Fresa Prayer

I thought this was hilarious, so I'm posting it, although I do realize that about 0.5% of my readership will understand it.

If you need some help (and it won't help that much), check out the meaning of fresa.

This just in...

Apparently, my favorite show of all time...COPS...made it to Mexico a few years ago. The amazing part--it was Mexican police. That's right, corruption, drama, bribary...all being hidden from the camera. Possibly the best part of it all...the theme song, "Bad boys," was literally translated:

Chicos malos, chicos malos. ¿Qué vas a hacer cuando vengan por ti?

If anyone ever finds an audio copy of the song in Spanish, or better yet, the show, send those my way!

Un bigote inmenso!!!

This pic is long overdue to be posted. This is Josh and I at the Independence Day party at our church.

Xochimilco (in Mexico City)

"You'll Only End Up Joining Them"

I recently discovered this singer/songwriter, Kevin Devine, through his connection with one of my favorite bands, Brand New. He has brilliant lyrics and pleasant melodies. This particular song is probably the most poignant, poetic, and accurate song I have heard about addiction. Do yourself a favor and purchase his newest record "Put Your Ghost to Rest."

Roomies!

This was taken Sunday night after Juan Carlos became a member of our church (Berith Presbyterian).

(Jacob, Juan Carlos, gringo)

A Good Source For Christian News

So, last night I rather carelessly posted this article after finding a reference to it on a different blog. This morning a certain missionary friend brought it to my attention that the site is satirical Christian news.

2 Thoughts:

1) Thank God this isn't real.

2) Some of these are pretty dang funny.

Yes Master!

"And You Falter" is currently being mastered here. That makes me smile. A lot.

I miss this.

Exciting News: The Jubilee Year will release a 6-song ep entitled "...And You Falter" in late October. We spent the last year working on it, and I am so excited that it is finally becoming a reality. Be on the look-out on itunes and myspace.

A Few Pics from UNAM and the Center of the City

"Islas"-This is where we have all of our CUR Bible studies and English Clubs. It's also where UNAM students go to smoke weed. Just sayin'.

The Zocalo (center of town). This was a week or so before Mexico's Independence Celebration. You will notice the huge Mexican flag decoration in the background. This is where the president (or presidents, as was the case this year) makes his big State of the Union speech.

Cathedral in the Zocalo.Bellas Artes Museum with Josh Oettle (fellow intern)
Zocalo with Amy Oettle (fellow intern)
My relationship with Frida Kahlo was taken to another level.
Mexican Nationalism at its greatest. Seriously, we gringos will never know nationalism like this. Apparently, every day, these three platoons come to the Palacio Nacional. "Why?" you ask. To take down the flag.

The Pad

As many of you have heard, I moved into my own apartment early this week. I really couldn't have asked for a better arrangement--great place with 2 Mexican guys who are a part of our RUF core group. Here are some pics to give you all an idea of what my pad looks like.

The complex.

The building.

The living room.

The dining room.

My room.

The roomies' room.

The bathroom.

The laundry room.

On Being a Missionary and Taking Days Off...

My very loving friends had this conversation about me today in relation to my taking a day of rest:

Mike: i didnt think missionarys had days off?
does satan take a day off?
James: no!
Mike: THAT BOY NEEDS TO WORK 24/7!
James: kwiki-mart style!



I love those guys.

Nobody's Perfect

Note:

Tuition at the UNAM for one semester is 20 centavos. Conversion to the dollar...2 cents.

2 cents a semester for college tuition. Believe it.

Interview

You can see an interview that I did sitting on Peter Dishman's couch here.

The View From Up Here

As of late (a.k.a. since I got back from NYC in early August), my Bible reading and prayer time have been given much more structure due to The Book of Common Prayer. If you don't know what that is, as was my position before some great people recommended it to me at Pre-Field Training, the book is published by the Anglican church and contains both some liturgical prayers and scriptures that follow the church calendar. For those of you, like myself, who grew up outside of a denomination that uses the church calendar for Bible reading, this can be a very helpful thing. At the end of the book is a Bible reading schedule to help you read the entire Bible in 2 years. Every day there are 2 or more Psalms, and Old Testament passage, a New Testament passage, and a passage from the Gospels. I'm loving it, and I highly recommend you head over to Amazon.com and purchase a copy if you feel like you need a little more structure in your Bible reading.

I say all of that to lead up to this little nugget of information. Every morning, as I head out to read my Bible, I am blown away as I walk out of Peter's door, take one flight of stairs up, climb a latter, and see this...

When was the last time you prayed for your city with a birds eye view of it? It's a pretty amazing feeling.

Doing It Big in MEXICO.

These are my breakfast weapons here south of the border, and, as I hope is evident in this picture, they are big. What can I say--I'm proud of my breakfast food.

Well, I've been in Mexico for 5 days now, and it's been a whirlwind, a meticulously self-aware, culture-shocked whirlwind. It's weird because I had forgotten almost completely about this part of my time in Puebla. Basically, I go through various emotional stages every day. However, everyday they get less intense. If you got my update/prayer email, you were made aware of this, and I greatly appreciate anyone who is praying for my adjustment to life here. I look forward to being comfortable here and falling in love with the city. It's quite different from Puebla, and I'm fighting the urge to get nostalgic about my time there.

I'm still staying with the missionary here, Peter Dishman, but it looks like an apartment may have finally fallen into place. I originally wanted to live with a family, but it looks like I will have an apartment and possibly share it with 2 guys from our RUF group (the only 2 guys in our RUF group in fact) which would be super sweet. I've met both of them and they are really great guys with a sincere desire for honest community and edifying relationships--wow, what a blessing.

Speaking of blessings and people who want honest community, today we had our RUF (which we call CUR) core group planning meeting. It was supposed to last from 3pm-6pm but instead went from 3pm to 9pm. Great times. These students are very excited about what God is doing on their campus, and they shared their ideas very freely. In addition to their fervor, I have been blown away by the spiritual maturity of these students. It turns out the CUR group is far smaller than I thought, actually just 15-20 people at this point. However, we have a solid group of believers to grow from. Praise God! Most of these students have just recently come to the Christian faith.

One girl, Monce, comes from a family in which the father is part of a pluralistic cult which teaches that no religion should be dwelt on. Instead, each religion should catapult you to another, so that you are constantly climbing a religious ladder of world cultures and beliefs. In addition, her "faculty" (major) here is one of great Communist thought and presence. So, she comes most recently from that worldview. It was wonderful to hear her reflections on Sundays sermon (at a student gathering we do every week here at Peter's house). She talked about how she longs for her family to come to know Jesus. She also talked about the great fear she has as she goes into a Communist faculty as a representative of Jesus. This year in the CUR we will continue to preach the gospel to her...only it can calm her fears and give her rest in the power of Jesus to change her Communist peers' hearts.

Hero or Villain? Liberator or Murderer?

In this article, Alvaro Vargas Llosa (who I have come to admire a great deal as a Latin American thinker and politician) examines the true history behind the world-wide icon, Che Guevara. One of my favorite parts in relation to Che's role as the head of a political prison called La Cabaña:

“Which brings us back to Carlos Santana and his chic Che gear. In an open letter published in El Nuevo Herald on March 31 of this year, the great jazz musician Paquito D’Rivera castigated Santana for his costume at the Oscars, and added: “One of those Cubans [at La Cabaña] was my cousin Bebo, who was imprisoned there precisely for being a Christian. He recounts to me with infinite bitterness how he could hear from his cell in the early hours of dawn the executions, without trial or process of law, of the many who died shouting, ‘Long live Christ the King!"

Ethnography of 25th Street Harlem from 9:30-10:30pm

Having finished what I thought were my ethnographic observations in front of the Apollo Theatre on 25th Street in Harlem, myself, along with Ben and Bonnie, headed back the way we had come. We hadn’t gone far when Bonnie noticed a small group of black men standing on the other side of the street. They looked like they were setting up for some kind of event, possibly a band preparing to play, so we headed across the street to see what the commotion was about.

We walked up on the men and quickly realized they were street preachers. They were dressed in what I can only describe as camouflage tunics. The material flowed like a dress from the men’s shoulders to their feet. Each had on a camouflage hat shaped like that of Malcolm X to match the tunic. Many of the men had well-groomed beards, making them look more Middle Eastern than they would have without facial hair. The man preaching would dictate various scripture references to his peers, and they would frantically flip to the passages and read them aloud. The preacher would then stop them after almost every phrase to interject either his own re-wording of the passage, or a word-for-word hyper-inflected mimic of what his friend had just said.

After just a few minutes, our efforts of hiding behind all the blacks and remaining unnoticed came to an abrupt halt. The preacher pulled out the infamous picture of Jesus (the headshot) which we have all seen a million times and thus recognize as a depiction of Christ. This version, however, had drawn-in horns and the number 666 written on his forehead. The man held up the picture passionately. Looking at me he spoke:
“Step forward my brother. Who were you taught that this is a picture of?”
“Jesus,” I replied assertively.
“Exactly,” the man continued, “this is what is being taught—that this man is Jesus.”

I was confused as to his point. After all, I didn’t believe Jesus really looked like the picture. Actually, I was offended by the picture as well! The man continued, making me into the bad guy with every thrust of his argument. He quickly shouted to his readers, “Revelation chapta 1, versus 12 through 15.”

A shorter man shouted from the King James Version, “And I turned to see the voice that spake with me. And being turned, I saw seven golden candlesticks; and in the midst of the seven candlesticks one like unto the Son of man.”

“A son like who? Who is this son of man?” The preacher asked me.

I replied, “Jesus.”



The reader continued, “Clothed with a garment down to the foot, and girt about the paps with a golden girdle. His head and his hairs were white like wool as white as snow.”

“Hair like what?” The preacher questioned the crowd.
“Wool!” They responded.
“Now, who has hair like wool?” He asked me. I hesitated.
“Is this hair like wool?” He asked as he indicated the hair in the picture of Jesus.
“No,” I replied as I smirked and laughed nervously.
“That hair is wooly!” The preacher remarked, pointing to a black man standing beside me. “Your brother has wooly hair!”


The reader yelled again, “And his eyes were as a flame of fire; and his feet like unto fine brass.”

“What color is brass?” He questioned, looking me in the eyes.
”It’s like gold,” I replied nervously.
The crowd burst into laughter. Smirking, one man told me that he works in a printing factory and that brass is 3 shades lighter than dark brown.
“So, brass is brown,” the preacher concluded.

At this point I realized that the men were making an argument for a black Jesus, but I did not realize the implications of that theological distinction. Their agenda would not remain hidden for long.

The men pulled out pictures of lynchings in the 1950’s. They pointed to the smiling white men in the background and made statements about how my people had oppressed their people. They were right. I told them that I agreed; it was sickening and wrong for whites to oppress blacks. The preacher went into a rage of passion.

“Don’t you think you should pay for that? Should whites not be oppressed for what they did to us?”

A man who had walked up behind me just minutes before voiced his opinion loud enough for it to be heard: “Hell yes they should.”

“When are they gonna pay?” The preacher asked.

“I’ll make ‘em pay right now,” The man behind me prodded. “String ‘em up right here.”

I realized then what was happening—racism in the name of religion. After the men had vented their hatred, they began to make demands: “If you’re sorry, kiss my boots,” one man told me.

I told the leader that I believed Christianity to be about love and not hatred. Looking him in the eyes, I told him that I loved him and asked him if he loved me. He stared into the whites of my eyes and said sternly, “No I don’t love you, I hate you.” He communicated clearly; his Christianity was not about loving me. In fact, he was only out to make me pay for what my people had done to his people (and other oppressed people groups) in the past.

The discussion continued in an organized manner, hinging mostly on random verses from the Bible all of which were about God’s love for Israel. The men insisted continuously that they were the true Israel. They brought out a chart of all the 12 lost tribes of Israel. On it were many oppressed people groups ranging from Africans to Dominicans.

They insisted I get out my Bible and the scripture wars were on. I brought up Acts 10 where Peter is praying on his rooftop and has a vision from the Lord that he should eat of animals that the Jews consider to be unclean. The preacher tried to focus on verses 11 and 12 which talk about the actual sheet being lowered. I urged the people to keep reading. I read from verse 34: “Then Peter began to speak: “I now realize how true it is that God does not show favoritism but accepts men from every nation who fear him and do what is right.”

I thought I had stifled them. The preacher quickly assigned a few new verses (never passages, just verses) to his readers. They wanted to return to verses about Israel the nation. At what was perhaps the pinnacle of the conversation we began to talk about hope and salvation. The preacher asked me what the power of God was. I responded that the power of God is Christ which I have inside of me through faith. He continued to look me straight in the eye (which he did throughout the debate) and I sensed a rage I had not sensed before: “You don’t have the spirit of God in you! You don’t have Jesus. Jesus called you a dog!” I couldn’t believe it. No one had ever made such heretical statements to me before. I was more sad for my brother than I was hurt. How could he say these things in the name of Christianity?

After that point, I decided that I needed to try and make an exit at the next opportunity I could. I now noticed many different people than the ones who had been around at the beginning of the debate. A middle-aged woman stood close and to my left. She got excited about what the preacher said, but did not show me any form of hate. In fact, I sensed a bit of compassion in her demeanor. An older man to my right fought desperately against my points and was one of the readers at times. He also looked directly in my eyes and spoke very politely to me. At one point, I put my hand on his arm, and he didn’t seem to mind. One of the few who remained from the beginning was an older gentleman sitting on a folding chair. He had been hidden from my view by the small crowd of people at times, but I noticed his composed manner once again. If anyone had a reason to hate whites, I knew it was him. I imagined the past degradation he must have received in the 50’s.

Our argument moved to a debate over Galatians. The preacher quoted a verse from chapter 2 and refused to admit that Christianity was for Gentiles. He told some elaborate history of how Galatians isn’t really about salvation for Gentiles, but rather Paul was actually a missionary to Israelites who weren’t worshiping in spirit and truth. Since this nation wasn’t a Christian nation, Paul had to disguise his writing as not to expose his underlying purpose. Thus Galatians is really about the news that salvation is for Israel only coming to a people who were not living in the truth of that reality.

I got very frustrated with trying to argue scripture with the men and told them I really needed to go (I had done this various times throughout the debate). An older man stepped up to the front and asked them to let him say something. He looked me in the eyes and spouted off a Hebrew sentence that sounded something like, “Ahem dofu alec tubaw shada.” At that point, I saw a window of opportunity and I backtracked out of the circle that had gathered around me. Ben, Bonnie, and I turned our backs on the men and women as they arose in victory claps and taunts.

Man's Fall in Adam, and the Remedy in Christ

By Ralph Erskine (1685-1752)

I found this jem-of-an-excerpt through some free online resources. I love its eloquent, profound communication of the heart of the gospel.


"O! unexampled love! so vast, so strong,
So great, so high, so deep, so broad, so long!
Can finite thought this ocean huge explore,
Unconscious of a bottom or a shore?
His love admits no parallel; for why,
At one great draught of love he drank hell dry.
No drop of wrathful gall he left behind,
No dreg to witness that he was unkind.
The sword of awful justice pierc'd his side,
That mercy thence might gush upon the bride.
The meritorious labours of his life,
And glorious conquests of his dying strife;
Her debt of doing, suff'ring, both cancell'd,
And broke the bars his lawful captive held.
Down to the ground the hellish hosts he threw,
Then mounting high, the trump of triumph blew,
Attended with a bright seraphic band,
Sat down enthron'd sublime on God's right hand;
Where glorious choirs their various harps employ
To sound his praises with confed'rate joy.
There he, the bride's strong Intercessor sits,
And thence the blessings of his blood transmits,
Sprinkling all o'er the flaming throne of God,
Pleads for her pardon his atoning blood;
Sends down his holy co-eternal Dove,
To shew the wonders of incarnate love,
To woo and win the bride's reluctant heart,
And pierce it with his kindly killing dart:
By gospel-light to manifest that now
She has no further with the law to do;
That her new Lord has loos'd the fed'ral tie,
That once hard bound her to do or die;
That precepts, threats, no single mite can crave.
Thus for her former spouse he digg'd a grave;
The law fast to his cross did nail and pin,
Then bury'd the defunct his tomb within,
That he the lonely widow to himself might win."