name that nation ...

5 Characteristics of [a nation] ...
i. a mounting love of show/luxury (affluence)
ii. widening gap between the very rich and very poor
iii. obsession with sex
iv. freakishness in the arts; masquerading as originality and enthusiasm, pretending to be creativity
v. an increased desire to live off the state

Does this sound like any nation in particular?
I automatically thought of the USA as our speaker challenged us with this today. It was actually a quote by a British historian named Edward Gibbon in his 1776 book "The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire." He listed these as the main attributes of Rome before its fall. Ironically that was written the year that the USA was starting out, hey? Makes me shudder. The fall of Rome is commonly attributed to outside Barbarian invasion, but truthfully it did not fall because of external influence. Their fall was the result of internal decay as they turned from a firm foundation on absolute truth.

We're watching a video series by Dr. Francis Schaeffer this week called "How Should We Then Live?" As much as I enjoyed the first day, I'm expecting awesome things from the Lord all week! Something else I found interesting was that the Roman culture as it reached the fall was marked by apathy. I had a terrific conversation last night about ... apathy. God confirmed a lot of things in my heart that I'm feeling directed toward and it's neat to see Him tie things together.

"The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it?" Jeremiah 17:9

wonderful weekend

With friends in Wailea, one of my favorite beaches on the island!

Holiday in the sun anyone? :) Blissful Saturday soaking up the sun.

Sunday we left at 4am to drive to the top of Haleakala Mountain! We got lost on the way and I was in a panic thinking we'd woken up ridiculously early for nothing, but we ended up getting there in decent time and the whole thing was covered in fog. Everyone else was super bummed out about that, but I had experienced Haleakala sunrise AND sunset in my DTS (with a 10-hour hike in between, crazy story for another time!) so I didn't mind. I was actually laughing hysterically at the whole adventure and Ada said, "Chelsea, you can make anything fun!" Made my day. :)

There I am in my wokeupat4amwearing10layersoftshirts glory!So after we hiked around a bit and were driving down, the sky cleared up for about 10 minutes! The whole weekend was full of "God-stories" of His timing and blessing, even in being able to do that this morning.

Sunday after church we were invited to hang out on a yacht all afternoon. The churches here are incredibly generous, continually blessing us in all sorts of ways. It was a busy but wonderful weekend!

breathing again

What a week! I finally understood why the SBFM is cracked up to be such an exhausting endeavor. That was mostly due to my own procrastination, but apparently everyone else did the same thing because we were all acting like zombies. Our worldview projects were due this week. Each group was responsible for a two hour presentation on an assigned worldview as well as an extensive written report. (Plus our usual reading & Bible reading & community assignments.) My group presented on New Age last night and it went really well.

New Age is incredibly interesting to me, and the more I learned about it the more I realized how much it was God's hand for me to research this topic. Their beliefs have permeated American culture and I had no idea how much of it I was buying into! I loved watching Oprah whenever I went to the gym or had days off work. I'd heard she was kinda kooky but rolled my eyes at people for being overly critical. She calls herself a Christian but mixes it with New Age. No wonder New Age is so prevalent in the world when one of the most influential people alive is pushing it to an open audience for an hour every weekday. New Age beliefs aren't harmless like they may come across to be.

Even scarier was learning about Marxism and how much America is shifting toward communism. Those examples were jaw-dropping - to say the least. We also learned about Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam and Secular Humanism. Tons of great information. Tons of reasons to worship God all the more.

A few weeks ago I woke up in the middle of the night and thought it was storming outside, but realized it wasn't raining. (I've never seen lightning in Maui or even heard thunder.) It was the sound of the ocean! It's like living a dream ... waking up to the ocean ...

this that & whatever

cross cultural communication

That was our topic for the week. I think if I'd heard this speaker during my DTS it would've confirmed everything I'd feared missions would be. In other words it would've made me keep thinking that being a missionary means you have to be a complete weirdo and lead a miserable life. I've grown since I did my DTS two years ago and was able to receive everything with a much better attitude. I listened to his amazing stories of his lifetime spent as foreign missionary and my jaw dropped. I can see that the choices he made are not just for the sake of letting his culture go so that he can be different, but because to make an impact in any culture you need to let go of yours.

It's an easy concept to talk about and listen to, but when it comes to letting go of my culture I definitely pick up an attitude. I take pride in being an all-American girl! I love our country and don't want to conform to something else. But my identity can't be founded in my culture. As much as I insist that I find my identity in Christ alone, I live my days in a way that shows otherwise. We resist letting go of our culture so much. We might think it's some Biblical principle and fight to the death to hold onto it, but the truth is that it's just something we value in our culture and it can be laid aside for the big picture.

One of the examples he used was names. He started replacing people's names with things like Dorcas and Chester and it was irritating. Sidenote: most of the school was annoyed by the speaker. And he could read body language like a book so he would call people out on it. Which was hilarious. I had a military tshirt on the day he found out I was Mennonite and he had a field day teasing me about that, especially cause he could tell I hated that the Mennonite thing even had to come up. Same thing when he wanted us to guess the artist of the song he was singing and I was the only one who knew it was Carly Simon - "Wow Chelsea, that's pretty good for your Mennonite background ..." Yeah yeah yeah, I try to keep it on the downlow mister.

But back to the example of names! :) If you had to change your name to something quirky you'd probably be resistant to it or wonder why bother. Our names are just words but we put our identity into being Chelsea Lynn Shank. We should be willing to change anything if God asks us to. Plenty of people in the Bible had to change their names - Abraham, Sarah, Paul and Peter. God wants to lead us more than we want to follow. God loves us more than we love Him.

He focused on getting rid of the cultural "screen" that gets in the way of our communication with people. This can happen in our own culture, but obviously is more of a barrier when we're crossing borders. We evaluated where we fall in being time vs event oriented, task/persson, dichotomistic/holistic, crisis/noncrisis, achievement/status, and vulnerable/non. Americans tend to be on the first half of those groupings. I scored big on achievement, which is all about earning what we get. This is good for life but gets in the way with theology because I have trouble receiving grace. It's hard to understand the grace of God when you live with a mentality of having to work for everything you get. I was also big on holistic thinking, but in everything else I was right in the middle.

I have a lot more to write, but I have to go work in the kitchen! God is doing a lot a lot a lot in my life and it's awesome!

$30,000

A friend and I just walked back from Anthony's coffee shop, one of the many struggling small businesses here - it seems like half of Paia is shutting down! Hawaii is being hit very hard by the economy because tourism is fading off. I've lost track of the number of people I've met who have lost their jobs and are searching for anything. A lot of people at my church have been moving back to the mainland. So in Anthony's this guy came over to talk to us and I thought he would just hit on us and move on, but no. We got into some political chitchat and he kept saying he was leaving but then walking back to tell us something else. When he finally left and we finally stopped laughing my friend was like, "It's times like this I wish I had a blog ..." And I remembered I have this and haven't written in ions ... so here I am.

Updates of the election were on the TV and after he got the lame jokes out of his system he started telling us that he doesn't know which candidate is better, but he was sure that Obama would win. He chuckled as he told us he would lose a lot of money if he didn't, because he'd put $30,000 on a bet. When I think how far $30,000 would go for me, it blows my mind that someone can just toss it out on a bet. What kills me even more is that he just got done telling us how he has been a businessowner for almost 40 years and this is the first time that he's ever felt scared. Everyone's fear is paralyzing them from spending which is screwing the economy over even more. He's been coming to Maui for 32 years and was distraught that most of his favorite waiters have moved off the island in the past few months.

The $30,000 deal made me assume he would vote for Obama, but he leaned in close to tell us that he couldn't vote for Obama for one reason. Abortion. His politically correct manners shined as he told us that he didn't want to take our rights away from us (we assured him we have no desire to exercise that "right"), but it's just wrong. And he can't imagine standing before God in judgment for all the babies he would have a hand in killing if he voted for someone who supported that. Amen! He owns some cemeteries on the side ("You see I did that cause I saw this whole thing comin!") and talked about the babies he's buried and how his daughter can't have children. He knew the stats on how much of our taxes go toward paying for abortion. Absolutely disgusting and heartbreaking.

It was refreshing to talk to him, because I have grown tired of people brushing abortion off as "just one issue of many." Who cares what a person says about anything if they think murder is justifiable? If human life is not at the core of their value system, there will be tragic repercussions to their behavior. Abortion is not just another issue! It is life or death and God calls us to choose LIFE. It's not about being "pro-life" and "pro-choice." The logical opposite of pro-life is pro-death no matter how they try to market it.

Yeah. I could go on but luckily for you there is a huge pile of homework calling my name. :)

But guess what?!
This past weekend our base had Manny's Mustache Marathon, a 7.1 mile run from the base in Haiku to one of the houses in Paia. I've never run more than three miles, so I thought I'd jog as much as I could and walk the rest, but I ran almost the entire thing! It was hot as heck but once I got to the portion along the ocean I was golden. I also felt like throwing up a few times, but then I'd see a guy up ahead and force myself to pass him. Smart comments had been thrown around beforehand, agitating me enough to make it my goal to pass at least two guys. I beat half the guys and was the top finisher for the girls!!! I still can't believe it. We had a BBQ on the beach to celebrate and the guys had a modeling faceoff to be judged for the best mustache. I guess the whole idea came out of a way for the guys to show off their sicknasty mustaches from "Overgrowth October." Oy vey.