Mom comes to Monrovia

My mom loves me + my mom loves coffee = My new coffee maker!!!!!

She's a beaut, isn't she? She's got a shine like a piece of polished granite under the Sierra sun!

My mother's words as we left the store today: "God restores that which was taken by the locusts." I'll leave you to ponder the meaning of these words.

Korean Night

I pray with these women on Monday nights. Here you see us having "Korean night". Eunsun, from South Korea, prepared a typical Korean meal for us(which was quite unique to my taste buds but delicious). We also watched a documentary on North Korea which was quite sobering and somewhat shocking.

Feeling Chilly in the Fire Tunnel

I went through my first fire tunnel last night. "Fire Tunnel?" you ask. Was this some kind of rite-of-passage deep within the Amazonian jungle? No, my friends, it took place at a local charismatic church and it involved two lines of pastors facing each other(kind of like a soccer tunnel) whom would pray and bless those going through the tunnel.

I attended the tail end of a conference at the church because I wanted to hear Heidi Baker speak, a lady who has an amazing ministry in Mozambique and is a hero of mine. I had been planning on leaving after her message as I knew that sometimes these kinds of services can stretch on indefinitely, but as the build up for the "fire-tunnel" increased after her moving message, I decided to stick around and experience it.

After waiting in line for an hour and a half, I found my heart pumping as I approached the stage. People would step into the tunnel and collapse; some were dragged off to the side and others would be handed through the tunnel on wobbly legs. The woman behind me said, "Get ready for the wildest ride of your life."

"Good grief," I thought to myself. "What's going to happen to me? Am I truly going to collapse in the spirit like I've seen so many other people do in the past?" I stepped into it, only to have a man grab my shoulders and breathe into my face. He handed me off to a woman who grabbed my stomach(thank goodness this was not the man) and started chanting "Fire in the belly, fire in the belly". I kept walking through the tunnel, nervously smiling at the men and women that would grab me, rub my head, say a blessing over me, and call for "more joy" for me. The recovering people- pleaser part me of me wanted to do something, but I just kept walking. It ended with a man forcefully embracing me, swaying me back and forth, and praying
something over me. I hurriedly went down the stage stairs, pushed my way through the dancing and rejoicing people, and fled the building, fearing that the woman was going to ask me about my experience.

The long and short of it...I felt absolutely nothing. I was a little disappointed, to tell you the truth. Do I think the whole thing was a farce? No, I think like most things, some people were having a genuine experience while others were faking it. The whole experience bears a little more personal reflection. If anyone has ever seen or experienced a fire tunnel, or has other opinions, I welcome your comments.

A woman's attempt to satisfy her wilderness longings in an urban context; or, Camping in L.A.

Spontaneously last Friday night, a couple of women invited me to hike up a small hill in Pasadena and camp out for the night. "Oh, I didn't know you could camp up there, " I said. They informed me that there were no signs explicity saying that one could not camp there. So, we set off Friday night about 7 p.m. The night was heavy with a damp mistiness that gave the whole experience a ghostly feel, and I could imagine that I was in another place(except for the wide expanse of flickering LA. lights below, but that's beside the point)

The evening was wonderful...I made us hot chocolate, and we snacked on wheat thins and cheese. Unfortunately, after we went to bed, things went downhill. First, being so close to the city, I was a bit uneasy about the possible presence of a "midnight marauder". I knew that Nattie would alert me, but when I heard the footsteps in the bushes a few meters from my head, that thought did not give me much comfort. I threw myself out of my bag and stayed semi-crouched, all senses on alert(the other girls were cozily snoring in the tent at this point). Finally, I determined that the movement was not a human, or even a cougar(stories of terrorizing cougars in L.A. were echoing in my head), so I crawled back in my bag. The next few hours were a blurry attempt of trying to forget about the constant rustling that continued to move around the periphery of the camp.

Morning came all too soon when the first runner of the day huffed by on the trail at 6:30 a.m. Shortly thereafter, the steady trickle of people(who are these people that hike so early on a Saturday morning?) converged into a loud and boisterous gathering at the picnic table next to ours. We all got up at about 6:50 and shook our heads resignedly. I mean, there were other picninc tables out there(of course, we technically probably weren't supposed to be camping, but let's not make a mountain out of a molehill!).

We asked one of the men if there was a special occasion going on. "No, "he replied quite cheerfully. "We're just getting together!" Getting together? Before 7 a.m. in the morning 2.5 miles up a mountain?(mountain in L.A. terms). Highly suspicious if you ask me. Ahhhh, well, we curbed our sorrows at a little breakfast nook on the way back home. Such is the camping life in L.A.!!