Meditations 2

Well here we are again after a 15 day lack of inspiration.

Some things have happened to Richie.

Richie went to a castel in Muiden. Richie thought it was a nice castle with a focus on children. Richie enjoyed playing some of the video games inside the castle which included throwing rocks on people trying to enter the castle and protecting a castle from invaders. Richie also enjoyed looking at himself in a mirror while putting his face through a jesters costum.

Richie went to the Dutch resistance museum. This museum was a marathon of information for Richie's brain. While in the museum, Richie recalled the times in his past when he had to read a history book for class and say a correlation between that and the musuem. The museum was full of information and there was much small print for Richie to read. The information, however, was so overwhelming Richie chose to leave after seeing the main part of the musuem rather than exploring all the nooks and crannies of the place.

Richie also stopped in at the Van Gogh musuem for the second time and saw the new exhibit of Alfred Stevens. Richie enjoyed his paintings immensely. Most of them were of women with beautiful dresses, but there was this one of Mary Magdalene that was very stunning for Richie. It shined above many of the others for Richie because of her stare and the way her hair had been painted.

Richie has also chosen to try to extend his stay in the Netherlands. Now everything is up the the government. He hopes they are kind enough to say yes. If not Richie will leave as planned in November. If they say yes Richie will stay until February, returning to America for the winter olympics during which he will attend a hockey game with his friends Will and AJ. This decision to extend did not come without a cost for Richie. He will now miss spending Christmas with his family in Sacramento. Richie loves these Christmases and this made his decision to extend very difficult. In contrast, Richie sees God working her in Amsterdam in his life and the work of the ministry her of sharing Christs love with all the people that come through the door. So Richie has decide to stay unless God closes the door by having the dutch authorities say no. Richie is also challenged by the socialness of the job here at the hostel. He likes learning and practicing asking good and thoughtful questions and hearing about the lives of the travelers. Not every conversation is spiritual but it is good for Richie to be social and not go with his first tendency to curl up with a book.

In the last couple weeks Richie had an extended conversation with a woman who was a chiropractor. He made the mistake of mentioning how his dad (as a doctor) looks down upon chiropractors. This statement inspired the woman to give her opinion of how doctors try to cover over the problems of people by giving them medicine. Richie said he did not believe that to be true and then switched the conversation away from this and back to her and how she got interested in being a chiropractor etc. It was interesting for Richie to here how she was not totally sold on being a chiropractor the rest of her life, but that she had taken the path God seemed to open for her (the conversation implied she had a relationship with God and was most likely a Christian by the way she told her story after Richie asked her how she decided to become a chiropractor). She is not totally in love with being a chiropractor but she says she will do it for a time.

Then tonight Richie was able to have a brief conversation with an acupuncturist. A chinese medicine man here in Amsterdam for a meeting on some sort of new techinique or herb. Richie thought it was interesting that he had met two people in alternative medicine. Growing up in a doctors home, he has a natural tendency to frown upon these alternative methods, but he asked questions and was interested in the field anyway. He knows very little about what it means to be in acupuncture. A lot of needles he supposes.

Richie also met this woman named Margot. Sadly this woman was eating something by a canal (she called indulging in the sinful act of pleasure at eating a tast treat like chocolate or something) and then her teeth fell into the canal. Quite the disastor (she believed God was judging her for her gluttony) and she came into the hostel and presented her case to Seth and Richie (Richie was training Seth at reception at the time). Well this seemed like quite the tragedy for Seth and Richie so they prayed about the whole thing and then with expectation Richie left Seth at reception and went to the canal hoping for a miracle. Sadly none occured, but when Margot came out the the hostel and walked over to the canal to have another look for her teeth and she saw Richie she was quite overjoyed. She called him her blond haired night in shining armor or maybe angel Richie cannot remember exactly. She is a woman of low self-esteem and much confusion about God and how he views her. She feels as though she must make herself righteous before she is able to come to God and when the truth of the gospel is spoken to her it goes in one of her ears and out the other. It is a rather sad situation but one in which God is more than able to work.

Richie has also been challenged in how to interact and converse with people who say such things like I am searching or who are unwilling to accept the words of Christ and his death. The searcher is difficult because to Richie it seems in order to actually know if something is truth they need to commit to something for a time and practice it. If while practicing it they find that it is false for some reason or the other than they move on. Yet the searcher does not commit, dabbles in many things, does not feel like he knows what truth is, and then determines that all religions are the same because he only sees them on the surface. Then there is the person that loves everything about the Bible and God, but cannot handle Jesus because of his death. It is hard for Richie to know what to say to this sort of person. Richie says the death is crucial for the forgiveness of sins but this falls on deaf ears in general.

Last, Richie did get the chance to show the cleaners in the hostel the film The Gospel of John. Cleaners are people who stay in the hostel for an extended period of time and work for room and board by cleaning the hostel every day. This film has Desmond from Lost playing Jesus and is very well done. It affected the cleaners in a great way and Richie was able to talk with Mo (one of the cleaners afterward) about the film and learned of how much Mo enjoyed and appreciated the film. While watching it, it inspired him to pray to Jesus for the first time. He said while watching it that he just started praying. Richie found this encouraging. Richie only regrets not asking Mo if he wanted to pray before Richie left.