On the Road Again

I plan on heading out from Savannah in the morning. I still do not really have a new desination in mind. I am thinking that I am heading away from the coast though. Huricane season = to much rain for me.

Savannah

I am in Savannah hanging out with James and Dean! Right now the plan is to hang out here a while, and then heading out in a yestsofar undetermined direction.

Statesboro

I have spent the last four nights in Statesboro, GA. Travis one of my Thailand teammates lives at the CCF house and I stopped by to hang out with him for a day or two, well a day or two turned into four, and now I am off again. Over the weekend I stopped for church in a little town called Register. It was a very interesting stop. I am not going to go into too many details, but is was definitely a very interesting stop. The church is a funny institution. Hopefully It is not the place that causes wounds, but is a place of refuge. A place where God is glorified instead of simplified, quantified, or sterilized.

IE has experianced an error and needs to close.

Horray, for blogging. This could be a long one, allot has happened since the last time I posted.



Last week, Mr. Kuehner got in at about 5 and got to meet Jeffery before church., He brought me a great care package fukk of notes, supplies, and of course candy! It was a really big encouragement to get to spend some time with him, and to know that Life Christian was keeping me in their thoughts and prayers. The other thing that was so great about having Mr. Kuehner there was that he is my only link to the more charasmatic elements of teaching in my growing up. Because of him I think that the gifts of the Spirit are still alive and active in the church today, but I have very little knowledge or expreiance pertaining to them and how they should be properly manifested. Well, I was going to see some of them manifested that night at the service at The Sactuary. The service was one of the most dynamic services I have ever experianced. The "head" minister got up after praise and worship and told us all that he didnt have any real message for the church. He asked who did. For the next 30-40 minutes, the microphone was handed around from one person to another. Anyone who had a word for the body was given a chance to speak it. I really enjoyed and apreciated the trust and vitality exibited inside the body of their fellowship.

I had been conscipted into service running sound shortly after I got there, so after the service I came down and got to meet a lot of really incredible people that Jeffery had wanted me to get a chance to talk to. ** at this point my post got deleted, and it is late now, so quality of report will go down I appologise**

Vaughn from the Sanctuary spoke some really encouraging prophetic words over me, I have very little experiance with this sort of thing, but the bible says that prophecy is to exort the body. I fealt very encouraged by it.

I walked the nest several days, and made good time. The liner socks have helped allot with my blisters.

I got to Swainsboro, met JJ a pizza delivery guy when he offered to give me a ride. He throught what I was doing was so neat that he made me sign something for him. He also let me chill at his trailer until I was ready to walk after the midday sun. No one else was there, compleate trust.

That day I finshed walking to Twincity. One of the people that Jeffery had introduced me to was a minister in that area, and I was supposed to call him when i got to Twincity so we could meet up. He didnt answer his phone when I called him. I was sitting outside of a gasstation for less than 2 minutes when a man walked up, after only about 30 second of conversation he offered for me to come to thier house and swim and eat diner. It turns out that they are also out of church christians. One of their biggest problems with the way the instatutional church works is that it robs the average member of thier personal minestry. I do not feal that the church nessesarily robs members by not allowing them to take part, but it can and often does rob them by a lack of opportunity and especialy a lack of expectation to be active and vital in the body.

I got in touch with Tony (Jeffery's freind in the Twincity/metter/garfield area) and he took me to a minestry that he is connected to called New Beginings in Christ. I stayed there for half the week, and have been staing at his house the last three nights. NBIC is run by an amazing couple named Donald and Joanna Atkinson. Faith based rehab is a really interesting portrait that the church could learn allot from. There is genuine comunity there, and people are open and honest with their problems, genuinly seeking help and wisdom in the comunity. Tony and his family have been great to me, his wife and two daughters have made me feal very much at home. Tony and I have spent a ton of time talking and he has ad allotto say that has taught me allot.

Sorry that there are very few details in the post, but it has gotten late and this post is already slow in getting here. Hopefully I will be able to fill in the details a bit more later on.

We dont play at AAA

For the past whole week I have been in East Dublin Ga, staying with Jeffery Aaron at his furniture refinishing and cabinet shop. This has been a really incredible stop in my journey. As I said in the last post I got hooked up with Jeffery through the past of Mt. Zion Baptist church in Jeffersonville. Jeffery's open accepting responce towards me was almost imediate and as complete as I could imagine. He told me that he fealt a spiritual conection, and well, for Jeffery and I that was all it took.

The very first day that I was here, we went out on an "errand run." This involved running all over town meeting with different clients and taking care of lots of small things. In addition we made several stops so that he could introduce me to people that he thought that it would be worth my while to meet. He was right. Let me interject here that Jeffery is an ordained minister at his church, his title is pastoral care minister. He views his ministry as one into the comunity and even though he works full time at his cabinet shop he is truely never doing anything that to him cannot be ministry. He is an amazing example of what it is to live out your faith in the day to day dealings we have.

To illustrate just how throughly accepted I was by Jeffery, the first day after I got dropped of at his shop and we had ridden around for the better part of the day we stopped by his wifes office so I could meet her. She was really excited about what I was doing but while we were all talking it came up that the childrens sitter needed to go soon, and that neither of them would be back at the house in time without rearangine thier plans. "Thats alright" was Jeffery responce, "Will can watch them." After having known me for only the better part of a day I was watching their children and really just a part of the family.

Here at the shop I have not been able to be super helpful, but I have been able to do some cleaning and other manual tasks here and there. Mostly I have been helping the painter, Albert. Albert lives at the shop and for various reasons doesn't have his drivers licence. We have been hanging out all week, it has been great. Jeffery told me that I can take out any of the trucks at the shop whenever I want, Albert knows his way around town, and I drive. It let both of us get out and take care of errands and just spend some time hanging out too.

Jeffery has introduced me to a ton of people throughout the week that he though would be interesting people to talk to considering what I am doing and trying to findout. I have really heard some pretty incredible words spoken to me by quite a few of the people that I have come in contact with. Words of encouragement, wisdom, teaching, and friendship. Last night I got to talk to a menonite freind of his, it was really interesting how allot of his belief structures paralell allot of the bigger questions and issues that I have been trying to find answers for over the past three or four years. Our outlook on our roles as Christians and the need for us to have developed an understanding of what we belive, without the ridgidity in our beleif structures that does not allow us to discus and learn from one another was also very similar.

I should be leaving East Dublin in the morning. Bob Keuhner is driving over today to deliver a care package from Life Christian Fellowship and I am excited to get to see him tonight. We are all going to the the "believers meeting" at the Sanctuary of Dublin, Jefferys church. Allot of the staff and others from the church had been gone on Sunday when we went, but I have been told that wednesday is their real service anyway. It is supposed to be a more freeform meeting as far as worship and planning of messages and such goes. I am excited about it. So far there has been absolutly no rhyme reason formula or anything else to where I have gotten great acceptance and where I have not. Every where I go however, God is showing me allot about his people and those who claim to be apart of his church. One thing that was obviouse to me was the stark contrast between two of my meetings last week, one that seemed to be motiveated by fear one fearless. While I do not think God wants us to be nieve or foolish, I hope that I can learn to listen to Him in strange and dangerous siutations, and that that will make me fearless as well.

I have included more paragrah breaks in this post at the request of Chris Baker.

In East Dublin

After leaving Life Center on sunday after church I took Marks advice and headed south through Warner Robins and Bonair across 96 and through Tarversville. I have since found out that that stretch between Bonair and Tarversville is prime blackbear country, but oh well i didn't see any. By tuesday afternoon I had gotten all but about 8 miles from Jeffersonville which I had decided was my destination for the week and was planning on going about three more miles that day and finishing the rest of it the next morning. The problem with all of this was that some where in all of the hiking over the last two and a half days I had worn and opened up a blister on the back of my right heal. This would not be as painful as it was if moleskin would stick to your ankle, but it just doesn't like to stay there for very long. The other small problem was that I had gone about nine miles and camped the night since the last time I had filled up my water suplies. The good news is that I got stopped by the sherifs and knew that there should be a small church about a mile ahead on the right where I could stop and get some water. As headed down the road, rather slowly at this point a car passed stopped, sat, then came back and stopped next to me. The guy inside asked if I could use a ride and I asked if he would just take me as far as this church up the road a little ways. I got in and we got to talking, he is also an out of church christian upset with the problem of the differance between faith and religion. We ended up missing the turn for the church and he took me all the way to Jeffersonville, but as we were talking he gave me on e of the most fitting statements between faith and religion. He said that growing up in the church they had given him allot of answers. Answers that he was not allowed to question. Where he was at now he was beyind that and looking for the right questions. That really struck a chord with me. God is so big, so unfathomable; As we search for him all the better we can do is to refine the questions that we have about him. Reigion gives us easy answers, faith teaches us to ask the right questions in our search for God. Jeffersonville was a pretty neat small town. I bummed around for the day. As I canvassed the town I saw that one of the churches had a tuesday night bible study. Not having anything else to do I waited around till six fourty five and joined them. The service that night at beyond the walls was really neat. It was a very interactive service because it was really set up as a bible study that they had all prepared for, and not just a regular sermon. After the service no one knew of a good place for me to spend the night, so at my request the pastor dropped me off at the Sherifs station to see if anyone there could tell me a place that I might be able to camp. The night deputy told me taht I could camp in the city park, and he also told me about a church in Danville, about 8 miles away that I might check out called Mt. Zion. The next morning, I woke up and during the course of the day came across a pair of people that I had a great time talking to. The both really strongly recomended that I talk to the pastor at the local Church of God. One of them even called him and set up an appointment for me. Though the circumstances have since changed through furhter conversation, this was to be the first truely negative encounter I have had with a church. The pastor told me that he saw me as a bright young man, who should be at home with a real job being constructive to the body rather than wandering around using sympathy tactics to get handouts from churches. The real gyst of the conversation I got from him was really one of fear. I know that he was trying to be helpful to me, but the few hurtful statements and even more so the dissapointment in my reception from a person that others had reasured me was the man to be talking to brought me all the way to the edge of tears. He told me that the reason the church used to be able to operate the way it did was because it was a different culture back then. The reason they were different than us is that they were a peculiar called out people wasn't it? Are we still not supposed to be that? Is a difference in culture really a valid reason that we cannot still realy rely on the church or is it a sad statment on our state of affairs? We need to stop accepting the curent state of the church as Ok if we really do see problems in it. Don't we need to be working towards change by being the impetus for it? I told the pastor that I would rather go and investigate Mt. Zion than accept his offer for a hotel room for the night, and he called the pastor from Mt. Zion and drove me over. My reception at Mt. Zion was much much better. The pastor there also told me flat out that he did not understand what it was that I was doing, but he didn't really need to if God had called me to do it. The congragation at the wednesday night service was extreamly warm and welcoming as well. The church did not have much of a place to put me up for the night, but let me string up my hammock in their playground facilities for the night. In the morning the pastor told me that it was a sad function of the way the american church works, but that he really could not think of a thing for me to do to help out around the church. They hired grounds and maintenance crews that took care of everything. He did not want to leave me hanging out to dry however and called a freind in Dublin to see if there might be more for me to do out here. His freind was more than willing to have me on for a while. The pastor from Mt Zion dropped me off in East Dublin Thursday morning on his way to Scotsburough, and I have been here at AAA Furniture Refinishing and Custom Cabinets having a great time ever since. It looks like I will be hanging out here with Jeffory Aaron, my host, and his family till about Wednesday, so I wil update you on my activities here closer to the time of my departure.

Thank you all for all the phonecalls, texts, emails and posts here on the Blog they have been a huge encouragement. Things are still going great, and while I am still getting blisters during the walking portions of the trip, they are not near as bad as they have been. Also once again, sorry that these are so poorly edited and that my spelling abilites are elementary at best, but they are posted in a pretty big hurry. Yall are the best.

Macon Report

Here in about 12 hours or so i plan on leaving Macon. I have had a really great time here. The number of really great people that have taken me in, and over all resonce have made this one of the best cities I have stopped in by far. Ok, so i havnt really been on the road too long to stop at to many places. But here and Crawford were both amazing. I have spent most of the week at Life Center here in Macon. One of their guys, Ben, has provided me with a fouton and shower. I really like the way that this church is stuctured and laid out. Their small group are more inportant to the way the church functions than most places I have experianced. Even to the point of there being no janitorial staff at the church because the life groups are expected to take care of the cleaning on a rotating basis. People here seem to have a very genuine level of comunity and comitment not often found in my experiance. They also have some summer interns that I ahve been able to hang out with, and a contruction/rebuild project that I have been able to help out with some, so being able to help out a little was nice. How I got to life center is a pretty long and interesting story, and its a little to late at night for me to be typing the whole thing out. But in breaf it involves being told to move on from a church, some awesome people at a gasstation, several really neat chance encounters, chinese food, being taken in for the night by two seperate couples, hanging some shelves, and making quite a few new friends. I may have a partner join me for the next few weeks or so, but I think that i will have to wait a few more days before I find out for sure.