First Day of Class

 I have a hard believing I'm actually here. I wake every morning surprised, and sometimes it takes me a a second or two for my mind to reboot and do a speed of light playback of where I am and how I got here. 

Today was our first day of actual classes. Tis a strange animal, these classes. Part of me feels like I'm in a church service, and the other (more studious) part of me feels like I'm taking notes in a college lecture. The topic we covered today was mostly centered on defining the  Body of Christ in the church. The concepts in themselves are nothing new to me and are relatively simple but there was a few times the teacher (Corby Duncan) went over my head.

We have been told time and time again to expect our views and understanding in certain aspects of faith and worship to be strained or even changed while here. I can already see it happening in the way we worship. During church back home,  a raised hand with closed eyes and maybe a slight back and forth sway, was the most physical expression of worship to be commonly expected. Here, actions such as those are reserved for the shy. Moshing, jumping up and down, and dancing in large crowds is the norm around here.

Prayer is also has a different spin on it here. Today, we were instructed to to each concentrate and pray for the upcoming semester. Back home, if this ever happened you could expect a quite room with bowed heads. However here, everyone started praying with up held heads and wispy voices (some people were even speaking in tongues) that if you closed you eyes, you would be convinced that you were in a cave full of bats.  Now, I not knocking this way of prayer at all. It's just different than what I'm used to, and it's going to take some adjusting on my part to open myself up to these new ideas.

A friend mailed me this earlier this week in a letter (yes, as in paper and pen). So I thought I would share.

''The LORD had said to Abram, “Go from your country, your people and your father’s household to the land I will show you.  ² “I will make you into a great nation,
   and I will bless you;
I will make your name great,
   and you will be a blessing.^[a]
3 I will bless those who bless you,
   and whoever curses you I will curse;
and all peoples on earth
   will be blessed through you.''
-Genesis 12:1-3


Also, it's VERY hot here. Today it was in the high 90's. Wind just stirred the hot air around and was more like more like a hair blow dryer to the face instead of a refreshing breeze. The wood floors in our house is about as hot as the  slowly cooling pavement outside in the stuffy night air.