Pensacola

Pensacola is such an emotional place for me to return to, such obvious spiritual warfare is going on there, but often times the Church seems to be on the wrong side or just completely isolated from the hurting people that it has alienated. On the bus into town, I tried to turn in a guy who was smuggling hard drugs into the city (Police and I miscommunicated). With 35,000 dead in the drug war in Mexico (funded by US coke money) and having seen a handful of P'Cola friends get caught up and somewhat messed up/destroyed by drugs, I really didn't want this guy, especially if he was dumb enough to blab it to the whole bus, to bring drugs into my city, and I was ready to confront him myself, but got confused with the police not coming through. I've been thinking a lot about what got Jesus killed lately, and I wonder what he'd have to say to thugs taking advantage of hurting kids. Somehow I don't think our picture of Jesus really incorporates the destruction of the temple marketplace.

It was great to see my old friends and get to share with Grace Community Church, and to stay with my buddy Mikey. Both the church and my friend were generous with their time and money, although I had no expectations of the latter and it was a real blessing just to be around them. After church, I sold a bunch of cards of my photography, and those went over really well, pretty much broke even on my investment. :)

I also talked to three of my local mentors, went to most of the local art museums, and had really good chats with a bunch of friends old and new about politics, art, faith, and just life in general. I met two of my friends back to back one day, and turns out they had met on an Operation Mobilization trip in Italy! A third friend I looked up to meet with has been in Mexico as a missionary for a couple years!

On Wednesday, I helped lead worship at youth group, and just got to hang with the guys. It was super-fun to hang out with these young men who had been kids at VBS when I was leading in high school!

My buddy Jonathan was talking about taking his art skills to the local children's home. I had kinda taken for granted that we still have them here in the states! It's so cool to see that God is working in my friends' lives, although it's also difficult that a lot of my friends from youth group and high school have given up on God and/or the church. Pray for this city, one of the most churched, and from what I've seen, darkest, places in America. Pray that churches would be places of healing, community, and redemption rather than of judgement, isolation, and condemnation. Pray that the church would get involved in its neighborhoods, and that the city could have hope and see its own beauty and potential as a place of peace and source of good in our world.