I doubt that I really know the name of the Jazz singer I saw and financial crisises suck.

Boatswain’s Log October 11^th and 12^th.

 

Well, yesterday was a long day. So I will summarize. I went to San Jose in the morning with Craig and Kasey and bought some cheap clothes for Nicaragua, got food, and went to the zoo. It was a big afternoon.

 

I bought 3 buttondown shirts, a hockey jersey, and a pair of pants that fit for about 6$. Some nice stuff too. Hurray for thrift stores.

 

The zoo was a bit sad, the animals lived in small dirty cages and didn’t really seem to happy to be there. Especially the lions. The toucans seemed pretty chipper though.

 

My brother had asked me on Friday what I would be doing for a 6 hour block of time on Saturday afternoon and like a fool I said that I wasn’t busy. The result was that I spent 5-6 hours in the Pentecostal church at a “coffee house” that was more like a “church service”. Apparently the goal was to get a bunch of churches together and have this thing to support a missionary.

 

We started out with some praise songs, and then it did become like a coffee house. Other groups played music and there was theatre. The downside is that all of it was at best mediocre. The music was pretty bad. Seriously. I would not choose to listen to it. Not great. Maybe glorifying to the Lord, but not good music. The theatre was similar. All of it had to do with a “is your name in the book of life?” theme that portrayed God as an angry figure who (aside from not knowing himself who was in the book of life…his angelic secretary had to check for him) cast people into hell repeatedly. This image of God pisses me off. The idea becomes scaring people out of hell rather than loving them into heaven. Not the way it should be done, and furthermore the actors we poorly trained.

 

The missionary himself was an interesting figure. The church was surrounded by different country profiles that “needed” missionaries. China was up there, along with Italy, Argentina, and several others. This is my opinion. These countries have the gospel in them already. What needs to happen is that citizens within those countries need to be the main source of missionaries. God might send people from outside to help, but generally things work best within the context that exists. The Chinese have Christians there. They have some of the best Christians in the world. I doubt they need our help with regards to preaching the gospel. Instead they might like to have money for bibles. Maybe we should pray for Chinese Christians to preach to their people instead of telling people in Costa Rica that they should go to China.

 

Anyhow, aside from the things that were sketchy there was a good feeling of people praising Jesus. Not a bad thing.

 

After all the time at the church I called my folks. It seems like the financial crisis is hitting everyone and it is frustrating not being able to do something. I doubt it would be different if I were in the US though.

 

This morning I woke up and went to Catholic Church with Andrew Ryan’s family. They’re really nice people. Afterwards we went for a “paseo” to the mall San Pedro and the supermarket. Andrew and I had some good conversation and then I returned here after icecream at their house.

 

Great time except for the Catholics not allowing other Christians to have communion. I was legitimately angry about this. I feel that there is no reason to deny communion to anyone who has a relationship with Jesus. I am not catholic, but that is no reason to deny me one of my rights as a Christian. Participating in the eucharist is something we all get to do. Shape up Catholic church. I disagree with your practices in this regard.

 

Off to Nicaragua tomorrow at 5AM. 11 hours in bus. Here we go.