2004-04-18

If I might be serious for a moment...

I'm glad that this can be a source of amusement for the people I know and love, because I like to help people laugh. This update, however, I'm intending to be fairly serious. Not because I'm in a terrible mood or anything, it's just that something happened over the weekend that's caused me to do some reflecting on heavier issues. I guess it's appropriate, though. The Bible itself says "there is a time for everything under the sun". A time for recording silly stories about overzealous Okinawan girls, and a time for serious thinking. That's the plan, anyway. It might unravel into a giant fart joke parade or something by the time I'm done.

As I detailed in an earlier entry, we had our first English Dept. Worship Service of the year. I found out one week in advance that we would be doing this on the 17th, and a few days after THAT discovered that I was in charge of getting the whole thing together. All this while I was dealing with the beginning of classes, preparing short mid-week worship talks, and battling an evil Voice Stealing Disease. It became obvious on Friday that the service was going to have a very thrown-together feel to it. Example: Our bulletins were simple half-sheets of plain paper with the absolute bare-bones details of the service. At best, it was gonna be a little...ragged. At worst, well, I didn't want to think about the worst.

The morning of the service I discovered that the PA system was ridiculously "hot" and the mikes were feeding back like crazy. We had no offering plates or songbooks. These got taken care of but such developments did nothing for my confidence. Then at the start of the service we had maybe 7 people in the congregation. Not a big deal to me--I'll speak my heart out for 7 people or 7000 people, but I was thinking it was probably not what the administrators had in mind. At about 11:10, though, a big gob of mostly first year students came in so by the time I got up to speak the small chapel was pretty full. I'd guess that at the peak there were maybe 50 people there. I know we had 30 songbooks and ran out.

So my talk...I did a rehash of my talk where I illustrate the Prodigal Son parable with the story of me running face-first into a door because of a girl at WWC. This is normally a fun talk for me to give because 1) it's a really silly story and 2) the message is truly what I'd want to say to people if I had only one talk to give. UNfortunately, however, I ran into some complications. Because many of the people in attendance have only a rudimentary grasp of English, and because this sermon is super-heavy on colloquialisms and cute little phrases that are even unique to me, I had to change the wording. Massively. What resulted was me talking veeeerrrrryyyy sssllllooowwwlllyyy and using simple language, which completely killed the flow of the talk. I also ran over my usual time by about 15-20 minutes. By the time I was done, my voice was destroyed. Even with the watered-down language, I don't think most of the students could follow what I was saying. If they got 25% of the message I'd feel lucky. And because of the simplified language I'm not sure how meaningful it was to the native/expert speakers. I walked out of the service feeling okay but like I missed the target on most of the audience.

We had an English bible study session in the afternoon so I didn't get back to my apartment until about 4:00. I was so exhausted I tried to sleep but for some reason I couldn't get to sleep. I guess I was focusing on the service, what could have gone better, and what to do for next time. Finally at 5:00 I gave up on sleep and decided to go for a walk. And that's where it happened. Just as I started the walk, up the main road into the college where the long line of sakura trees stands, three people were coming back my direction. Turns out they had been at the service and heard me speak. They said I'd done a good job, and then one of the ladies said in halting English, "The message touched my heart. I had to leave at the end because I was crying. Jesus spoke through you today."

THAT stopped me dead in my tracks. I thanked them profusely for their kind words and let them go on their way. As I turned to continue on, I was the one with misty eyes. Ever since the first time I got up to speak in front of people what, 10 years ago at senior week of prayer at WWVA, I've prayed the same short prayer. Just that through my talk, God will touch one person in the congregation. Just one. If he gives me more that's great, but my goal in each talk is for one person to hear God speaking to them. Well--he gave me one. Even when I was all stressed out over the thrown-together service. Even when I had all these misgivings about the language, the time, my awful voice giving out, etc. Hearing that lady say that restored my focus. Hey, if I'm here to have people say I'm doing a great job, then I might as well go home. Period. People said that in Sacramento. People said that in Loma Linda. People said that in Walla Walla. And it's sure easier to communicate what I want to say back home! I came here because of one thing: I felt like this was the center of God's will for me at this time, that he had some reason for working it out that I could be here. And if I am truly here to give glory to God and discover what "being in the center of his will" means for my life, then the Charlie Brown bulletins, the hot PA, the Phlegm Phairy partying like it was 1999 in my voice box--none of those things mattered. Even the fact that most people there couldn't understand what I was trying to say didn't really matter. God had a message for that woman that morning, and the message (at least the message I tried to give) was that God loves her. Whatever hurts she was carrying around, whatever secret pain or guilt was weighing on her, if she was rejected and betrayed by everyone who mattered, there was and is someone who looks at her and says, "That's my girl! Whom I love! I will never give her up."

Okay, I just thought of something really amusing to close with. A priest, a rabbi and a minister are in a Mexican restaurant...just kidding. It's not a fart joke, I promise. After the service, I was in the back shaking hands and stuff, when these three girls come up to me with those aforementioned crummy bulletins. They've got pens in their hands and they ASKED ME TO AUTOGRAPH their Pic N' Save Charlie Brown bulletins. Since this is a first for me, I wasn't exactly sure what to do, but I went ahead and signed them. I SWEAR, when I come back I am so gonna be a total big-headed diva. I'll pastor your church, but I want my office painted all white and decorated with white orchids. And a bottle of Evian on my desk every morning. Thanks, dahling. And yes, I am counting on some of you to slap the taste outta my mouth if I do that.