I've been neglecting blogging lately. I think the main reason has been how focused I am on learning Kinyarwanda. But here's some pieces of technology that I've had a strong appreciation for lately.
I love mopeds.
100 miles to the gallon. The tank is 1 1/3 gallons. When I rented a moped, he asked that I not return it empty but would instead put in $1.00 of gas for the next person.
Hawaii's laws are awesome. I don't need a motorcycle license to drive one. My moped was limited to 37 mph. So on highways, I drive in the bicycle lane. Which is a huge plus when there's traffic.
Polymers.
Metal water bottles really suck. They expand with temperature and get scratched easily. The grooves got worn down enough that the cap wouldn't stay on and I couldn't carry it around like I normally do. It was really frustrating.
So I got a Nalgene! It's awesome. It holds 750 mL. I don't have to take off the top to drink from it. And it's easy to clip on to my belt during construction.
Artificial sweeteners.
I did an experiment the other day. I got two little styrofoam cups of coffee. I put a pack of sugar into one and a pack of sweetener into the other. The one with the sweetener was so much sweeter. I had no idea they'd be that different. I liked it.
The Internets. (A Series of Tubes)
I'm probably spending an hour a day learning Kinyarwanda on the Internet. Spanish divides nouns into masculine and feminine, and adjectives are conjugated accordingly. Kinyarwanda has 12 divisions of nouns, and every word in the sentence is conjugated (more correctly, inflected, which includes conjugation and declension) accordingly. I'm learning to say a lot, but my listening comprehension is really lagging because I'm still really slow at it. I have a list of 80 verbs that I'm memorizing, and it's a bit frustrating sometimes, because there's some words that I look at that I can't remember, even though I've looked at them 10 times. And when I read my Kinyarwanda Bible, I can't understand most of the words I read. It's a tiny bit overwhelming, but I'm pushing through. I can't get any sympathy about this here.
One thing I love about blogging is that when I have a rather witty cultural reference, I can just put the link in so that people can brush up on the reference and get it (e.g. The Internets and A Series of Tubes). Because there's so many girls here that give other girls a bad name by not getting anything I say unless it's not subtle at all.
Monday, November 29, 2010
Monday, November 22, 2010
Staff Appreciation Night Preparation Craziness
(I'll have a blog about the weekend later.)
One of the girls in the Compassion DTS, Emily, decided to have an appreciation night for the staff. She created groups to help her organize it. I volunteered for the food prep group. Today she said she needed someone with a Costco card, so I raised my hand and joined in on the Costco run today at 5:00.
There were 8 of us walking into Costco with one card. A bunch of people were nervous that that wouldn't work (that they'd stop us and say a large group can't walk in with one card). I said that'd be ridiculous. We walked in just fine without a second glance. Sweet.
Two of the girls wanted to take advantage of the Costco run and get personal food in addition to the event's food. I saw no problem with that. I just scan my Costco card before each of them goes, and then they pay with their card. I wasn't sure that you could pay with a different person's card, in which case, I would just pay and be paid back. But again, there were a few in the group that didn't think it'd be allowed for one member card to be scanned three times, which I found a ridiculous idea. And so they suggested schemes of throwing everything into one batch and subtracting the personal goods from the cost and dividing the remainder among the supporters. There were a few people suggesting schemes, and whenever that happens, I pretty much always stay out of it, to not further contribute to the cacophony. It went on for long enough that I took the two girls through the lines and scanned my member card for them, so that I could show the others that it could be done, and then we'd simply pay for the group things with the communal money.
And it almost completely worked, except with one problem. The lady behind the counter was personally offended that I was taking advantage of my membership powers. Perhaps she felt I was cheating the system. If I were breaking a rule, or if she at least thought or felt I was breaking a rule, then that would have been understandable. But this was different. She started out perfectly fairly, informing me that I would not be entitled to a third receipt for the third purchase, motioning to the receipt that had just been printed out for the second purchase. So I ask, "K. I can still do a separate purchase, right?" "Yes." Wonderful. I take the second receipt out of the machine and hand it to the second girl, Lauren. The lady sees the receipt no longer there and then asks me if I took it out of the machine. I say, "I'm sorry, I thought you gestured for me to take it." She said nothing, but she appeared very annoyed with me. She then starts running the last group of food, for the event. Emily waits at the register to pay. I forget who got handed the third receipt, but we were all surprised to be handed a third receipt since we didn't pay. I see that the card number on the receipt was the same number as on the second receipt. She had charged the $100.34 of food for the staff appreciation night to Lauren's card. We hand Lauren the cash to make up for it, but she started freaking out because her account didn't have much money and she is living month to month.
We know Walmart has a money transfer service, so I hop out of the truck with Lauren and Emily (who needs more personal food). I wait with Lauren in line, and for at least ten minutes, the guy in front of us is returning a handful of items, one transaction at a time. (I don't know if this is relevant, but one of my roommates used to steal things from Target and then return them to Walmart because of Walmart's lax return policy; he said it was really easy.) At this point, I remember I was approaching the time for a phone date, but just then, we get called to the counter and we ask if they can transfer money into an account or deposit checks, and no, they cannot. They can transfer money between people but not into accounts, and they can cash welfare/government checks but not personal checks; Walmart knows its key demographic/customers. Lauren will have to mail the cash to her mom for her mom to deposit, because her bank does not have a branch in Hawaii. She said her mom probably wouldn't deposit anything for her until she gets the cash in the mail, which is sad.
So we check out of Walmart, and while we had been in line at customer service counter, the truck driver had texted me to say take the Walmart shuttle back so he wouldn't have to come back, cause shuttle vans come every 20 minutes anyway. We walk outside and there's 5 YWAMers waiting for the shuttle, including a CommTrans person who wanted to tell me how hilarious my jokes were last week at the open mic night. Also as we're walking outside, we see an empty YWAM shuttle driving away from those 5 people that are waving at the van. They all expect the van to turn left for another loop to actually pick up people, but it didn't. It just drove away. Ha! Did it think we were waving goodbye?
So we wait and talk. Ten minutes later, another van shows up. I wish Lydia a good night and hop into the van.
It's really good I was in on all this, because I feel I did a pretty good job of making the crew laugh as our plans went through the blender. Crazy night. :-D
One of the girls in the Compassion DTS, Emily, decided to have an appreciation night for the staff. She created groups to help her organize it. I volunteered for the food prep group. Today she said she needed someone with a Costco card, so I raised my hand and joined in on the Costco run today at 5:00.
There were 8 of us walking into Costco with one card. A bunch of people were nervous that that wouldn't work (that they'd stop us and say a large group can't walk in with one card). I said that'd be ridiculous. We walked in just fine without a second glance. Sweet.
Two of the girls wanted to take advantage of the Costco run and get personal food in addition to the event's food. I saw no problem with that. I just scan my Costco card before each of them goes, and then they pay with their card. I wasn't sure that you could pay with a different person's card, in which case, I would just pay and be paid back. But again, there were a few in the group that didn't think it'd be allowed for one member card to be scanned three times, which I found a ridiculous idea. And so they suggested schemes of throwing everything into one batch and subtracting the personal goods from the cost and dividing the remainder among the supporters. There were a few people suggesting schemes, and whenever that happens, I pretty much always stay out of it, to not further contribute to the cacophony. It went on for long enough that I took the two girls through the lines and scanned my member card for them, so that I could show the others that it could be done, and then we'd simply pay for the group things with the communal money.
And it almost completely worked, except with one problem. The lady behind the counter was personally offended that I was taking advantage of my membership powers. Perhaps she felt I was cheating the system. If I were breaking a rule, or if she at least thought or felt I was breaking a rule, then that would have been understandable. But this was different. She started out perfectly fairly, informing me that I would not be entitled to a third receipt for the third purchase, motioning to the receipt that had just been printed out for the second purchase. So I ask, "K. I can still do a separate purchase, right?" "Yes." Wonderful. I take the second receipt out of the machine and hand it to the second girl, Lauren. The lady sees the receipt no longer there and then asks me if I took it out of the machine. I say, "I'm sorry, I thought you gestured for me to take it." She said nothing, but she appeared very annoyed with me. She then starts running the last group of food, for the event. Emily waits at the register to pay. I forget who got handed the third receipt, but we were all surprised to be handed a third receipt since we didn't pay. I see that the card number on the receipt was the same number as on the second receipt. She had charged the $100.34 of food for the staff appreciation night to Lauren's card. We hand Lauren the cash to make up for it, but she started freaking out because her account didn't have much money and she is living month to month.
We know Walmart has a money transfer service, so I hop out of the truck with Lauren and Emily (who needs more personal food). I wait with Lauren in line, and for at least ten minutes, the guy in front of us is returning a handful of items, one transaction at a time. (I don't know if this is relevant, but one of my roommates used to steal things from Target and then return them to Walmart because of Walmart's lax return policy; he said it was really easy.) At this point, I remember I was approaching the time for a phone date, but just then, we get called to the counter and we ask if they can transfer money into an account or deposit checks, and no, they cannot. They can transfer money between people but not into accounts, and they can cash welfare/government checks but not personal checks; Walmart knows its key demographic/customers. Lauren will have to mail the cash to her mom for her mom to deposit, because her bank does not have a branch in Hawaii. She said her mom probably wouldn't deposit anything for her until she gets the cash in the mail, which is sad.
So we check out of Walmart, and while we had been in line at customer service counter, the truck driver had texted me to say take the Walmart shuttle back so he wouldn't have to come back, cause shuttle vans come every 20 minutes anyway. We walk outside and there's 5 YWAMers waiting for the shuttle, including a CommTrans person who wanted to tell me how hilarious my jokes were last week at the open mic night. Also as we're walking outside, we see an empty YWAM shuttle driving away from those 5 people that are waving at the van. They all expect the van to turn left for another loop to actually pick up people, but it didn't. It just drove away. Ha! Did it think we were waving goodbye?
So we wait and talk. Ten minutes later, another van shows up. I wish Lydia a good night and hop into the van.
It's really good I was in on all this, because I feel I did a pretty good job of making the crew laugh as our plans went through the blender. Crazy night. :-D
Tuesday, November 16, 2010
Beaches
I'm serving the Lord, I promise!
Children's Beach. There's a rock wall that lets in water but kills the waves, and on the side the rock wall closest to shore, there's like a pool maybe bigger than a football, and it's all about five feet deep, and so it's the perfect place for snorkeling. We also saw a turtle there. There's no sandy beach here though.
Mile 88. A very white sandy beach with very clear water. Small waves, but it's a big beach. It also has a rock you can swim out to and jump off of. It's popular but not super crowded.
Hapuna Beach. We went here the first weekend. It was the biggest beach, and it had pretty good-sized waves. There's a good area for playing football and soccer. There's a park canopy for having lunch in.
Magic Sands Beach. Short stretch of sand with huge waves. Crowded and fun. Very close to base.
The beach by the pier. Closest beach to the base. You just have to walk down the boardwalk to get there. It's the smallest beach, but it's perfect if you just want a quick getaway.
Other tourist attractions include the farmer's market, the weekend flea market, the froyo place close to the base.
Great tourist activities are snorkeling, boogie boarding, cliff jumping, going to the movies, and napping.
Children's Beach. There's a rock wall that lets in water but kills the waves, and on the side the rock wall closest to shore, there's like a pool maybe bigger than a football, and it's all about five feet deep, and so it's the perfect place for snorkeling. We also saw a turtle there. There's no sandy beach here though.
Mile 88. A very white sandy beach with very clear water. Small waves, but it's a big beach. It also has a rock you can swim out to and jump off of. It's popular but not super crowded.
Hapuna Beach. We went here the first weekend. It was the biggest beach, and it had pretty good-sized waves. There's a good area for playing football and soccer. There's a park canopy for having lunch in.
Magic Sands Beach. Short stretch of sand with huge waves. Crowded and fun. Very close to base.
The beach by the pier. Closest beach to the base. You just have to walk down the boardwalk to get there. It's the smallest beach, but it's perfect if you just want a quick getaway.
Other tourist attractions include the farmer's market, the weekend flea market, the froyo place close to the base.
Great tourist activities are snorkeling, boogie boarding, cliff jumping, going to the movies, and napping.
Wednesday, November 10, 2010
A Snapshot of Sermons
We have lecture everyday from 9 to noon. Same speaker every weekday for a week. We have really good lecturers here. Here's a sample of one day of preaching.
"
When I grew up, I was in a gang. Our school building was made up of 4 halls, arranged in the shape of a giant rectangle with the blacktop courtyard in the middle of the rectangle. Once, my gang members and I stole a tombstone, lifted it over the school building into the courtyard, and cemented it to our turf (our piece of the courtyard that stood around at all day). Once, I stole a teacher's car, and did donuts in the lawn of the school. I had teachers who would give me an A as long as I agreed to not show up in their class and to leave them alone.
There was this girl in our school who was really good-looking, and she was a Christian. Every single day, my best friend and fellow gang member, Mike, would ask her out, and she would say no. But then after a couple months, she says yes on the condition that she drives. She took him to church and he got saved.
Everyday he started telling me about Jesus, and I would hit him and spit on him and excommunicated him from our gang, so he started telling me about Jesus from a distance, for two years. One of my friends, an enormous guy, said he heard about these church services where they were praying for people and the people were falling down whenever they got pray for. He decided to go to one so that he could prove that no one could knock him down. At the end of the sermon, they ask people to come down for prayer, and he jumps out of his seat and starts running down because he wants to be the first one for prayer just to prove that it wouldn't affect him. When he gets ten feet from the stage, it's as if he ran into an invisible concrete wall. He fell over backwards and was knocked unconscious for 30 minutes, even though, as everyone in the church could see, there was nothing there in the spot he seemed to crash into something. He got saved that night.
After a couple years, I eventually gave in to my best friend Mike's invitation to go to an evangelistic meeting. I went and hated it. But at the altar call, I couldn't explain it when I felt myself stand. I tried to sit back down but my knees wouldn't bend. People were pushing me to the front, but the stage ran out of room, so the speaker told us to just stand there. I stood and listened, but then ran out. But then I went home. My mom freaked out that I was home on a Friday night, because I never came home on Friday nights. I just went to bed and woke up in the morning.
When I woke up, I started freaking out, because I wasn't shaking. I'd been heavy into drugs from ages 11 to 18, so it was normal to me. (He's describing DT.) Anways, I went to work that morning.
I worked as a cleaner for high rise buildings, because as soon as the supervisor left, me and my friends used to steal massive amounts of equipment from the buildings everyday so that we could buy drugs. But this morning, my friend said, "Let's go." And my knees locked again. And then I couldn't believe it when my mouth said, "I don't want to steal anymore." I called Mike and said, "What did you do to me?!" He said, "It's Jesus! It's Jesus!"
So he gets me to church and I pray, "God, it's me, Don Gillman. I'm down here. (As if saying 'here' would clarify things for Him.) I know I've done a lot of bad things. I'm sorry."
I became a Christian, met and married my wife, started a construction business, and then joined YWAM.
One of the guys I met in YWAM was an Indian guy named Simon. He was weird cause when we'd hang out in town he'd want to walk and hold hands with me, cause men do that in his culture, and I had to always keep hitting his hand away.
Simon used to be an alcoholic street fighter. One night, a white lady throws something out of a cab towards him, and he was curious what a white lady would throw out of a cab, and so he bends down and picks it up, and he's too drunk to read it. So he sticks it in his pocket, and the next morning, he reads the gospel tract. He becomes a Christian from that. He joins YWAM and eventually helps the Bible get translated into the dialect of his tribe in north eastern India for the first time. All that came from the courage of a white lady who was too timid to do anything more than toss a track out the crack of a window, and she will never know what all that little act of faith led to.
"
The End. I left out a lot from that day. But there's a snapshot of it.
"
When I grew up, I was in a gang. Our school building was made up of 4 halls, arranged in the shape of a giant rectangle with the blacktop courtyard in the middle of the rectangle. Once, my gang members and I stole a tombstone, lifted it over the school building into the courtyard, and cemented it to our turf (our piece of the courtyard that stood around at all day). Once, I stole a teacher's car, and did donuts in the lawn of the school. I had teachers who would give me an A as long as I agreed to not show up in their class and to leave them alone.
There was this girl in our school who was really good-looking, and she was a Christian. Every single day, my best friend and fellow gang member, Mike, would ask her out, and she would say no. But then after a couple months, she says yes on the condition that she drives. She took him to church and he got saved.
Everyday he started telling me about Jesus, and I would hit him and spit on him and excommunicated him from our gang, so he started telling me about Jesus from a distance, for two years. One of my friends, an enormous guy, said he heard about these church services where they were praying for people and the people were falling down whenever they got pray for. He decided to go to one so that he could prove that no one could knock him down. At the end of the sermon, they ask people to come down for prayer, and he jumps out of his seat and starts running down because he wants to be the first one for prayer just to prove that it wouldn't affect him. When he gets ten feet from the stage, it's as if he ran into an invisible concrete wall. He fell over backwards and was knocked unconscious for 30 minutes, even though, as everyone in the church could see, there was nothing there in the spot he seemed to crash into something. He got saved that night.
After a couple years, I eventually gave in to my best friend Mike's invitation to go to an evangelistic meeting. I went and hated it. But at the altar call, I couldn't explain it when I felt myself stand. I tried to sit back down but my knees wouldn't bend. People were pushing me to the front, but the stage ran out of room, so the speaker told us to just stand there. I stood and listened, but then ran out. But then I went home. My mom freaked out that I was home on a Friday night, because I never came home on Friday nights. I just went to bed and woke up in the morning.
When I woke up, I started freaking out, because I wasn't shaking. I'd been heavy into drugs from ages 11 to 18, so it was normal to me. (He's describing DT.) Anways, I went to work that morning.
I worked as a cleaner for high rise buildings, because as soon as the supervisor left, me and my friends used to steal massive amounts of equipment from the buildings everyday so that we could buy drugs. But this morning, my friend said, "Let's go." And my knees locked again. And then I couldn't believe it when my mouth said, "I don't want to steal anymore." I called Mike and said, "What did you do to me?!" He said, "It's Jesus! It's Jesus!"
So he gets me to church and I pray, "God, it's me, Don Gillman. I'm down here. (As if saying 'here' would clarify things for Him.) I know I've done a lot of bad things. I'm sorry."
I became a Christian, met and married my wife, started a construction business, and then joined YWAM.
One of the guys I met in YWAM was an Indian guy named Simon. He was weird cause when we'd hang out in town he'd want to walk and hold hands with me, cause men do that in his culture, and I had to always keep hitting his hand away.
Simon used to be an alcoholic street fighter. One night, a white lady throws something out of a cab towards him, and he was curious what a white lady would throw out of a cab, and so he bends down and picks it up, and he's too drunk to read it. So he sticks it in his pocket, and the next morning, he reads the gospel tract. He becomes a Christian from that. He joins YWAM and eventually helps the Bible get translated into the dialect of his tribe in north eastern India for the first time. All that came from the courage of a white lady who was too timid to do anything more than toss a track out the crack of a window, and she will never know what all that little act of faith led to.
"
The End. I left out a lot from that day. But there's a snapshot of it.
Friday, November 5, 2010
Week 5
Relationships Week.
Most of it was good, and then she spent the last day reinforcing stereotypes about ministry subculture. She endorsed the Christian side hug (instead of real hugs), and guys and girls not hanging out in a one-on-one setting. Real quote: "Does holding hands cause you to stumble? You have to know yourself." (Context = A guy the speaker knew started out a relationship without being willing to hold hands because he had a crazy sexual history and wanted to be at the other extreme.)
We're learning more about the Rwanda mission. They haven't had any student deaths for two years now (just kidding, mom!). We're all going to be living in a house away from the YWAM base. A few of my teammates love to cook. I'm learning Kinyarwandan still, but I haven't put as much time into it as I'd like. I really need this weekend. I really want to sleep in. I'm surprised how easy it is to spend a week here without reading the Bible. It'll be a good weekend though.
Brazilians (male and female) are the most touchy-feely people in the world. A conversation with one of them is quite an experience. I think it's really cool.
Basketball tournament tonight. My team lost. Our Hawaiian big guy left the game at 16-16 (games to 15) to go play on the other court with a Hawaiian friend. Lame.
Most of it was good, and then she spent the last day reinforcing stereotypes about ministry subculture. She endorsed the Christian side hug (instead of real hugs), and guys and girls not hanging out in a one-on-one setting. Real quote: "Does holding hands cause you to stumble? You have to know yourself." (Context = A guy the speaker knew started out a relationship without being willing to hold hands because he had a crazy sexual history and wanted to be at the other extreme.)
We're learning more about the Rwanda mission. They haven't had any student deaths for two years now (just kidding, mom!). We're all going to be living in a house away from the YWAM base. A few of my teammates love to cook. I'm learning Kinyarwandan still, but I haven't put as much time into it as I'd like. I really need this weekend. I really want to sleep in. I'm surprised how easy it is to spend a week here without reading the Bible. It'll be a good weekend though.
Brazilians (male and female) are the most touchy-feely people in the world. A conversation with one of them is quite an experience. I think it's really cool.
Basketball tournament tonight. My team lost. Our Hawaiian big guy left the game at 16-16 (games to 15) to go play on the other court with a Hawaiian friend. Lame.
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