missions.

i should be doing so many other things right now but i think i need to type for awhile. the room will organize itself, and that c.s. lewis biography was terribly written anyway.
this weekend something very strange happened. i was lonely, which is the new norm. i discovered that there was a conference called the "northwest missions fest" going on right by my house. i went by myself. there were maybe three thousand people there.
i wandered around the shoddily made booths and talked to people who had already talked to hundreds of people like myself. i met up with my mom. i saw the usual missions crowd:
1.awkward teenagers who are beautiful and frightening in their furor,
2.old missionary couples who never look too pleased at the state of american christendom,
3.people from the dregs of society who don't fit in anywhere but who are so isolated and lonely that they will corner anyone who happens to be nearby to explain their latest idea to advance the great commission.
i tell you what, kids. i belong with these people. there is something about it all that thrills my heart. if i had to put my finger on the reasoning, i think it might have to do with how very unglamorous it all is. missions is simply people being obedient to god, in ways that involve long distances. i very badly want to be obedient to god, because god is the one who gave me (well, actually everyone) christ. christ is by far the best thing i've got going for me.

a quick story:
i went to a seminar at the conference about working with refugees. they had real live refugees stand up in front of us and tell their life stories. they were very fragmented when they spoke. i had a hard time following, but i loved their faces. one of them was a preacher named achmed, and he said he was from somalia. i just about died. i went to talk to him after the seminar was over, and i couldn't stop shaking his hand. very culturally inappropriate of me, but i don't think he cared. i asked him how i could best share christ with the somali bantu refugees. i told him all about it. i told him that i wanted to see them come to christ. what should i do, i asked. he smiled at me, and his teeth stuck out very prominently. one tooth was very yellow. he told me to stop worrying about it. just be there, he said, smiling his prominent smile. i was frustrated at his african answer, and somewhat hysterically started explaining that majuma's husband was in the hospital and that i thought he was going to die without ever hearing about christ and i couldn't speak somali and i couldn't find a bible and--
and then he stopped me. oh, hassan? he asked. i just about died again. yeah, i said. do you know him? oh, i visited him yesterday in the hospital, said achmed. and you know majuma, i aksed? of course, he said. i visit with them all the time. i work for irco, and we work on english together.
my look of shock was so great that achmed laughed at me.
you see, he said
god cares for the somali's more than you do.

christ is by far the best thing i have going for me.