The people are the best part.
The people are the best part!
And the best part of this trip has been time spent with people, some of it planned and some spontaneous.
Yesterday I had coffee with Grant. He's about three years older than me, and had done a stint in the Army before he came to GBC and was my roommate for a semester. He's lived here in G.R. since then, spending his career working as a software engineer for NCR (remember them?). I found him on Facebook, made contact, and we set up yesterday's conversation.
Our lives have taken different paths since our time at Bible college and we're now in very different places in almost every respect. He says the word agnostic comes closest to describing his thoughts on spiritual matters, he attends a church here that stands as a bastion of liberalism in every sense, and he and his wife have no children. Grant has MS, something between mild and advanced. (I learned a lot about the disease because of his willingness to explain it to me.)
Our conversation was easy and thoroughly enjoyable. Like everyone, Grant has a story well worth telling and instructive, even for someone with different views on most key topics.
While we sat at a table next to the Starbucks kiosk inside a grocery store I glanced up and saw a very pretty young lady looking at me with that "is that who I think it is?" expression on her face. Turns out it was Sarah, one of my former students and the wife of one of my ministry students who now teaches at the college. Oh, and the daughter of a couple I grew up with at our church in Seattle. Hugs, a quick greeting, and a smile left on my face.
Home for lunch with Pam and her mom and then off to see Jeremy, president of Grace Mission International, the organization under which I've made my teaching trips. He gave me very helpful (and gratifying) feedback about my three trips and told me which countries look like good options for future trips: Bolivia, Curacao, and Zambia. I'm already eager.
Four or five years ago I spoke at a week-long summer camp in WA, teaching a morning and evening session to an amazing group of about 60 H.S. students. I've stayed in touch with some of the (again, via FB) and recently learned one of those now works as an intern at the college. So after my meeting with Jeremy (they have their offices off in a corner of the administration building) I went over to that building to see her. Turns out she is going through a pretty rough stretch, feeling hurt by the actions of individuals she held close to her heart. She cried, we hugged, and my heart broke for this sweet young lady who is the victim of others' selfishness and insensitivity.
Then we met Rob and Leslie Burch for dinner at Q'doba. Wonderful! He's a car guy who has restored a rare and very beautiful Pontiac and they were part of Celebration when I pastored there. The Burchs were/are part of a subset of people at Celebration who "came out of" the Worldwide Church of God, a group that can accurately be described as a cult and was prominent during the second half of the last century, reaching the same level (maybe higher) of prominence then as Scientology holds now.
If you're of a certain age you may remember the father/son team of Herbert W. and Garner Ted Armstrong who led that group.
I knew the Burchs, the Wendts, and both generations of the Walkers had come to Celebration from the WWCoG, but what I didn't realize until this week was that the Walkers and the Burchs had never heard about the overriding power of grace until then. the WWCoG taught that only through very strict obedience to the Mosaic law, including observance of all the holy days, could one be OK with God. I had a conversation with Rick Walker Sunday morning, and then with the Burchs last night in which they told me I was the first person to tell them (via sermons) that simply trusting in God's grace extended through Christ's death for our sins was the only way to acceptance before God.
Even as I type that I cannot explain how that makes me feel. Totally humbled, and very, very grateful for the opportunity to have been the messenger God used to bring that best of all good news.
The people are the best part.
The people are the best part.
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