Safe from the Losing Fight

Technically, the first thing I remember on Sunday was the alarm clock going off. Someone had reset it or something so it went off at midnight. I let it go for a while, hoping John or someone would get it. But apparently I’m a much lighter sleeper than John/Tiger/Phil. I don’t think John even stopped snoring. So I got up and turned it off.

I slept fairly well. Every so often I woke up, pushed Tiger back over to his side, or turned over, then went back to sleep. John is a very early riser. He got up about 4am or so to go get breakfast. He got back around 6am or so (I think he just biked around) to get Tiger and have breakfast. I think about 7am or so he came back to get Phil. As I would find out, Phil is not easy to get up.

I don’t remember what time I got up. But I had the last hot shower I would have for a while.

We went to Newsong Church. Its called a multi-cultural church. It looked like it was about 80% Asian. There’s not anything wrong with that, but I would have described it as an Asian church, not multi-cultural. I guess I envision a multi-cultural church having a more ethnically balanced congregation. i.e. A bunch of Chinese people plus white dude doesn’t make you a multi-cultural church. It just makes you a Chinese church and a white dude.

I remember spending a long time looking for seats. There plenty of open ones. But there was apparently something wrong with them. I’m not sure if we were looking for someone, or for quieter seats (it was loud there) or what. I’m pretty easy to please, so my feeling was “just sit somewhere.” I don’t think God had blessed one chair more than the other.

After church we continued driving. We met up with the Idaho church at a park near the border. We had a small worship time, then an ice breaker. They taped a name to your back, then you played twenty questions with people you didn’t know to figure out who you were.

The Idaho people were nice. Your standard Baptist church youth group. A lot like the one I went through.

We also used the time to meet in our ministry groups. The children’s group went over our lessons again and prayed. I found out that despite our feelings of unpreparedness, the Idaho group was even less prepared when it came to giving the lessons.

Oh, during the meet & greet for the children’s ministry, Noel jokingly introduced himself as “Bob.” Somehow I got labeled as “Jim.” Tiger and Phil were there, so not only did the names stick, but they had to get nicknames too. Tiger went by “George” and Phil eventually went by “Alex” (after changing his nickname a few times).

We left the park to go to Albertsons to get some food for supper (since we’d be in Mexico that night, and YUGO wasn’t providing). We then went on to the border. We didn’t even get stopped, just waved right through.

Not that it mattered because we immediately got lost. We eventually stopped and John asked for directions. He got us most of the way there, but we got lost on some dirt roads. Alan, one of the Idaho adult leaders, then took the lead, and got us the rest of the way to YUGO.

Once there, YUGO gave us all the rules, etc. The Idaho youth were acting like… well, youth. We had to set up our tents and unpack. That took a while. I’ve been camping many times, but never with a tent; always with a camper. So I basically stood around watching everyone unpacking and setting up tents. This wasn’t helping my “what the hell am I doing here” mood.

We also had bathroom duty that night. It wasn’t that bad since people had just gotten there, and it had been cleaned just before.

There was a worship meeting that night, but I definitely wasn’t feeling like it. I actually don’t even remember if I went or not. I think I might have caught part of it. It did not have an impression on me.

I spoke with Elaine that night. I told her I didn’t really want to be there. More accurately, I didn’t feel that I belonged there. I think it was a mixture of being unsure of how God could use me, and all the youth, and the mickey mouse rules that come with them. That, and I don’t think I had much of a servant’s attitude. I was feeling pretty selfish at the time.

I was ready for the day to be over, so I went to bed as soon as I could.

The second day was spent traveling, mostly.

We started out by driving back over to Kristy and Noel’s house. That was the rendezvous point. We picked up Melissa on the way.

Once there, we pack everything into the rental cars and figured out the driving arrangements. We had six registered drivers on the rental cars so we could rotate. Kiki was also there to pray over us and send us off.

The driving was pretty uneventful.

We stopped in Irvine for the night. We got a quick supper then went back to the hotel. Once back at the hotel, we started some last minute preparations for the missions trip. The children’s ministry mainly reviewed our stories.

During this time, I think a lot of us were starting to feel really unprepared and inadequate. I know I did. I had my lessons down pretty well, but I was having a lot of doubts about how God could actually use me. I don’t speak any Spanish. I don’t really relate well with kids. I am a strong introvert, and definitely don’t feel natural in front of groups.

We didn’t go over all the lessons, but instead prayed, and really just gave everything over to God.

I think I got to bed around 11pm. I was sharing a room with John, and his two kids, Tiger and Phil. Tiger and Phil are 7.5 and 6 respectively. I was sharing a bed with Tiger. He was already asleep by the time I got in, and despite being small was managing to take up the entire bed. He was pretty easy to move over though.

I slept pretty well.

The first day for me was really Friday, since I had to travel out to the SF Bay area.

I couldn’t find a ride to the airport (waited too late, and Mike was out of town), so I just drove there. I left early because I knew traffic down TX-121 would be bad, especially with the construction. By the time I got to the airport, the Remote North parking lot was full. Fortunately, Remote South was still open. The remote parking lots are reasonable, only $6/day.

I got there with plenty of time. More than I knew. My flight got delayed because the plane we were using got in late. Apparently there was some bad weather around the DFW area and planes were being routed around it. So my flight left late, then it took longer to get to San Jose. We had to be routed around the same bad weather that had impeded the flight on the way in. The suspense apparently got to the kid two rows in front of me. She threw up, which really added to the atmosphere.

By the time I got to the San Jose airport, I was not in a particularly sunshine-y mood. The flight was long and I was very tired. Elaine met me there (she seemed very chipper at the moment), we got my bag, then went to the car rental.

So before I arrived, Elaine had been at the car rental center. We had reserved a minivan for the missions trip. By the time she got there, they were out. So they offered her a full sized van for the same price. So she signed all the paper work, paid for the van, then went to the other side of the airport to pick me up.

When we got to the car rental together, we went straight to the parking lot to pick up the van. But it wasn’t there. The man handing out keys seem really confused. He told us we had to go back to the counter to figure out where the van was. It didn’t take long to figure out they had rented the van out from under us in the time it took Elaine to go to the other side of the airport to pick me up. Nice.

They kept telling us we should have taken the key. Apparently their booking system is as sophisticated as “do we have the key?” If they have the key to a car, they’re renting it. So never have a car rental employee hold they keys to your car. They’ll rent it out. It doesn’t matter if you’ve paid for the car.

Anyway, Elaine and the woman renting the car spent a lot of time going back and forth, trying to work something out. They didn’t have any more vans, so they offered to rent us two cars. The problem was, the cost kept coming out to more than what they were going to charge us for the van.

Meanwhile, my sunny disposition was not improving. I was getting more fatigued and dealing with the whole “are we going to have transportation or not” was not helping. At one point they needed my license to put me on the driver’s list. Normally, I wouldn’t have minded. But I was tired, and felt like I was being forced into driving because of the rental company’s mistake. Elaine noticed my deteriorating condition and called Kristy and Noel to come out and drive one of the cars back to their place. The idea was I could just crash at their place until the next day.

But Elaine got everything worked out shortly thereafter. That’s when Kristy and Noel arrived, and we drove the rental cars (two of them) back to Kristy and Noel’s house.

Elaine and I then continued on to her parent’s house. She pointed me to a bed and told me what time to get up.

I slept like a rock.