Mystery Meat on Toast Please, with a Side of Passionate Preaching

My new favorite way of ordering food at a restaurant is to just pick the one that I think I can actually pronounce, and just order it, whether I actually know what it is or not. Today I went to lunch with the Varner's at a little cafe down the street and there were two sandwiches that I could pronounce on the menu. So I talked little Tom Tom into getting one while I got the other and we would cut the sandwiches in half and trade. I got an order of fries too, just in case it ended up being another sheep intestine sandwich or something crazy like that. Luckily, one happened to be a delicious grilled cheese and the other was some sort of mystery meat, but it tasted great. Tom Tom even ate all of it, which made me proud.

But on a more serious note, last night was a great time of fellowship here at the apartment. It was K's cell group meeting, with "the White Guy," "the Shark," and "the Mexican." They let me sit in, even though everything was in Turkish. There were a couple times when things got pretty heated as the guys were discussing the passage. It made me realize how badly I need to know this stinking language. Twice I was used as a prop for the discussion, neither time I was told what the discussion was about. Thanks guys. But after the Mexican left, I got to talking with the White Guy, who knows a good bit of English, about America. He told me that he really wanted to go to America because of how faithful of a country we are to God. Ha! Whatever man. That set me off. I went off about how at one time America was founded on Christian principles, but that we are moving away from them at an alarming rate. The parts of the country where there seems to be a continuation of those traditions are sadly, just that, continuing traditions in large part. There is no depth to a lot of peoples faith, it is just a cultural label they put on themselves because they sure as heck aren't Muslims. So why go to a place like that? So it'll be easy? The ease brings complacency. It's too easy. A little persecution would be good for the church in America. It would seperate the wheat from the chaff maybe. Show us who is really on our side and who is just jumping on the bandwagon. No, you shouldn't dream of going to America, you should be thankful you were born in a place where it is hard. The persecution these people feel here refines their faith in a way that we can't experience in America. And because of that, they reach a maturity and a depth that I can only dream of having some day. You should not dream of going to America, you should dream of changing your own country into a nation that will worship the one, true God. As long as I am here preaching, as long as us white people are the ones sharing the Gospel with people, it will always be a foreign Gospel. Only when national believers, who have been raised in the culture, who have experienced life in the country, who speak the same mother tongue, only when those people start preaching to their countrymen will the Gospel truly become their Gospel. I begged the guy to stay here. Take up the work here. Do the things that I desire so much to do, namely to present the truth of Jesus Christ in a culturally appropriate way, in their heart language.

So I was winding down my little sermon when I noticed my roommate, Special K, was translating everything for the Shark. When he got done everybody just looked at me for a few minutes until finally Special K told me that I had to learn Turkish quickly, so that I can preach to them myself, without him translating. We'll see buddy, we'll see.