Today I'm writing to you from Salina, Kansas in a Rodeway Inn.
We've made it through training and we're on the road again! The first week of training was much more difficult than the second. We had a lot of practice with the program this last week, and I feel a lot more confident about it. I was really struggling there for a bit.
I knew that God had called me here to Group Mission Trips, but it was out of my (ever-increasing) comfort zone. Here's why… I'll be going out to Cincinnati and am pretty much in charge of six camps. It was a lot of responsibility, and I was way overwhelmed. I'm still not sure how camp is going to go, but I do know that God has it under control.
Anyways, I wanted to share with a little of what God's been up to in my life.
Being in America hasn't been too much culture shock for me. I'm thankful for ending in Europe because I feel that being there helped me ease into American culture. With that being said, I've definitely been noticing things here in America that are affecting me negatively that I'm not sure I even realized before I left for the race.
A couple things are how our culture is obsessed with image/status and consumerism. That's been really difficult. More on that soon.
The other is me realizing, not for the first time, how sexually-charged our culture really is. I avoided things that made me uncomfortable before the race, such as movies that had scenes that were inappropriate, but there are so many more things that I'm having a hard time accepting as "ok."
As my partner and I were driving today from Colorado to our stop in Kansas, we were listening to some Top 40 music on the radio. It's disgusting. Girls singing about sleeping around and making it sound cool and the "thing" to do. I was just reading in Ezekiel 24, where God is talking to Ezekiel about Babylon laying siege to Jerusalem. The Lord is going to act against them in order to wipe away "impurities." The main sin in question is lewdness. I wanted an exact definition of lewdness so I looked it up in the dictionary, and it is described as crude and offensive in a sexual way.
When I was reading this I just couldn't help but think of how this chapter seems to be talking about America… and secular music in specific. God says of this land that they have a "deposit that will not go away." That's imagery for sin piling on top of sin and it can't be cleansed – it really doesn't want to be cleansed or purified. How is that any different from what culture has done to the young generations of today?
So, that's the second thing I mentioned. The first is based around consumerism.
I'm reading a book right now by a Christian author about paying for grad school. It's called The Grad's Guide to Money. What he was saying was really interesting. I'll quote some of it that really stood out to me:
Today, the use of the word consumer has become so common that most of us don't even notice. Every week we hear about consumer spending, consumer sentiment, and consumer segments. We accept the label without question.
But consider this: To consume literally means to use up, squander, or spend wastefully. It's right there in the dictionary. How's that working for us?
Consumer is more than a word; it's a worldview. I mean, think about it: if I'm a consumer, who's the most important person in the world? Me, right? If I'm a consumer, what's most important to me? Money and things.
How completely against the Word is being a consumer!? But this is the label that we are given when we're out shopping. I guess I knew I was going to struggle with our consumer-based society when I got home from the race. I didn't realize it would affect me so much. Every purchase I make, I'm wondering if this money could go to help someone in India that's struggling from not having clean water. Or those kids in that orphanage we visited in Tanzania that hardly had enough food to eat. Or the kids in Cambodia living in the trash village with ripped clothes two sizes to small for them. Or… the list goes on. Yet, it's so hard not to be selfish in a consumer society that wants us to only think about me, me, me.
So there you have it. Other than these couple of things, I feel like I'm adjusting just great. This was just on my heart. I'm back here in America in the middle of these problems, and I really want to do something. Life is so much bigger than the next purchase we want to make or the momentary, fading pleasures we want to choose for our lives.
Thanks for reading.
