The St. Louis Experience: Altered Views

WARNING: The blog you are about to read may contain jumbled and unclear thoughts. Read with understanding.

I honestly am not quite sure how to put this trip into words and give it justice. So much happened during that week in St. Louis that I'm not even going to try to jam it into one unsuspecting blog. Consider this part 1. Here we go:

I'm going to start out by saying I originally did not plan on going on this mission trip. I had already signed up for a backpacking trip with YoungLife and the dates crossed and the cost would've been too much anyway. One Sunday during our worship time, Alan announced that they were going to have a St. Louis meeting afterwards and free lunch would be provided. For some reason I felt pulled to the meeting, in the moment I thought it was the free Little Caesar's. Later I'd find that it was a God thing.

During the meeting my heart went under some radical changes. I won't go into any serious details (mainly because I feel like this part of the story is taking too much room) but I pulled a 180 and decided to do the mission trip.

A month or two later I was payed for, packed and on my way to Missouri. I won't go into details on the ride up there (Julie said we could go to like a million different places just because whenever we'd ask something like, "are we almost there yet" or "can we go to the Oz museum", she ALWAYS said yes), but it took around 13 and a half hours.

As we drove through the city on our way to the church we were staying at, I observed. Something that shocked me even though I'd heard about it, was how neighborhoods could go from wealthy looking to ghetto instantly (I also saw a billboard for a restaurant named Hot Tasty Butts, which Julie said we could go to).

While I had also heard prostitution, drug deals and gang violence weren't exactly uncommon there, I still found it shocking. Being around issues of that intensity really made me think about how sheltered life is in the Springs. While those issues do happen, they're fairly unheard of. In St. Louis, though, kids around the age of 6 probably know more about drugs then I may ever know.

Seeing all this junk made me wonder how good being sheltered is. I can understand sheltering to a point, but if people don't even know what's going on in places like St. Louis, how are they supposed to help? Besides seeing how sheltered we are, I also noticed that the Springs is pretty separated, not just by race, but by class too.

It's weird how being in a place that is so far out of my comfort zone for only an hour or two can change the way I look at my own city and even (to the extreme) life itself.

Too Much, But Not Enough

I've been in a weird area of life. It's like a dry spot, like the many I usually face every once in a while. This one's different though. It seems like it's draining me more than ever, but my faith isn't shaken at all (GREAT SIGN). I can tell when thoughts are strategically being placed in my head to take me down, which is a change too. I can tell these are lies, but why did I give in so easy?

The thoughts that had been running through my head were generally negative (well duh). I can tell that a lot of them are from wounds by the family. Lately I've been around them way too much for me. While the family that stayed with me haven't really caused too many wounds, sometimes it feels like they pour salt water on wounds that are still open. Maybe for this dry spot, they were the cause.

Another possibility is stress. One thing I feel like I NEED to be is perfect, and I realize this is impossible (unless you happen to be THE son of God, which I am not). While I know I don't HAVE to be perfect, I still try to push myself. I HATE disappointing people. If disappointment was a person, I'd shoot it in the face. Maybe not, but I would make it would suffer.

I never feel like I'm quite good enough for my mom (the only stable parent I've had). I try, hard. In school I take all honors classes and for the most part, get As. I'm not allowed to get Cs and even Bs sometimes. On top of everything, I feel like I need to be a dad to my brothers, which I'm not capable of now. And on top of THAT I have to write an essay, read three biographies, answer a couple long questions per biography and read a book too. This really isn't too bad, but if that's summer work for AP English, which far exceeds summer work for honors English and even IB English, then this class is going to SUCK this year. Especially mixed with Honors Physics and Pre-Cal.

As strange as it sounds, the more I get involved with church (in a "Student Leader" type of way) and the more responsibilities I get, the easier life seems. Being in Youth Ministries is DEFINITELY where I feel called. Getting to connect with other students like T-Klop, Danny, Chavez, Kyla, Bethany and all of the other students is where I really feel at home.

While I feel like I may be under too much pressure, (or maybe I just haven't gotten enough sleep, I tend to magnify life when I'm tired)(That's a boring answer though, I wanted to share more) God ALWAYS shows up for me.

This last Wednesday was like a Rejuvenate Jeremy Day. I got to go to Elitches, which was packed, and have a little fun (hey, it only cost $15 bucks to get in). Then I got home and went straight to the Klop-Stop for youth group. That youth group went DEEP. It was so good. After that I hung out with Zach, which was by far the most helpful thing.

We went to Chuck E. Cheese (which shows how awesome we are) and had a blast, NO JOKE. It was great fighting fires and getting tickets with Zach and I almost died in this crazy murderous bubble thing (plus I got this wicked GIANT pink ring and some stickers). After goofin' around, we went to DQ and got some Blizzards (we gave the workers there the ring and stickers because they seemed bummed). We parked in the parking lot and watched this creepy dude walk around. He set off a car alarm and we soon decided that we were going to be murdered if we stayed there so we went to a less creepy spot and talked.

The talk was great and ranged from nearly everything I felt was crushing me. We talked about family, friends and we touched a little bit into the future. It was great. It's conversations like this that I strive for. Whether it's over some intense issue or some amazing praise, getting to hang out and talk to some close guy-friend like Zach is always the best remedy for me. Zach encouraged me and helped build me back up.

Now, the issues aren't gone, but the dry and lifeless feeling is. Something I wouldn't mind doing now is talking about what I probably have the hardest time talking about, which is an open wound dealt by my dad that I haven't given enough attention to. I've talked about it before, but I don't feel like I've done a whole awful lot to close it up.

What I got out of this long, tedious dry spot is that God WILL always show up and even though the future looks frightening, he'll give me Chuck E. Cheese moments and deep, healing conversations. He'll never put me through anything I can't handle. He'll show up like a loving Father.

MAN-Trip and More

I got back from the annual MAN-Trip yesterday. It wiped me out and didn't turn out like I thought it would. I didn't learn too much out of it, which caught me off a little bit. I guess that's a lesson I'm learning. At this point, I'm learning less and teaching more. My youth pastor sent me a letter a couple months ago and at the end it read, "Remember, you are here to give, not to get." I'm not quite sure why it's taking this long to learn., maybe it's that I don't think I'm qualified to teach. I definitely struggle with self-confidence, father based issue maybe?

Anyway, back to the MAN-Trip. To say it started and ended with a BANG! would be an understatement. Andy, our beastly intern, sent one of the windows on our churches "Party Bus" to kingdom come with his super-belly-smashing abilities, and that was the start. Once we had gotten up to Kelly's backforest (instead of backyard) and started a fire and got settled into worship, things kicked off spiritually. During worship I felt called to get up and walk over to the cliff that overlooked a creek. I thought, "Okay God, why not? I like nature." I didn't know that there was more to this calling, I guess I should have though.

Not long after moving to the fence did one of the guys come over. It was Andrew. I'd gotten to know him a little bit over the last month. He's a freshman that's new to the high school youth group. One thing I'd learned about him (because he told me...) was that when he gets comfortable around people he gets a little rough. We had a work day Tuesday (bear with me, it may seem like I'm drifting off topic, and it happens, but I'm not) and he was on my team. I found out that he was getting comfortable with me. I took a couple branches to the face that day. Where was I?

So Andrew walked over and pretty much shared his testimony with me. It may have meant a lot to him that I listened, but it meant a ton to me too that he was able to share some pretty heavy stuff with me. I know that we created a bond that night that God is going to use. I got to share a little of my testimony with him and it turns out that we have some common ground. I can't wait to see what God has in store with that friendship.

After that we proceeded to play three intense games of Capture the Flag that lead to deception, injuries, fun, a concussion and a bunch of half naked men running around. While it was fun, Zach had to leave early (he received the concussion) and that was a huge bummer. After the third game, things quieted down a bit. I walked up to the Party Bus with Jack (who is awesome, by the way) to treat his wound. When we got back to our camp site, everyone was laying down and it was pretty much the end of the day. (It was actually around 2 A.M.)

The next morning Tim, Danny, Mark, Nate and myself went to find the horses (Kelly's backforest contains many creatures, four of them happen to be horses). When we found them, we decided to re-name them all. We came up with American Ed, Nelly, Cow and Butts. There's a back story for every name, but this little story is off topic enough.

We made our way back to camp and were greeted with a great message from Old Man Harrington. He talked about how important it is for us to find and maintain relationships with other dudes that will ask us tough questions and keep us on our toes. While this was a lesson I've learned, I realized that it was probably one that needed to be heard by some of the guys and even re-heard by the rest of us.

After the talk we went to Sheldon's and got some grub. Not some grub I guess, A TON of grub. So many of the guys thought they could down three of the biggest pancakes you may ever see. I had seen these pancakes before and wisely chose to get a breakfast burrito, which was delicious.
Needless to say, almost everyone failed at eating the three beasts. The only person who did it was Mark. He made history that day, and he pretty much closed the trip.

Overall, what I learned out of all the broken windows, concussions, capture the flag victories and pancakes was that sometimes, I'm not the one doing the learning. I created and strengthened many relationships on that trip, and that's more than enough for me. I'm ready to step up myself.