very encouraging because I think in a part of my mind I had almost resigned myself to never even ahving the chance of running another marathon.(marathoning is one of my favorite competitive events, I've run 4 and want to run a whole lot more) My finish rekindled in me jsut how much I love race day and my performance gave me hope that I will indeed recover enough from this to run again. It was an awesome feeling. I got back to my room changed shirts to the very nice race shirt and went to a mexican restaurant to celebrate. I then came back to my room and slept for a couple of hours then got up and started getting ready for the Intervarsity "Re-Do Your Prom" event. I got dressed in the new clothes that I bought friday afternoon(stunning if I say so myself) cleaned up....re-dyed my hair(which is blue)....shoe polished my shoes and then left got to Jacob's Ladder about 15 minutes early and there was no one there except for the "chaperone"(there to make sure we didn't break anything during our event) talked with him for a bit and once people started arriving I did an hour stint as bouncer. Complete with a black leather jacket and sunglasses I was quite the imposing figure. I even shooed some drunks away early on. After we propped the door open to let some cool night air in I got down to partying. It was a blast I got to dance with some very good looking girls ;):D . I'd give a list, but that would be bragging. It was quite the evening. I've not had that much fun in a very long time and while parts of it were bittersweet for reasons that belong in a later blog it was overall a wonderful night. I got in at 1:00 and immeadiately set all my clocks ahead to 2:00 and went to bed. I got up this morning at about 7:45 showered and picked up my friend Adam on my way to church. On time change sunday my church has a morning breakfast at 8:30 and trust me the food is well worth the early rise. :D Great group service today instead of a seperate college service, good message too. I got back and ate a salad in the cafeteria(nothing else looked all that tasty) went back to my room and slept for four hours(thank heavens for sunday afternoon naps 8) ) Went down to dinner and ate about a pound of pineapple and had some powerade(once again nothing else even sounded good) Now I'm blogging, I may play some video games for the rest of the evening or I may break down and study some. Either way its going to be an excellent night, only problem is that tommorrow is monday and school begins again. However, next weekend is easter and I'm going home and two of my chinese friends are coming home with me jsut to prove to them that Texas is not completely flat and brown grassed. Lubbock is pretty much dead center for the southern plains. Where as my hometown is dead center of the Piney Woods of East Texas and plenty of hills too. I'm excited :D :D And on a completely shallow and goofy note they're both cute girls too so not only do I get to share Jesus with people from another culture and country but I get to hang witha couple of cute girls for 7 hours while I drive home....who could ask for more? Well I think I've brought everyone up to speed on my weekend so....goodnight to all God Bless! you all richly according to His will and all of you are ordered to have great weeks! Coming from the end of one of the best weekends of my life - Ferris :lol: 8) :D
