Tuesday, April 24, 2007

Back in Kansas

This morning, the telephone's ringing pierced my ears at 4 AM EST--our wake up call to get ready for the flight back home. Saturday morning my parents and I flew to Washington DC to visit my sister in the first family vacation we've had in a while. The trip was quite excellent. I'm really not a large city person, but there is something more appealing about walking and taking public transportation than driving a car every where. My only experience with public transportation has been in China which is rather lacking in enjoyment because it's almost necessary to know Mandarin to get around. So the Metro system in DC is very nice. Very clean, smooth.

I was surprised at the near endless number of gigantic government buildings with interesting architecture. The white house was white. There were the anti-war vigil folks out there who have apparently been there since 1981 or so. My dad liked talking with one guy there--he seemed mentally together and a pleasant person to talk to as opposed to a lady my dad talked to the next day who told him that the Holocaust never happened right after we had been to the Holocaust Memorial Museum. The museum was very well put together and sobering. When we were at the information desk, I asked for a brochure about the Roma people--one of the "pesky gypsy groups" that people still do not like in Europe and most likely other places. I almost spent this year with the PCUSA in Hungary working with Gypsy people, and I remember one of the guys who spent a year with Roma described to me the time he went to Auschwitz and saw the pathetic memorial for the Roma's killed there. They are a group that has a lot of negative stereotypes and I think that can be a self-fulfilling prophecy in the same way that inner cities are here. Stereotypes have some element of truth and self-perpetuation. But, I spent a couple minutes at the memorial praying for the Roma people--that God would bring healing and restoration to them. That they would be redeemed.

Honestly, death is kind of unsettling to me. I feel this way both around atrocities and when I am flying in an airplane or when I am near a steep edge and can feel myself start to fall even though I'm not close. I don't know why I do that, but I just do. I think about this eternal life that there is in Christ, and how that contrasts with the life here on this earth. People have a hard time reconciling that kind of atrocity--the Holocaust--and God, but I think that people use it as an excuse to not think or research what the bible says about sin or the state of the world. It can seem like a lousy place with people with such darkness, but there God is working and there, he is too.

"You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good
to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives."
-- Genesis 50:20

So I visited some Uyghurs in DC while we were there and that was really nice. I can't really say much more than that. Supposedly the letter is finally on it's way to me but I need to get a fax of it because Chinese mail system is somewhat slow I would guess. I need a visa in less than a month. I've got my plane tickets on my desk already.

That's it for now!

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