Exterminator Gone Mad – What should we do?

As many of you know, Charity and I had a major battle with bed bugs in our apartment last fall.  It has to be the single most psychological fight that I’ve had in a number of years.  We would wake up with bites all over our bodies.  I slept about 2 hours or less every night for about three weeks.  You feel like crap is crawling on you all night long.  It was straight crazy.  We somehow picked them up from some of the apartment complexes where we spent time with our friends new to the country.  There is so much traffic in and out of their apartments that they’re easy to pick up.

 

Today I was visiting a friend at another complex when an exterminator walked in following up a bed bug treatment he had done.  He talked down to everyone in the house suggesting they didn’t understand anything or know English.  One individual in the house is extremely intelligent.  He got pissed at me because I wasn’t translating everything he said.  I wasn’t angry just because he was a cranky, mad exterminator.  The whole system of injustice started rolling through my mind.  The type of treatment he was doing was cheap.  The manager at the complex had gone soft on the cost.  I’m sure if the exterminator would have come to my place he would have been a lot nicer.  I grow so weary of racism.  He must have said “these people” five or six times.  Arrgghhh!!!  The “us and them” that Christ died for to reconcile was alive and well today.

I want to learn to be in the moment with God when situations like this occur.  I don’t think justice means me yelling at the exterminator and telling him how unjust he is.  Nor does it mean to do what I did today and merely sit silently.  I was talking to a pastor friend of mine the other day who also struggles with this practice of serving Jesus and being alive with Him in each moment.  Why are we so often caught off guard when the most critical times come in speaking for the Lord?  I want to learn to have a healthy balance of compassion, justice, and righteousness.  Moment by moment serving God isn’t easy.  I need you help.

Live to be Forgotten

In an age of self-publicizing and where we long to be successful leaders, leave our mark, etc., Patrick Fung offers a wake up call for us “to live to be forgotten”.  We are to make Christ visible, not ourselves.  Take a look at this interview.  Does anyone have a copy or has anyone read Fung’s booklet on “Live to be Forgotten”? 

http://www.vimeo.com/8433862

Refugees, Friendship, Haircuts, and Zippers

I got my haircut today for the first time in awhile and the beautician asked me what I did for a living.  It was like déjà vu as she gave me the exact same comments the last time she asked me what I did for a living.  It must have been six months ago or so that we had this conversation.  It was surreal as her questions were identical. 

1. Why do we take in refugees and raise such Hell about the Mexicans crossing the border?
2. Do they get social security even though they’ve never paid into the system?
3. What do they do for work?
4. Why did the US agree to bring them here?
5. What do you mean a refugee camp?  Why don’t they just go back to their country?

I’m not exaggerating when I say that she asked the exact same questions last time.  Six months ago I remember telling Charity afterwards, “I just think she didn’t know much and had lots of questions.  Now she is at least aware of the situation.”  But today she kind of proved me wrong as it was the same exact conversation.  I forget a lot of stuff – maybe she just forgot??

It seems that lately I’ve gotten several nasty comments in regard to the friends that I have, most of whom are refugees from Asia.  That is hard to take.  They are our best friends in the whole wide world.  We just got a new apartment right in their neighborhood.  I even had the thought the other day that God may one day ask us to go somewhere else and I had the though of, “Man, I just don’t want to be away from them.”  Certainly they’ve become a real family to us.

International Day: A Zipper Story                                              Many of you know that last week we hosted an International Day at Arlington High School with music, food, dances, and games.  We planned the event from 1-3pm and in natural fashion people started showing up around 1:45pm.  But when people started showing up, it was a big crowd.  We had around 75 or so people turn out all together.  We were able to cast the vision for the church and people seemed geminately excited.  Lots of fun.

When I arrived at our apartment, I began unloading the sound equipment from the van.  As I was walking up the stairs, I noticed a rather unfortunate mishap. My zipper was fully down, unzipped.  I started thinking, “Hmm. . . when was the last time I went to the bathroom?  How long has it been down?”  Well I hadn’t gone to the bathroom all day long!  My zipper had been down from about 10am until 5pm.  So the whole time I was speaking from the front and leading the Intl Day, my fly was open!!  I did have a long shirt so who knows if anyone noticed.  God has a hilarious way of humbling us.

I was telling some of our Bhutanese friends about this whole deal earlier this week and they were laughing hysterically.  We and one family kind of have this inside joke where we say the Nepali word jignu, jigne into a more direct form “jig-jig”.  It means literally to remove.  So when it gets cold here in MN we’ll say that our feet are being removed, our cheeks are being removed (galo jig-jig, omla jig-jig), etc.  It has been a running joke for awhile.  When the mother of this family found out my fly was undone all day she said, “jig-jig”.  I laughed for about five minutes straight. 

A few days later, one of the family members started giggling a lot.  Then her sister started laughing even harder.  I was telling a story when I finally asked, “What happened” in Nepali.  One of them had their zipper down and the other one noticed.  Oh gosh.  In light of my beautiful adventure during International Day, it made it pretty stinkin’ funny.

Later on Monday night, I had a very intriguing conversation about ghosts, evil spirits, and my belief in the supernatural.  That was one of the most fascinating discussions I’ve had as I talked about my understanding as God being supreme in all things.  I’m thankful for this doorway and for understanding a spiritual hunger in some of my friends that I’d never seen before.  Just praying for God to show His power again and again to all of us.