I usually love riding the bus. But the past week has been really annoying. I've had to go from Torrance to Santa Monica and it takes me about 2.5 hours on bad days, and 1.5 on the good days. It's awful because for 6 weeks I am going to have to do it every single weekday. My mom's suggestion is that I take a taxi. My sister suggests I get a car and my idea is to get a ride from my friends. I can't wait to see which one ends up working out. Probably my way because it's the cheapest.

My self imposed hiatus from jack.html is over. I admit I am addicted. I can't help myself. I just keep going back for more. I really like almost everyone's page because each person has a unique flavor. And most of the time you can really see their personality shining through. What amazes me are those people who can write pages and pages and update frequently. Where do they find the time and how can they find all those words?

So in December of 1998 I bought a November Issue of Christianity Today(a magazine). I was really interested in it because of the cover title, "Now That We're Global: Reports from Evangelicals Worldwide". It included strories from Vietnam, S.Korea, Russia, Kenya, Brazil, Mexico, West Bank. I really wanted a chance to hear about the growth of the church in those countries because i really enjoy to hear perspectives on issues from different parts of the world. Yesterday I reread that issue and I could not believe how much more I understood what they were talking about. When I read it the first time I understood the words and sentiments expressed but after going overseas last summer, I could relate to the stories. I felt my heart breaking as I read about some of the challenges faced by the churches in these countries.

Did you know that in 1994, 80% of Rwandans were Christian? (either Protestant or Catholic). Everytime I hear that statistic I am shocked. From what I understand, missionaries went to African nations and held outreaches where thousands accepted Christ. But very few of these thousands would ever be discipled and have the opportunity to learn what it means to truly follow Christ. It is so good to know that some of that is changing as "the church in Africa is experiencing a healthy self correction". Not only is the African church growing, it is also ridding itself of the unhealthy legacy of Western christianity.

It was also interesting to read about Sri Lanka, Indonesia, Vietnam, and Brazil. These are countries with fascinating stories. For instance in Brazil one pastor, a descedant of Swedish immigrant, shared that his father became a Christian through his relationship with some Japanese missionaries. So this pastor is fluent in Portugese, Swedish, English etc. In Sri Lanka Christianity has been growing as people are exposed to the gospel for the first time. It's always been kind of amazing to me to see how Christianity can remain similar the world round yet be so different because of cultural differences and other challenges faced.

When I was returning home this summer from my trip to KZ our team spent the night in an Uzbek airport. It was rather obvious that we were Americans. Since people overseas tend to think that all American travelers have tons of money, I was very worried that while we were sleeping people would walk off with our luggage. So I kept my eyes wide open and tried to think of ways to arrange our luggage so it would be well protected by our sleeping bodies and it would be easy to detect any movement.

I am really, really picky about using public restrooms. If it looks dirty I know that it is probably very unsanitary. A group of us went to use the bathroom and I was surprised by its cleanliness.(despite the fact that they were squattypots). The shocker this time was that you had to pay to use the restroom. I was like, there is no way I will pay to use a public restroom. Two hours later I was singing a different tune and had to borrow some Uzbek currency. Later i returned with a friend that had to use the restroom. We had to use the buddy system because to get to the restrooms you had to walk out of the airport, down the stairs and around the corner. Believe me, going to the restroom has never been such an adventure.

After we had settled down for the night I started writing in my journal and thinking over my life. Around 4am, I decided to go rinse out my bowl of Spaghetti. This little boy walks up to me and I totally ignore him because I figure it'll be too much energy to try and understand Uzbek or Russian at this time of the day. To my astonishment he started talking in English. So we started talking and I was pretty happy about it. Now i had company and I could watch the luggage! As we talked I found out his Dad was from Bangladesh and his mom from Uzbekistan and so he speaks Hindi+ 2 other Indian languages, English, Russian, Uzbek, and is currently learning French and German. Anyway reading about that guy from Brazil with the Swedish dad reminded me of my airport experience.

I have to rank that as my most interesting airport experience adventure ever.
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