Last night I went looking for churches on-line and found one that wasn't far from the apartment and looked pretty cool. I knew it was going to be okay just by the fact that the worship leader said that U2 was the greatest band on the planet and that Bono had a strong impact on the world or something like that. It reminded me of home and our pastor Ben.
I went this morning and it started like any normal church service; with worship time. We sang two songs that I didn't know, but also "God of Wonders" and "Dwell." When we sang those two, it felt a little more like home and very comforting to me. The pastor got up to speak and the message was on lying and how it can turn a strong relationship to basically nothing. He started with a clip from "Liar Liar" where Jim Carrey takes his son out onto the playground at recess and tries to get him to "unwish" the wish he made that his father couldn't lie for a whole day. It was pretty cool. The pastor also works at Raytheon (?) which my dad has mentioned is big down here though I don't understand what that is aside from being engineer-oriented. He told a little anecdote about having to go through a lie detector test once at work, which was standard and the procedure for conducting the test. He was talking about how he had to face a wall when they asked him the questions and the last one was one that hadn't been on the paper he had filled out and the questioner asked him "Did you like meeting me today?" and the pastor blurted out "NO." He said after that it was sort of awkward, but the questioner said everyone said that so it was okay. But I think about that and think about God and how he always knows when we're not being truthful, when we're just hiding in the garden like Adam while God asks us "Where are you?"
Where are you. Where am I?
Sometimes it seems so easy to hide away from everything, to hide away inside of yourself, but God is always there and always knows the answers to each of your questions, even the ones you're not prepared to answer. He knows our thoughts, knows our intentions, knows our heart. And to think that inspite of all of those things, all of the negative thoughts that constantly pulse through my brain about myself, situation or others, inspite of my deliberate disobedience at times and inspite of my tendency to do what I want rather than what God wants, He still wants me because He knows where I am, even if I don't.

On my own,
Lying stark on the ground
Born for the world to see
Barely making a sound
Forehead to the floor
Face down
You see me in my weakness
You see me with my frown.
The hostility and emptiness
Is more than I can bear,
Listlessly waiting
For someone to care.
Wait.
For the hand that moves me
Wait
For the comforting one
Wait
For someone to free me
Wait
For the settling peace...

...I also watched a movie today. It's a foreign flick with subtitles actually. It was the first movie out of Afghanistan since the Taliban regime collapsed. It chronicles the journey of one small family of a grandmother, mother and daughter who can't work because of the fact that they're female. But because there are no men in the home, they can't put bread on the table. So the grandmother gets this idea to disguise the little girl who's about 12 years old, as a boy so she can make money to be able to buy them food. The girl works for a while, but then is taken by the Taliban during a round-up of all of the little boys in the town. The boys have to attend a school where they're trained up to become Taliban members someday.
I won't tell you then end, however this movie was incredibly moving to me. It's called Osama (the name the girl takes as a boy) and it's just so horrible to see what these women had to endure in their lives with the Taliban running around. In one scene, a wedding party is being thrown and it's all women. They're singing and dancing and enjoying one another until someone says the Taliban is coming. They all throw on their required "garb" (looks like a ghost costume from Halloween. No skin shows, it's just a giant drape over you with very miniscule mesh breathing holes near the face area. You can't even tell who is under the garb) and the women instead kneel in a room and pretend to morn and wail as if a relative has died. Can you imagine? One minute you're celebrating and another you're mourning all because you can only be viewed in one way; lesser of the sexes.
So that's been my day. Chelsea will be coming over later...
Toodles from Tucson!