Thanksgiving

Richie thinks how thanksgiving is tomorrow. He will probably skype with his parents and there will be a little feast at the community house on the Willemsstraat. It should be a nice day. Richie has to work in the morning, but this is not so much a problem as it is not a usual thanksgiving. He is in Amsterdam.

Richie is in a small state of mourning. There are many volunteers leaving at the end of the month. He enjoyed spending time with them and will be sad to see them go. Some of the ones he is closer with he hopes to see again in this life. One of these is Seth. He has enjoyed the last few months of hanging out with him and getting to know him. He is from North Carolina and a godly and good man.

Richie bought his plane ticket home yesterday. He found a good price with Icelandair leaving from Copenhagen on February 13. It may not be the most comfortable flight and he may not get food for free on the flight (based on the reviews)...but he will survive.

Richie had the opportunity to share last Friday at a hostel night. He believes he remembers describing these events in a past post so he will not bother describing it this time. He was in charge of coordinating the night along side Maaike. He came up with a theme stolen from Charles Dickens called Great Expectations, and he composed a speech about our expectations when we come to God and Christ. He kept it general at the beginning of his speech. He spoke of expectations in sports, traveling, relationships, and then he spoke of expectations of the Pharisees when they came to Jesus. Jesus did not meet their expectations, and yet he was the Son of God. Then Richie made it personal by speaking of expectations when coming to God. What do we expect from him? Are our expectations reasonable? In line with scripture? Do we get angry with God when he does not meet our expectations? And then Richie asked the guests to evaluate their expectations and see if they are blinding him or her from seeing truth. Giving this speech was an interesting experience for Richie because he received very little feed back after delivery. People kind of just sat strait faced and dumbfounded, and in Richie's mind, they seemed to have turned their brains off. After the speech, they turned their brains on again and chatted with each other, but Richie is starting to think he should reevaluate his speech giving and try to make things feel more conversational when delivering rather than preprepared. He had a strong sense of the prepreparedness of the speech. He did get good feedback from the manager who had attended yesterday (Tuesday) so that was nice and made him feel a bit better.

Richie also had the opportunity to lead a Bible discussion last night. He chose to discuss Cain and Abel. It was a nice discussion. Two guests came. One who when to Trinity Western University in Canada, and the other was a guest from Michigan close to the end of a two year travel trip he is on. His name was Steven, the guest who went to Trinity Western was Colon. They were both friendly and eager to discuss, so the conversation was not so hard.

Steven was an interesting guest to talk to for Richie. He always finds it interesting to speak to world travelers. Richie asked him, now that he is close to the end of his journey, if he feels like he has changed a lot since the beginning. He mainly feels like some priorities in life changed. He spoke of the family oriented nature of the Central and South American life, and how that challenged the priorities of America where everyone strives to have the best and be the best. This was the main philosophy shift he felt. He said he had such inclinations before, but seeing it lived out in Central and South America made it real for him.

This was an interesting conversation to have because it caused Richie to remember another conversation he had with Ewout, one of the managers of the Shelter hostels. Richie had commented how both Apple and Microsoft come from America and how the rest of the world uses one of these operating systems. He stated it as a curious phenomenon. Then Ewout made the observation that in America, economics is largely inspired by trying to be the best, make the best operating system, have the best life, make the best car, or the best country, whatever. Yet in countries in South America or Central America economics may be more driven by the family or focused on the family so they are not as worried about being best. It was an interesting thought for Richie.