Why does my face hurt? Because I have a headache.

Sometimes I get headaches. Well, often I get headaches. They usually choose to hide behind one or both of my eyes and throb. The result is that my face hurts. I don’t get it, but that’s what I mean if I ever say to you that “my face hurts”…either that or I got hit in the face by my brother playing Wii-baseball.

I have a headache now. I think it is because I am sick. Not deathly ill mind you, just sick enough to lose focus on many things and hate being awake. When I get sick it’s hard to focus in my Spanish class. The last time I was sick I thought I was losing the whole language because I couldn’t focus and none of the words made any sense. Today it wasn’t quite like that, but nor was it far off. I looked out the window alot.

There’s this girl in Spanish class who speaks very fast. I don’t always understand what she says because she says it so fast, but at the same time she is such a refreshing person to have in class. She’s way better than me and she’s really impressive in her linguistic skills. High five to her.

Yesterday I went and talked to Dr.Neuhouser about Mennonites. It was great. Firstly, the mennonites do this thing called ” the Mennonite Central Committee” it’s their international development and relief arm. 3 year committments in other countries. They have a program in Colombia that focuses on helping the victims of the 3 way civil war that’s happening there. I am interested. A man named Tony Campolo came on campus Wednesday night and talked about gaining authority (people do what you say because they want to) through radical acts of service. I was so excited that someone was echoing my thoughts already. Not that I desire authority, but rather the service part. I thought about MCC and what they do and what I want to do and what Tony was saying and I told God “Here I am! Send me!” for about 5 minutes straight. He just might.

That’s something that I wonder about. I want to do this. I want to do MCC’s program in Colombia after college. It scares me a little though. Several reasons:

1) I could die. I am not scared of death, but at the same time it’s not as though I want to hang out with it and buy it icecream. Working with Mennonites means pacifism. I guess I can deal with that, though it does tend to lend itself to the distinct possibility of letting someone kill me rather than kill them first.

2) It may take me awhile to find a woman who is interested in long-term sorts of relationship with me if I do this…I guess that’s short-sighted and not very dependent on Jesus, but it’s hard when what I want in life and what the standard American Christian woman wants in life are so different. Think about it. What do girls really want from men? Companionship? Yes. But also the majority of them value security too. I don’t think they’ll get a nice house in a suburb with a husband who wears a suit and tie to work in who I am. I doubt many father-in-laws are going to be wicked pumped about a poor man who has no goal of living in a huge house and living the safe American dream. The American dream is not mine.

3) 3 years is a long time away from people I love.

Anyhow, that’s what I thinkin’ about lately in that sense.

More on Mennonites. According to Dr.Neuhouser the mennonite church is all about congregations. The overall denomination leaders can’t tell everyone what to believe. The congregations have to decide based on what the holy spirit is telling them. Then they do stuff. Same with the bible. The pastor doesn’t say what it says. They believe you need the community to do it. So everyone reads it and somehow the pastor preaches on what they decided. That’s pretty money right there. My friend Rick said, “that’s annoying.” In the sense that it’s annoying that one person doesn’t tell them what to do, but in all honesty…I love it. It came out of the reformation when the protestants were trying to deny that tradition was what determined belief n’stuff. They said “Sola Scritura” (only Scripture), but their scripture was interpreted by one man just as much as the catholics. The catholics had the pope. The protestant denominations had Calvin, Luther, and Zwingli. Hmmm….I like Mennonites.

Also, the mennonites don’t kill people. They’re pacifists. I like that. I don’t get the concept of “quit killing people or I’ll kill you.” It seems like they agree.

The last thing we talked about was the Mennonites view of scripture. For them the central part of the bible is the gospels (Jesus). the way they view scripture is that all of scripture is interpreted through Christ. So, you don’t read Moses to understand Jesus. You read Jesus to understand Moses. It’s kinda hard to wrap your mind around, but I like it alot. So for Mennonites, Paul doesn’t interpret Jesus. Jesus interprets Paul. Fun stuff. Thanks to Dr.Neuhouser.

Last thing before I take a nap before dinner. Sometimes people clap after praise music. Why do you do that? I don’t get it. Unless you’re clapping for Jesus, you’re confusing me. The people playing music may be good. Yes. I agree. But why are they playing music? Is it to put on a good show or is it to bring glory to God and bring people to a place of worship? I think the second one, or at least I would hope so. When we clap for them what are we saying? Perhaps we’re thanking them, but it feels less like that. It feels more like we’re getting done with praising God and then starting to praise people. Yes they have amazing talents and gifts. Tell them they played well after the service. It’s not about them, or me, or you. It’s about Jesus. Clap for Him if you’re gonna clap. I don’t like that either because He’s not putting on a show, but still it’s better than clapping for the people playing praise music. Clapping for them is like getting a present from your mom at Christmas that is handed to you by your uncle and then saying thank you to your uncle. It’s rude. Your uncle gave you the gift directly, but he didn’t buy it.