Nathan's Blog

Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo.



That's about all I have to say for now.

I got a 500 dollar gift card for Target from the Saturn dealer when I bought my car. It's really cool because Amazon and Target have this thing worked out so I can order anything off Amazon through Target, so my opportunities were endless. There were so many things that I could use it on but I took the easy way and just ordered an iPod. So I got this cool new gizmo in the mail. The problem with buying an iPod is that once I had the iPod there were several gizmos that it was "necessary" that I buy so I could make the most use of my iPod experience whether I’m in my room or in the car or in the bush. Now that I’ve spent my 500 dollars on the iPod and its various accoutrements, I have been trying to find out how to make the most use out of it.

never used iTunes before but it’s starting to grow on me. The podcast concept is something new to me. Since the glory days of Napster (can you remember back that far?)I’ve not really downloaded much stuff. There’s all kinds of cool stuff you can download. Some of it’s free and then there’s audio books and stuff. But I’m sure you already knew that. Anyways I was searching for some podcasts to download. I found some interesting things. Dr David Garrison has a bunch of stuff on Church Planting Movements. The NPR stuff is great. But I almost had a wreck today listening to a particular podcast I downloaded…

I’m in the middle of about 15 books at the moment but one of them is A New Kind of Christian by Brian McLaren. I’ll have to say it has made me think quite a bit, yet at the same time he says things that I’m already thinking. I just didn’t realize I was thinking them until I read it. If that makes any sense, explain it to me. I have no idea how I found them but I found several sermons by Mclaren and proceeded to download them. They sat in my iPod for several days and today I had to make a long trip down to the coast so I decided to listen to one of them. The first one was on The Emergent Church being Monastic and Communal. Some pretty good stuff there, and just about the right length of time so that it ended when I got to my destination. On the way back I about had a wreck. The next sermon I listened to was on how the Emerging Church is Postcolonial. He talked about how the modern church has had a colonial mindset and for about 20 minutes he used none other than the exploitation of the Angolans by the Portuguese colonists to explain the evils of colonialism. It turns out that his Grandfather was a pioneer missionary to Angola with the Plymouth Brethren not only that but his father grew up in Angola. What he had to say literally blew me away. I’ll write more about it later.

I was in Pearlington this morning. The road was blocked where they were removing the remains of a house that had made its resting place on top of the road. Because I knew I would not be able to get through for a while, I pulled into the driveway of the property on the right. This is a picture of Edmund. That chair is where he spends pretty much all his time. He's sitting in his living room, complete with central heating and a dining room chair. A cold front just came through and the normal 60-70ish temperatures have dropped down to the low 30s at times. Yeah, you people up North may be jealous of our warm weather but you have a house to live in and warm clothes to wear. Edmund has taken up smoking again because he says it helps him forget how cold it is. As I was introducing myself his son (who's name I forgot) came up and threw some wood from what used to be part of the house on the fire. I stood and talked to him and his son for about 30 minutes as the Army Corps of Engineers cleared the road behind us. At least there are plenty of skeletons of houses to keep these people warm for the next couple of months.

Today I drove down Highway 90. What used to be an overcrowded, casino infested, debaucherous paradise is now a Ghost Town. There is no traffic, no gambling, no naked people on beach, no fishermen, no old retired couples riding bicycles, no antebellum mansions, nothing but piles of rubble. I saw what must have been several hundred billion dollars worth of damage and destruction today. How much sleep am I going to loose over it? None.

I’ve gotten so used to seeing the most horrible things. I see kids playing in filth that I wouldn’t want to see a stray dog to play in, but they’re happy. The stench of death hangs in the air as rotting organic material like dead animals and saltwater polluted plants begin to decompose. It’s a feast of the senses for flies, mosquitos and biting gnats, but your nose gets used to it and you can always use bug spray. This has become normality. What can I do about it? Like everyone else, I find it hard to care anymore. I’m not saying I don’t care but I’m only caring on a rational level.

Maybe that’s why I’ve recently developed an unusual affinity to Punk Rock music. Ok, not really, I just descovered that I like a few songs by a few Punk Rock bands. I’m still not a huge fan of the genere as a whole but I guess I can just relate to the depressing, nihilistic and anarchistic lyrics in a way I never could before. As I was walking around the Ghost Towns of Gulfport and Biloxi taking pictures of the destruction a Green Day song came to mind.

“I walk this empty street
On the Boulevard of Broken Dreams
Where the city sleeps
and I'm the only one and I walk alone”

Though I have no idea what Green Day wrote that song about, depressing lyrics have a way of pricking my emotion and making me feel normal. It helps me to feel bad in a way I have trouble doing on my own. Lamentations and Ecclesiastes have new meaning and have even become my choices for pleasure reading. I’m just looking for something to help me feel.

Actual weather forcast for Sunday, August 28th 2005 in Carriere MS:

Sunday night: Windy with a shower or thunderstorm possible early, then frequent rain showers along with heavy downpours and strong wind gusts. Overnight low 77F. NE winds at 20-30 mph, increasing to 80-100 mph. Rainfall may reach two inches.
Monday: Showery rains containing strong gusty winds and heavy downpours at times. High 84F. E winds at over 100 mph, diminishing to 80-100 mph. Rainfall over two inches . Wind gusts could reach 140 mph.
Monday night: Bands of heavy rain showers along with strong gusty winds, especially early. Low near 75F. S winds at 70-90 mph, diminishing to 40-60 mph. Rainfall over two inches.

Velveta, Rotel, Snickers, Brownie Mix, Oreos, Kool-Aid, Peanut Butter, Taco Seasoning, Ziploc Bags, Popcorn, Reese's Peanut Butter Cups, and most importantly twelve 20 oz. bottles of Dr Pepper. Those were just a few of the things on our shopping list before we left the US. Oh yeah, and three huge transformers to convert 220 volts to 110. Before we left we packed our bags with 140 pounds of all those great things that Americans just can't live without and don't exist in Africa. Someone had given us 200 dollars to shop for all this junk that we could take with us to Mozambique and give to the missionaries. We had been dragging this stuff with us for a long time and looking forward to getting rid of it.

As we sat in the Conways living room in Nairobi looking at all this stuff, we realized we had a problem. Coming from America we had a 70 pound weight limit per bag and could check two bags per person. But flying from Nairobi to Mozambique we had a 30 pound per person limit. We each had 70 pounds of food and stuff and our own stuff on top of that. We had hoped that the airline person would not notice our extra 120 pounds of stuff, either that or just ignore it as we checked in. We were not so fortunate. We had to go through it all and decide what we really needed to take and what to leave behind with the Conways.

We boarded our tiny little plane in Nairobi. It was one of those scary planes with the big spinning propellers one of which happened to be right outside my window. When it was spinning I was sure that one of those propellers was going to fly off and decapitate me. I saw my first African snow on the peak of Mount Kilimanjaro below. As we flew over Kenya and northern Tanzania I could see huts and villages and the occasional city below. The closer we got to Mozambique the more there was nothing below us. No cities, villages, huts, roads, or anything, just bushes and dirt.

We flew into a little mom and pop airport in the costal town of Pemba, Mozambique. It was basically just a runway and a little building. There was not a white person to be seen but Jeremy and Martha Smith who were there to pick us up and take us back to their home 2 hours east in Montepuez. We got our passports stamped without any problems and then hoped and prayed that our luggage actually made it with us.

Our luggage did come, the only problem was trying to get it through customs. The one person that worked at the airport wanted to see inside one of our bags. He opened it and saw the huge transformer. He mumbled somthing that sounded nothing like Portuguese. It turns out that he was trying to say that he wanted us to pay Mt 500,000.00 ($20)for some sort of customs tax but he refused to give us a receipt. In other words he just wanted us to pay him a bribe to let us through. We refused to pay unless he provided an official receipt for it. So he refused to let us go. It then became a waiting game. The guy eventually got frustrated with us and wanted to go home because the airport was closing. He said, "Since you don't want to pay, just go!" so we did.

After the South African man reluctantly used his tow cable to pull us out of the mud in the game park, we went back to the cabin where the Conways were staying. By the time we arrived they were ready to leave for Eldoret which was the same place I needed to be. I hitched a ride with the Conways because the Mark and Ben had to stop at Chepkong’ony before going to Eldoret. It’s probably a good thing that we ended up driving back at the same time because that old American Isuzu with the steering wheel on the wrong side broke down three times on the way to town.

We arrived at the designated restaurant where I was to meet Chris and a campaign group from Texas right as they had finished eating. Chris and I were going to spend the next few days with this group from a church in Texas. Working in big groups like this can be a good way to get a lot done and it’s nice to be around other Americans who at least speak your own language. That’s usually the case at least, I think we got a lot done and they were Americans but this was a deaf campaign group. And I know about as much sign language as ancient Sanskrit.

When I was about 10 years old I remember the church in Colorado Springs had a deaf ministry. I learned a lot of sign language back then but now the only word I could remember was “airhead.” It’s an important word to know but as I’m trying to relate the love of Christ to the deaf people of Kenya I find it hard to integrate “airhead” into the conversation. It was great to work with and see the American deaf people interacting with the deaf Kenyans.

Fortunately there was a lot of work to be done in Eldoret that did not require me to use sign language to get accomplished. The church building at Langas was built about 10 years ago and needed some serious work done to it. It was built with roof to support tin but had a tile roof installed instead. Oops! So we spent most of one day removing all the heavy tiles that were causing to roof to collapse and the next day straightening the roof, reinforcing the walls that were about to cave out and putting a tin roof back on. It would have been a very sad thing if the roof had collapsed while there were people inside.

On Friday Chris and I drove back to Nairobi with the deaf campaign group. They were going to do a deaf workshop in for the deaf people from all around Kenya. Unfortunately we were not able to stick around for it because we were going to fly to Mozambique the next day. The Conways were nice enough to give us a place to stay again, this time at their home in Nairobi.

In the small amount of time we were in Nairobi we had the chance to visit an orphanage for AIDS babies. AIDS is a serious problem in Kenya and many of its victims die with young babies. The orphanage takes these babies and keeps them until they are three years old. A lot of the babies are HIV positive when they come to the orphanage and most of those test negative by the time they leave. One thing I have learned on this trip is that there are so many different types of ministry that are possible and needed. Just in the country of Kenya I have seen so many different works by different missionaries. Yet there is still so much that needs to be done.