Wednesday, November 24

Jesus Freaks

Last night at Art Center my professor showed us some interesting websites.
She designs websites for a living (aside from her teaching) so she's always got new and interesting things to inspire us.
Just for fun, she showed us a site called poemsthatgo.com, that deal with the art of using not only the words, but incorporating typography visuals and sound. One such creation is called "The Last Day of Betty Nkomo", and for some reason i found it fascinating. It's intense, in some ways; i won't say too much about it. But if you go to it, make sure your volume is low, if it needs to be. If not, crank it up, because the syncronization of the words and the music is really beautiful. here you go!

So guess what? i actually wound up going to the Billy Graham Crusade after all. On Saturday morning i went to Pip's house to practice and he asked if i was going. I hadn't planned on it. Why didn't i go? hmm, interesting idea. Okay, i'll go!
That's kind of how it happened. So around 6:00 Pip, Andrew and his USC posse, and my sister all came to the house and we walked down to the Rose Bowl. It's nice living so close, it only took us about a half-hour and was much more refreshing than sitting in traffic with gazillions of cars. We walked across the golf course turned parking lot and past the picketers holding up signs reading "Billy Graham=Hell" or something like that. I guess no public event worth it's salt can take place without a close-knit bunch of angry protestors on it's skirts.
When we found our seats just as the program began, the place was about three quarters full. As the "hip" Christian bands began playing i kind of zoned out, i admit. I don't know, i found it hard to get inspired by a bunch of guys running around on stage screaming like maniacs how much Jesus loves them. At one point Pip turned to me and said "I wonder what it's like for the people that haven't been to one of these since 1965".
Once Third Day got up things calmed down a bit. They played a few older worship songs i could actually sing to, and that was nice.

By the time Billy Graham showed himself, the entire place was packed. I'm not kidding. every seat even behind the stage was taken.
His talk wasn't stellar. Just simple and palpable...which i guess was exactly what people needed to hear because when the altar call came it took about 10 minutes to completely fill the football field in the center of the stadium. I'm talking thousands of people. There was so little room there were people saying the sinner's prayer in the aisles. It was both awe inspiring and unnerving.
Anyone who reads this...please pray for these people. Now is the time for the enemy to get his foot in the door. May they all continue to grow in wisdom and the Lord's joy.
The walk back was equally nice, Pip Sarah and i singing Christmas carols a lot of the way, trying to keep the cold out of our jackets. About 5 minutes after we all returned back to our house, it began to pour. That was lovely...until we decided to go out to dinner. And for that account, i will use a portion from Andrew's blog concerning the same event...
"After that we went to Dinner at a Thai place called Chandra's- but the ride there was the real experience... something you could really sink your teeth into, if you know what I'm saying. It was pouring rain, and my Cadillac was loaded down with six poeple all squishing each other. I couldn't see the lanes on the street, the windows were fogged up like crazy, I was frantically trying to wipe down the rain that was pouring in the side window (which I had open so I could see and in a half-hearted attempt to de-fog the windows), Don was weeping, back-seat drivers were earnestly trying to direct me, people were honking and all throughout Mike Escoto was taking flash photography inside the car. Awesome. Needless to say, we made it- and thank God the rain subsided by the time we were done, cause I would not have wanted to go to LA in those conditions."
I'm proud to say that i was one of those back seat drivers.

Ich brauche gehen nach arbeite. I hope that means what i want it to mean.
Keeping it real...

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