Let me tell you about Deb...

Vancouver hosts some really interesting individuals. The average day in the Friendship Centre bears witness to this. Inside, we have some of the loveliest people in the world; outside, some of the strangest. One of the sights I have been most curious about occurs on Wednesdays. If I am vigilant, at some point in the day, I may see a slight woman walk toward the SkyTrain station with a longsword strapped to her back. It's the sort of little thing I live for. This is really interesting, because people in BC tend to frown on the idea of owning guns, so a lady with a three-foot-long edged weapon is, well, ironic? Confusing? Counterintuitive?

I've been planning to talk to her for some time, because, hello, sword. Sword = awesome. You can imagine my sheer delight, then, when I noticed her standing at Waterfront Station tonight with a rapier on her back (two swords! Twice as awesome!). She was very friendly. She's been learning the sword for over two years now, and she owns two longswords, a side sword, and a very nice rapier. She's working on her blue ribbon and will test to qualify next month. By day she works with alzheimer's patients; by night, she duels. Her name is Deb.

Why am I telling you this, you ask? Well, as we got on the SkyTrain tonight to head home, three ladies were sitting in the adjacent seats, and one muttered to the others, "This is going to be interesting..." and glanced meaningfully, pointedly at Deb, as if the mere presence of the sword certified her as a nutcase and probable nuisance. I'll be straight up with you; it made me very angry. My suspicion is that Deb's life and friends are probably significantly, qualitatively more interesting than that lady's life and friends. Deb minds her own business, and I didn't hear her denigrate anyone over the course of our forty-five minute conversation. Deb was perfectly pleasant, sincere, kind, and interesting--and yet, in that lady's eyes, she was weighed, numbered, and found wanting, just because of the sword.

I have two thoughts: the nature of my own judging heart, and the problem of responding to human judgment. I definitely judge people. I often actively try not to, but that doesn't mean I succeed. A lot of the time, I don't really know what to do with people, and I let the fact that I am uncomfortable stand as an excuse not to engage them. It's not good, and it's not Christlike. I need grace as I travel around this crazy, diverse city. I need grace and love to reach out to people who are not like me in many ways. I need grace.

My second thought is probably going to be a little meandering (it's after midnight). The lady on the SkyTrain judged Deb and found her wanting just because she was carrying a sword. Something that wasn't even a part of her served to define her in the other woman's eyes within seconds. The lady knows nothing about her. Nothing. This hits me pretty hard, because the Lord's been doing some stuff lately in surfacing areas where I've let the judgment of others dictate who I think I am or should be. If you've had a few significant conversations with me, you've probably heard me mention the movie Mean Girls. It's probably my favorite source of illustrations, second to the Bible. If that doesn't make sense, I probably can't explain it to you; you just had to be there. I'm not exactly sure how Tina Fey got hold of so many details out of my life for her movie, but, when I saw it in the theater with my mom, there were times when I cried while everyone else laughed (though I laughed louder than the rest of the theater when Regina George got hit by that bus). It just resonated so much with me--the cruelty of one's peers. I was weighed, measured, and found wanting many times in middle school and high school, in school and in church. People saw me, made snap judgments, started rumors, and made catty little comments (and some not so catty or little, but shouted from cars as I rollerbladed in my neighborhood). I felt hounded. Worse, I wondered if those things were true, and I weighed and found myself wanting too. Here's the deal: it's like the Bible says--man looks at the outside, but God looks at the heart. I was basing my view of myself on the opinions of people who were absolutely ignorant and unqualified to have opinions in the first place. Think about that. It's like making assumptions about gravity based on the scribblings of a two-year-old. It doesn't make sense in any other arena of life. It's like evaluating the relative dollar worth of something based on whether the dog will pee on it. I mean, really? I've spent years of my life valuing myself based on the casual words of callous and cruel teenagers who have no right or authority to make significant pronouncements about anyone's relative worth, and I am just starting to see the absurdity of that. Only God knows who I really am; may I listen ever harder to His voice. May His opinion reign in me. And in you, too. You are precious, valuable, accepted in the beloved, forgiven, justified, complete in Christ, the apple of His eye. One day you and I will shine like the sun in the kingdom of our Father.

Praises

• I'm going to be able to take a trip to Ottawa in February for a prayer conference. The Lord opened the door for this trip up so clearly and beautifully and provided for it. I am terribly excited.
• I have already gotten to witness to several people in my first two weeks back. I have had a couple of situations in which the Lord has given me a lot of freedom to speak out.
• I was very sad in the days leading up to coming back to Canada, but the day I left, the Lord gave me such incredible peace, and as the plane approached the city, He gave me such a yearning toward this place. It is good to be back. I miss my Memphis people, but it is good and right for me to be here now.
  

Prayer requests

• Please continue to pray for my landlord. Pray for wisdom for me to witness to her, and pray that she would hear with understanding, accept, and obey. Pray that she would be like the good soil in Matthew 13.
• Please continue to pray for divine appointments. Pray for boldness for me to step out and speak the truth. Pray that the Lord will help me to speak the truth uncompromisingly, and that His love will shine out even as I do.
• Please pray for opportunities to start ladies' Bible studies. I am not naturally skilled at gathering people. Pray for the faith just to try it.
  

You who are still reading, thank you very much for sitting through this. I covet your prayers.
-Jennifer

A little shameless promotion

Go here. Isn't my mom cool? I was able to attend a luncheon today to start a 12-week leadership training seminar to train women to use Chronological Bible Storying to disciple other women by exposing them to the Word of God and examining its stories to develop a biblical worldview. Things are looking exciting in Memphis!

Greetings from the Great White North

Things I have discovered:

• Alanis Morissette and Sarah McLachlan do get a fair amount of air time.
• People do say "eh," in much the same way we ended half our sentences with "hey" in Zimbabwe.
• Americans have a pretty well universal reputation in Canada for being rude.
• Canada is well and truly multicultural. I have never seen so many people from so many different places in my life.
• The sun rises at about 4/4:30am and sets at about 10/10:30/11pm, which messes me all the heck up.

I'm currently sitting in a basement apartment in Surrey, BC, typing on a keyboard that has Arabic letters in addition to English letters. It's pretty fancy. I'm staying with a truly wonderful couple from Iran, who are currently out of the country visiting family, and I am here to make connections. This morning I found my way from the apartment to the church via bus and skytrain by myself for the first time, and I'm kind of proud of that. One of the things I do here is simply to ride around on buses, etc., and meet people. Got to have a Spanish conversation yesterday, which was pretty stinkin' fancy.

Not much to say on a blog, I think. The things that have really meant a lot to me have been late-night conversations with my Iranian hosts, who hold a near and dear place in my heart, and they have been an incredible encouragement to me this past week. I am currently in charge of keeping their fish, Mahi, alive. Please pray for the fish. I did tell them that if he died, I'd go to a pet shop, find a fish of the same color, use fingernail clippers to trim one of its fins down, and a Sharpie to put a stripe on its back, but I hope it doesn't come to that.

If you happen to see this:

• pray for divine opportunities to meet and share with people
• pray for wisdom for me and my teammates in engaging so many cultures
• pray for Royal Heights Baptist Church, the group I'm helping to represent
• pray for Canada; it's about two percent Christian (by name)

My current schedule:
Sunday:
Morning: attend church at Royal Heights, assist with the older children's Sunday school class
Afternoon/evening: assist with youth at an Arabic church
Evening: weekly debriefing
Monday:
9:30-5:30ish: Discovery, which entails riding around Vancouver and intentionally making conversation with strangers
6-?: Bible study at my supervisors' house
Tuesday:
10am-12pm: leadership development with the RHBC pastor
12pm-7pm: Discovery
7pm-?: conversation help with Korean students at the Place of Loving People, downtown Vancouver
Wednesday: Adventure day (free day!): usually this will involve hanging out with my supervisors in different areas of Canada.
Thursday:
9:30-6:30ish: Discovery
7-?: help with youth at RHBC
Friday:
?-7:30: prepare to help with youth at the Jesus Way Fellowship
7:30-?: help with youth at the Jesus Way Fellowship
Saturday:
?-6pm: hit the parks, trolling for people to talk to
6pm-?: help with youth worship, RHBC

It's fun but exhausting.

Workin' Girl

So I've temporarily been bumped up to the receptionist's desk on account of a luncheon, and I have to say, I've never seen so many squashy, carpal-tunnel saving devices in my life. My hands are safe (yesssss).

For those of you who aren't up on all my bidness, I've spent the last couple of weeks helping to shift the library's collection, and we are finally over half done, but it still feels like an endless job. It's probably a good work out...

I thought I had all kinds of interesting musings, but now that I've started typing, I really don't.

Thanks.
-mgmt.

On another note entirely.

So occasionally I make forays into the freezer to inquire after long-forgotten frozen pizzas and the like, and I had noticed a Wal-mart-bagged something in there, but I usually avoid such things, as they generally turn out to be frozen chickens or turkeys. Today, however, as Steven and I were poking about, he pointed out what was actually in the bag:


Yes, that is exactly what it looks like. See, Steven's Sunday School teacher works at Kroger, and every Christmas he gets to take home a pig's head, because Kroger always orders two (for what purpose I dare not ask), and fails to sell one. So James gets to bring it home and, being a man who works with youth, he uses it for pranks. Steven put this in his best friend Ben's car one morning during church, and Ben didn't find it till late that night, but he thought, why waste a perfectly good pig's head? So he put it into his mother's freezer. Mrs. W., suspecting nothing, opened the freezer a few days later and freaked and threw it away, so Ben rescued it, and Steven transferred it to our freezer, where, after the pattern, Mom found it a few days later, freaked, and then gave in. So there it sits. I have no idea what we're going to do with it, but it has eyeballs and everything, and it's thoroughly repulsive. Welcome to the weird, weird life of my family.

For y'all: Ps. 126:5-6 Those who sow in tears shall reap in joy. He who continually goes forth weeping, bearing seed for sowing, shall doubtless come again with rejoicing, bringing his sheaves with him.

Also: Ps. 149: 5-9 Let the saints be joyful in glory; let them sing aloud on their beds. Let the praises of God be in their mouths, and a two-edged sword in their hands, to execute vengeance on the nations, and punishment on the peoples; to bind their kings with chains, and their nobles with fetters of iron; to execute on them the written judgment--this honor have all His saints. Praise the LORD!

So basically I don't know quite what that means, but it really jumped out at me a lot. Maybe y'all have some suggestions.

As for me, I'm on a little adventure. For months now this thing has been bothering me, and it came to a head last night at our Lord's Supper service, where God kind of said, either deal with this, or you can't take My supper. So I'm trying to deal with it, and I would appreciate your prayer support, because this is sort of a scary situation for me.

Here's the deal: A year and a half to two years ago, I hit a car in the Union parking lot. I was trying to back out from between two behemoths that were really close to me, and I was concentrating on the one next to me so hard that I didn't see a third behind me. Well, I smacked into its bumper. Naturally, I freaked out, got out, and looked, and I couldn't see any damage to it, and my car looked okay, so, since I didn't know what to do and didn't see anything I could do, I drove away. Well, I saw the car again later, and it looked like the bumper had been pushed up, but I still didn't know how to deal with it, so I didn't. This has been bothering me for ages. I've talked to Mom about it and given it to God and repented, but He's been telling me for a while now that He wants me to make it right. He's even told me who at Union to call. So last night I surrendered to it, and I called Union this morning and talked to the head of Safety and Security, who was very gracious and promised to research it. The scary part now is that I don't know what's going to come out of his research or how it's going to affect me. I'm going to do whatever I have to do to make it right, but I'm definitely in unknown territory. So if you guys want to lift me up for that, I'd appreciate it greatly.