2004-05-31

We are the champions, my friends

This weekend was busy and full, but it was a good kind of "busy and full" this time. Something interesting was happening every day, and I came out of it feeling pretty good and rejuvenated. Well, except for the fact that I'm sore all over and I'm more than a little sunburned, but more on that later.

I guess the weekend actually started on Thursday night, because Friday was "Service Day" when the students all went out and did "Ingathering", picked up garbage around the campus or other assorted goody-two-shoes type things. So Thursday night John, Amanda and I went to our normal Tae Kwon Do class and all these students were in the gym doing various things. In fact, some of my English students showed up and were playing basketball and badminton. After the TKD class I joined in a basketball shoot-around and impressed some of the girls with my mad hoopin' skillz. In reality I was really rusty but they at least feigned interest in their polite Japanese don't-want-to-offend-the-teacher way.

So Friday was Service Day, but somebody up top forgot to put our names on any schedule so the three of us basically got the day off. Amanda and I practiced for the big weekend activity--a school-wide softball game that was scheduled for Sunday. Amanda had never played softball before--I think she played cricket in Australia, which is sort of similar but different enough that she had to learn all these new motions and skills. The one thing she really took a liking to was batting, though. I told her to imagine taking swings at some of the lazy students here, which was probably not a very good teacher-ish thing to say but I said it anyway cuz I'm baaaaaaaad. So that was fun. I felt kinda bad, though--I almost hit her with a pretty hard comebacker when I was batting, and then almost broke a window in the gym on my last swing. She didn't seem too offended, so that was good. That took care of Friday morning. In the afternoon I went with John to Mobara to pick up some desserts for the Sabbath potluck. Our Campus Ministries group was in charge of supplying food for the shindig, and being lazy bums we opted to buy the stuff rather than make it ourselves. We'll end up working for them, though--the desserts here are (you guessed it) EXPENSIVE. A little half fruit log cake thing cost about 12 dollars. They weren't very big so we each picked up two, then made a vow that if any little kid took a piece and didn't eat it we were shoving the cake right down their gullets.

Then on Friday evening the Campus Ministries group packed a bunch of students into a bus and headed for the beach. I think I posted some pictures to the website of the event--several of them came out really well. That was a good time, except I found out WHEN I WAS BOARDING THE BUS that they wanted me to speak at the thing. Somebody suffered a massive brain-fart and just plain forgot to ask, but that was cool because I'm used to such shenanigans by now. People know you're a pastor or have experience in ministry and they ask you to do all manner of goofy things. So I slopped together a talk, with a big assist from Amanda who suggested the poem/story "Footprints In The Sand" as a good Beach Vespers story. So I did the talk and had a really good time with the students. I even learned that Violet has a thing developing with a boy, so I decided it was safe to stop treating her like a fusion-powered potato. We even took a walk down the beach and she told me about how excited she was about this new thing and it was cool. I told her that if the guy hurt her she should tell me and I'd beat him up, and she thought that was nifty. It seems that I'm settling into the role of Men-Tor the Friendly Alien, or maybe just Weird But Understanding Old Guy which were the roles I'd HOPED to play when I first got here. After a stint as The Heartbreak Kid it seems things are getting back to semi-normal and I couldn't be happier.

Sabbath was the normal church service--no special worships or anything. The aforementioned potluck went well--the fruit log cakes were a hit and I didn't have to force-feed anyone MY PRECIOUSSSSSS. In the afternoon, we had our normal English Bible study and I led out in the discussion, which went well except I got all emotional and choked up and un-manly at the end. I was talking about prayer, and decided to close with Jesus' prayer in John 17. I told the people there that Jesus prayed for them, and I believe that at this time, when he needed all the strength he could get to face the upcoming Passion, he thought of all of us and drew strength from his love for us. I went around the circle, said each of their names, and said that Christ saw their faces when he was praying--and that's when I started to feel all gooey and blubbery and had to take a moment to compose myself. That was kinda unexpected, but I have no regrets. Some of the students there weren't even Christian and if they at least understood that I care about them, then it's okay if they think I'm a big ol' softie.

We ended up doing an impromptu vespers that evening. Some of the students went over to the apartment of one of the staff here and we cooked noodles for them to eat. Some of the Korean ministers were there so we had some singing--in fact we sang a lot of English songs (glory!) and it was actually a ton of fun. One of the Korean pastors gave a short talk where he told this AWESOME story that I am so pilfering and talking about when I get back to the US.

Then yesterday (yeah, this entry's almost done) the softball game actually happened. I wasn't sure, because the weather has been strangely uncooperative lately, but it was sunny so we played. Unfortunately, it was also humid as all git out so it was super-uncomfortable. I ended up on a team with Amanda, some English students and some nursing students, and a couple of girls who were friends with one of the nursing students. We weren't the most imposing team there, but everyone came up with timely hits and we ended up going undefeated and winning the whole thing. Amanda, who'd never played before, scored twice and got two RBI. She also said she had a great time, which made me happy. I had five hits, scored twice and batted in four, although one of them was kinda cheap because I took a walk with the bases loaded. One of my English students hit a home run, and in this one game against what looked to be the best team all the girls on our team got timely hits to get on base and push runs across. It was an enormous amount of fun and our trophy for winning the tournament was a big ol' box of instant ramen which we distributed among the team members at lunch. Unfortunately, I ended up with a bad sunburn because I either forgot my sunscreen in America or misplaced it here.

This is way too long already. Yeah. This weekend was a blast. I'm enjoying campus life.