Tossing Cyooks

A few weeks ago eleven of us got together for a friendly contest. for every song that was played off a cd we would have to finish 1 full 16oz cup of water before it ended. the object of the contest was to drink (8) 16oz cups (1 gallon) of water in less than a half hour and hold it down. needless to say, there was some cyooks bein' tossed that night. and when you drink that much water in that short of a time span something known as projectile vomiting occurs. the worst part of it was that if you held it down you had to hold it the longest too. the last two people battling it out were about to pee or crap themselves before one of them gave in and the other won. the winner was none other than zac zimbleman. he's one of the guys from another team in atlanta. the second place finisher was meghan dewees from my team. i know, she deserves props...myself, i got all 8 cups down, but they came back up as soon as the others were spewing. it's bad enough when you have to puke. but it's worse when you have to puke and all you can hear, see, and smell is other people puking around you.

it was the most fun i've ever had.

All I have to say is, "Too much Christmas music, too soon!" It is my belief that they call it a Holiday or Christmas Day because it lasts for a single day. Otherwise, they would call it a Holimonth or Christmas Month.

Things are going well in Atlanta. Today is was rather warm. It felt like it was 65 this morning. It's hard to focus on building relationships in the community when you've got Christmas music playing all the time. I haven't planeed much for my return home either. I still haven't coordinated my sleeping arrangements with my friends back home.

I need to write my December newsletter before I leave or it won't get sent out this month. Another thing is that it gets darker earlier. By the time I get out of my service site it's almost dark out. Since I need to be out in the community I have to be outside in the dark. I'm used to going inside after dark. Maybe it'll work out. Hopefully the people I'm close to now will invite me in becuase it's dark. It harder to leave the house after dinner when it's so dark. Not to mention i bit more dangerous.

And on that note, I'd like to share an experience I had. I mention this experience solely to inform people of the reality of racism and the need for reconciliation: My team and I got stopped by another white cop walking to bible study last wednesday night. He asked if we lived around here. And suprised that we said yes he told us to "be careful around here". Just moments before the cop pulled over to talk to us my team and I passed by a group of African American teenagers. We heard them laughing and calling us "KKK" as we passed by.

My friends, we've got to work harder at fixing these broken relationships between races. This issue affects all of us. I'm no expert at this, but I know there's something wrong with what happened last week. The people that said those things to us have had little experience of what their ancestors went through, yet it is obvious that they are still affected by it. And if they can indirectly be affected by it, I think we can indirectly cause conflict. I think our part is to claim the responsibility of our ancestors sins. Just like in the bible. I can't put my finger on exactly who, but I do know that there were people who cried out to God and confessing the sins of their ancestors, asking for forgiveness over their entire nation.

I should be on my knees repenting of the inhumane treatment of African Americans by my ancestors. God help me. God help us all.

(I don't know where this came from, but it happened. And I think it's important now.)