Bigger an/or Better

One thing that is an essential part of life on summer project is being able to approach, interrupt, and talk to random people whether they are sitting on the beach, walking the promenade, or enjoying a Saturday evening in their homes.  At the beginning, it was a really intimidating, awkward, and scary thing to do, but every time it becomes a little bit easier.  It's not that you become that much better or more comfortable with it, but more that you learn not to fear rejection.  A no is just that, a no.  It may come in a polite, annoyed, or yelling tone, but it is still just a no.  I guess I'm not really afraid of no's anymore.  Every Saturday night we have a project "social" and last night the community team informed us that we would be playing bigger or better, a game where the goal is to start with a penny, and work up to the biggest or best possible object.  We were split into 13 teams of 5, given almost 3 hours, and told to go/do anything we wanted.  We just had to find people that were willing to trade whatever you had for something bigger.  Whoever had the best item at the end would be the winning team.  I wish you could hear all of the stories of the adventures of various teams last night, because they are all highly entertaining, but you will have to settle with just hearing mine. My team was super excited about the game, and we decided to walk the neighborhoods rather than try to drive somewhere or approach businesses.  So, we just walked up to house after house, explained the game, and asked if they had anything bigger/better that they didn't need/want and would want to trade for the item we had..  The first few houses were a little intimidating to knock on, but we soon became fairly comfortable with our roles.  From the penny we advanced to a small wine glass, and from the glass to a book on Benjamin Franklin.  With the book we managed to obtain a full trivia game from the 80s.  The lady who gave it to us was quite passionate about trivia, and was quite sad to give it away, and we assured her that it wasn't necessary.  However, she insisted because she wanted so badly to help us with our game and had to other versions that she was better at.  This woman also offered us a toilet (yes, a real toilet), and was shocked when we eagerly declared that we would love to take it.  She didn't want to burden us with carrying it all over the neighborhood and we realized that many of the houses probably wouldn't be willing to take it off our hands.  So instead, we agreed that if by the end we didn't have something better, we would return for the toilet.  After multiple houses, we ended up at an amazing block party with the trivia game in a newly acquired bag.  The block party was awesome complete with food, alcohol, and two awesome jumping houses.  The people were totally friendly and helped us out by trading us two very heavy lawn/beach chairs and offering us some pizza as well.  We trekked around with the chairs for quite some time, most people didn't have anything bigger and didn't really want to take the chairs off our hands.  We continued to acquire additional items such as a huge ugly piece of artwork and a super old air filter that a woman traded for one of the chairs.  We also encountered a few very interesting people, one being an odd lady with a crazy house who was leaving for the airport in five minutes but offered us her bathroom (which a couple people actually really needed to use), and learned that the meaning of "no soliciting" is really "the people inside are very mean and have babies sleeping and dogs that bark when people knock and have real lives that are too busy for silly games."  But like I said, we are kind of immune to rejection by now.  At the end, we decided that as none of our items were really that awesome, we should also bring back the toilet because it was so darn hilarious.  So we returned to the house and took the toilet from their garage, letting it take the passenger seat of our group's car while four people rode in the back.  Returning to the motel was hilarious as everyone had obtained an array of random items and had stories to tell.  Amongst many other things we now have much more furniture, a trampoline, a piano, and some pretty odd costumes.  Overall, it was a super fun night.

On to more serious things....on Thursday night one of our student's fathers who is also involved in Campus Crusade came to teach us about the Satisfied? booklet which is directed toward Christians rather than non-Christians and talks in depth about a life filled with the Holy Spirit.  He pointed out that many time when we are out evangelizing, we get disappointed when we start a conversation and find out that the people we are talking to are Christians.  He was totally right, I often would much rather talk to someone that is more challenging and has the potential to be saved that someone who already has all the right answers to our questions.  Through his talk, I really changed my perception of speaking with Christians, and I'm much more excited to do so now when we go out sharing.  Earlier that night went we were doing our "go" part of teach and go, I was down near the beach with my sharing partner and we ended up going through perspective cards with a christian couple.  At first I was disappointed, but as we chatted became increasingly encouraged to have the opportunity to speak with them.  Though they were definitely Christians, they had only been living in Santa Monica 2 years and had yet to find a church.  We were able to encourage them to find a community where they could grow together and with others closer to the Lord and after we prayed for them, they also prayed for us.  Sometimes it really is special and encouraging to just chat with another Christian, and now I have another tool to introduce to them!