hi, i already told nathan about this, but i wanted to let you guys know about the exhibit in the brown gallery (in the bryan center) right now.

it's life-size photograph portraits of people who meet at a church under a bridge in waco, tx. most of the people who go to this church are homeless or disabled. anyway, it's really well done, very beautiful, touching, and full of hope . i hope you guys will take some time to visit it and pray over it in the next few weeks (before it leaves!)

So I hope Jason Wang doesn't mind me linking his blog. :) He posted a cool story the other day.

http://theanxiousoyster.tumblr.com/post/377756700/sorry

Enjoy!

Regrouping!

I was chatting with Patrick Ye and something he said, in reference to social justice, that succinctly wrapped up my entire pubpol195 course was this: "You can't help a community if you don't know them first."

So the attempted foray into Durham last snowy Saturday was a bit of a fail (it was a fun one, though). Here's the story!

Nathan and I both showed up at the Carr building twenty minutes late, and Rob showed up soon afterward. We were actually all dressed really funnily -- Nathan looked like a male ballerina (he had two layers of tights on... and basketball shorts), Rob was wearing camo pants so he looked like some sort of army guy, and I looked like an arctic explorer in hiking boots and a big parka. But these details are entirely unnecessary!

We found the DATA bus stop off East Campus - it's behind White Lecture Hall, opposite the Catholic Center. It came every hour or so (or we assumed so, based on something that two guys in a pickup truck yelled out) so after a fair bit of waiting we got cold, and we all wanted some cake (the Catholic students were baking) so we decided to enter the Catholic Center house to stay warm for a bit. Needless to say, Murphy's law stood true and we missed the DATA bus that came less than five minutes later. Nathan even ran out into the middle of the road to try to wave it down, but he was ignored - probably because of his ballet costume.

So we chilled with (and made new) Catholic friends, Rob got into an epic snowball fight, etc. and we decided to perhaps wait for the next bus... which we missed again. It came approximately every fifty minutes, not hour! Nathan was like, "DATA bus!" and pointed to it through the windows as we watched it pass by. We missed the next one as well, although we had kind of given up by now. So we just chatted and watched half a movie with a bunch of people in the Catholic Center. (They have a nice house! And they do dinners on Tuesdays in case you're interested.)

Sooo we'll go to Durham in the future sometime. :) Hopefully God will let us, soon. In the meantime, URBAN MINISTRIES VOLUNTEERING OPPORTUNITY this Sunday! See info below. Comment or e-mail if you're willing to go? And email Jason Wong!

- - -

WHERE: Meet up at the WEST CAMPUS BUS STOP to head over to Urban Ministries to volunteer
WHEN: Sunday Feb 7th, 11:30am-1:00pm
HOW?: If you have a car, please bring a car! There is a church nearby that you can park in.
WHAT: Serve food to people at Urban Ministries! and hopefully spend some time getting to know people, too.

budget planner – Mint.com

it's really saddening to see the systems that keep society, especially social movement, static.

Something Scott Said.

While conversing yesterday, Scott and I were talking about conversation, questions, relations with people. Here's something he said that's going to stick with me for awhile:

"S'part of why I love to listen to anything someone will talk about. I see more of them, and who they are. I see more of His writing."

library ministry

i spent monday in the charlotte public library and i was overwhelmed by the number of homeless people that were there. i walked through the entire second floor one time before a homeless man smiled at me and said that we could share his table if i could find another chair. at urbana, i went to the st. louis library, this beautiful palace of books (one of the buildings sponsored by andrew carnegie, really art-deco with fancy mosaics on the ceiling and stuff) and it too is a popular refuge for the homeless.

i really praise God that there are places that the homeless can go to not only keep warm but also have some type of mental stimulation. anyway, as we start thinking about what types of things we want to do in the future to serve the poor of durham, we might think about public libraries being a place to minister to others or just meet some people :)

Christian Protests in Egypt

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2010/01/07/world/AP-ML-Egypt-Christmas-Attack.html?ref=world

This is such a sad story about Christian prosecution and retaliation right now in Egypt. Please read and pray for intercession.

We are connected.

"All men are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly. As long as there is poverty in this world, no man can be totally rich even if he has a billion dollars. As long as there is disease rampant and millions of people cannot expect to live more than twenty or thirty years, no man can be totally healthy, even if he just got a clean bill of health from the finest clinic in America. Strangely enough, I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. You can never be what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be." - James Cone's Martin & Malcom & America