In the Land of Jason

Wow, I've been really bad about blogging the last couple of months. I'm at the library eating and taking a break from working on a  health policy paper (about HR 1693) and eating chunk light tuna kits. 

   Theres a display outside the library memoralizing the 20th anniversery of the fall of the berlin wall. The students sitting around me weren't even born then. My family had just gotten back from German when it fell. I remember stories in the german papers about people who had been shot trying to get over. I still have this very vivid memory of a fuzzy black white photo of a body tangled in the barb wire. I used to spend hours trying to figure out how I would escape if I ever needed, the disguises and excuses I would use. We got back during the summer and I spent most of it with my grandparents, it was to be a hard adjustment that fall but I loved my time at the camp. When the wall came down, I was so excited so, the intensity of the happiness I felt  for the families that could finally be reunified still feels familiar. My classmates didn't care and looking back I wouldn't expect most 12 year olds to care either, especially when most of us discovered girls that year. Its so hard to imagine that so much time has passed.  Soon after, it occurred to me that up until our departure in July people were still being shot. If only they had waited just another six months they would be alive. The idea haunted me for long a time as a kid. Yet had that desire not been so intense, the wall might never have come down. 

      It moves today to think about the wall and all of the suffering its meant. It makes me think of the concentration camps. It makes me think of dreary, soulless communism. It makes me think of how the world punished Germany by cutting it in two and making it watch as half of it withered and died from cancer. I can't think about the wall though and not think about people I met that still prayed for family members trapped on the others side after 30 years. I think about people that planned for decades to escape. I think of how even in all the dreariness hope still pushed its way up through concrete despair. 

       The last few weeks have been dreary and extremely busy. Every day is a 12 hour day. Every day things are left undone for the next morning. I do my laundry over three or four days. One day I put laundry in, the next morning I throw it in the dryer and on the third or fourth I put it away. I'm learning a lot, mostly about how much more I have to learn. Sometimes June seems so far away. Really though its all hyperbole. Its an incredible privilege to be in my position to learn. I got excited the other day thinking about going to Global Missions Health Conference in Louisville. For so long its seemed like some far off thing. Now I'm nearing an important junction in my education, I will finally be able to begin practicing. My student days are numbered. 

Some prayer requests

1. Maycol a friend of mine is having a disagreement with the mother of his children and she has taken them to live with her parents 2 states away. Maycol is incredible torn up about the their departure and is really struggling. Please pray for peace and strength for Maycol. 

2. Pray for my time at the medical missionary convention. This'll be my first real break from school and I'll get to spend a little time with Belinda. I'll be talking to clinics about possible job opening here in the US so as to get experience before going overseas. 

3. Continue to pray for the Hispanic church. They had a baptism Sunday before last. Also had a healthy baby born to one of the members. I was there last Sunday for the first time in several weeks and it felt really weird to be so out of touch. They seem to be doing well. 

4. The church I've been visiting, Parkside Christian Church has been great. I've only been there a few times but they have deep roots. It was a good decision to take this time away. I'm so emotionally drained that I don't have much to offer by Sunday morning. Instead I've found my times there to be refreshing and challenging. 

5. Are you going to Global Missions Health Conference? Know someone else who might? Let me know and we can meet up. I'll be there all day Friday and Saturday. If you need transportation or help with the cost let me know. Check it out at www.medicalmissions.com 

As always.. May God bless you as you seek Him, 

                               JP