I was once again awoken by the sound of my alarm going off, but this time it was a self-imposed deadline. I am in the process of taking Phys Ed through Prairie, and that means I need to be running at least 3 times a week for more than 30 minutes. No easy feat if you don’t like to get out of bed early, and the country you are living in becomes unbearable for hard labour at 9 AM. I find myself in a conundrum. My mind says yes, it is time to go to bed; my body says no, just a few more minutes. What my body really means is no, just a few more hours. Today, my mind won, and I jogged for about 30 minutes… I hope it gets easier!
The morning, as with all Fridays was spent at the Airport school. I love those kids, they bring an enthusiasm and a willingness to the Bible. Much like back home, you have to realize that while you are only teaching and giving information, you are also planting seed with which God can do great things later on in life. I just hope that the stories I tell, and the conclusions we come to are ones that will stick with them, and fall on good soil to be cultivated later.
After school it was off to Suva. Normally, you would like to catch a Taxi to the capitol city, but they are not always available. A minibus (11 seater van) will also get you there, but the drivers like to take a few more unnecessary risks on the way down. Today, it was by minibus. I managed to snap a few fantastic shots of the Fiji coast and some of the people, so feel free to check out the pictures to get an idea of what the drive down has in store.
I am in Lami all weekend, and that means a very different experience than you will find in Nadi. The church has a mean age of around 20, and they are alive and free to express their opinions and faith in worship. Youth tonight was quite the experience of Fijian culture! The kids were inspiring in their worship, some laughing and enjoying themselves, some singing boldly, and some closing their eyes in reverence. Reminds me of my BugAM days. The games that came afterwards were wild and frantic. Think normal games… with about 10 times the intensity, lots of yelling and jumping around. It was a blast!
After, Molly and I went into Suva to go see Ghost Rider. While I certainly can’t recommend the movie for many people, it was quite the laugh. No, don’t think that’s a positive statement, the laughs weren’t intentional. The writing was awful, and the directing was even worse… both by the same guy. In his attempts to make the bad guys menacing, he uses every horrible, awful scare shot in the book, and at no point does he actually succeed in making you scared of the characters themselves. The plot seems thrown together, and nothing really sticks.
Worst of all, however, is how he portrays the struggle between evil and evil. God is an absent party in this movie, offering no protection and the church is portrays as a feeble institution. That leaves evil to ward off evil and protect mankind. It makes the Devil the force of justice in the world, and I have a small problem with that. It is no wonder our culture is disillusioned with who God is when everything they see bombards them with falsities and watered-down religion. Nothing is true, everything is relative. It’s sad, and it is far past time we make a stand to say that God is real, active, and caring in our world. Time to pick up our swords and start fighting back.
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