grace.kindness.peace.disruption.pain.processing.rinse.repeat.have a nice day.

Hello World. I've had troubles updating my page for the last couple days. I cannot access it any more from a web browswer. "Then how might you be adding this post?," you might ask. Well, it's prety geeky. If you understand what it means to ssh to a server in the US and to use lynx to add a post, then kudos to you. I should have many more stories upon my return to the US later this week.
There should, however, be updated photos.

Executive Summary:

• marched in a pro-government rally
• drove past war-damaged roadways to go to the south of Lebanon (the center of the most recent war with Israel)
• listened (in three languages) to a story of how a Ukrainian woman and a Lebanese man met and fell in love over the Internet
• and stuffed myself at three meals.

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Where to start? Well, first I apologize to lying to all of you. I've done pretty much everything I said that I would not be doing. Let's start with going to the large pro-government rally commemorating the death of Rafiq Hariri. The radio was calling for 600,000 people to gather in the city center. Ask any one of people there and they would have told you that over a million would be in attendance. We did not intend to go, but as with any transgression we took a sip and ended up finishing the entire glass. On the way out of town we passed near the roads leading to Martyr's Square, the location of the rally. Though still a good distance away, we felt very safe taping the mass of people walking to the city center. Bearing a free Lebanese flag, we joined the masses, taping along the way. As we approached the center of the rally, the security got tighter, as did the breathing room. To get a better vista we used Dave's camera as a ticket to get on the roof of a nearby building, providing us with a spectacular view of the mosque, demonstration, and Hariri's burial site. The scene was very peaceful, yet full of passion as people chanted in support of the government. Giddy as school children having , we made our way back to the car and headed to lunch. There we would be transferred to another driver that would take us to the southern portion of Lebanon, thus turning me into a lier twice over. Along the way we stopped off at Tyre (cf. Acts 21:3 to take pictures of the ruins. As we ventured further south, the damage from last year's war with Israel became more evident. Bridges remain impassable after being bombed. Bombed roads have been fixed with gravel, rendering them passable, but drastically increasing the travel time between Beirut and the south. Hezbollah flags and pictures of Nasrallah (the leader of Hezbollah) became more prevalent. Our driver asked if I feared Hezbollah. "Not when they're far away from me," I responded. "They're really not so bad," he replied. An awkward silence ensued. He continued to yet again broaden my perspective. While not all Lebanese people think Hezbollah are "good guys," they are considered to be the group that pushed Israel out of Lebanese lands many years ago, thus providing freedom and returning dignity to the Lebanese people, both Christian and Muslim. Have they done bad things? Yes. But they have also done good things in the eyes of the people. Soon after we reached our destination town in south Lebanon we filmed the prayer meeting and Bible study of the church plant. A few minutes into the service the power went out. Within a minute someone had initiated the back up system: four fluorescent bulbs attached to a car battery. Dave filmed remaining majority of the service in what appeared to be dance club lighting. Upon returning to the house of the pastor, we were greeted with a fine Lebanese meal and warm conversation in a mixture English, Arabic, and Ukrainian. After a tasty meal of potatos, lamb, labneh, lebanese bread, and much more, our hosts treated us to the story of how they met and were engaged to be married. The 31 year old wife-to-be was a single mother living in the Ukraine, about to lose her apartment. She prayed for a husband who could provide for her and be a father for her son. At the recommendation of a friend at church, she filled out an online dating form. Now at this time a Lebanese man in the Ukraine told her pastor's about a man he knew in Lebanon who was looking for a wife. Her pastor passed along the information and suggested that they correspond. After many emails, requests for pictures (and polite requests for more pictures after not caring for the expressions), and a lot of prayer, the wife-to-be waited until the end of the July War and travelled to Lebanon to meet her suitor. She did not simply want a man to be a husband, she wanted a man of character to be a companion and a father for her ten-year-old. After a week with the man's family and in his country, he proposed and she accepted. A few months after that she and her son left their life in the Ukraine and moved to Lebanon for a new life. The couple really is quite cute and happy, and the man has accepted the child as if it were his own. I could do little but sit back and laugh to myself at the beauty and hilarity of such a story. Before heading to bed as a liar twice over, I ate roasted chestnuts and looked at pictures while laughing at what I thought was the correct moment in the grandfather's jokes. He, by the way, reminded us greatly of Uncle Joe from "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory," a fact that has put "And I've Got a Golden Ticket" on the soundtrack to this trip.

All is well and I have much to tell, but that must come another day. We are headed out yet again to get some more footage for Dave's talkie.

One thing however: any educated person should have understood this before (I include myself here), but don't believe everything the news tells you. When I spent four months in Sierra Leone, I was struck by how the lack of constant news was a breath of fresh air. I am typically a news junkie, and to be without allowed me to see how the news media works hard to keep us in a healthy state of fear, just so we "tune in at five o'clock" or "check it out online." If we're afraid, we want to know more. And if we want to know more, then we must turn to the only dealers that support our "need" to know.

Enter Lebanon, 2007. On Wednesday, the international news agencies picked up the story of the bus bombings here in Lebanon. Three people tragically lost their lives. "People died today in the [unsafe] Middle East; film in at eleven." This hits the news because it supports the fear that the media wants to utilize to keep you tuning in. Now, fast forward one day to the rally the bus bombs was supposed to affect: nothing but a peaceful rally of 600,000 people in the Middle East. We didn't know that those even happened, did we? People die at Mid-East rallies, right? Or at least American flags must be burning to keep little children warm, right. No and no. The only flags you saw were Lebanese flags, and they were out in droves. No one was killed. No American flags burned. And it was safe enough for this rather large American to walk amongst the crowds.

So, yes, people are killed over in the Middle East in repugnant ways. But no, it is not the norm. The most important thing to realize about people over here is that they are very, very much like you. True, they may look different, talk differently, dress differently, etc, but so do people from Kentucky, Massachusetts, Hawaii, . They have wives, children, fathers, and mothers. They are hungry, get sick, and enjoy a good birthday party.

So, the things you see on the news really happen, but they are not the whole story. In fact, they never can be the whole story, but we must not forget that.

Chris Huertz, the president of Word Made Flesh (the organization that I partnered with in Sierra Leone), has written an excellent article over at the Christian Vision Project. "A Community of the Broken" sums up part of the vision for WMF and for its hopes for the Church. Check it out if you're at all interested in what I did last year.

I'm waning after seventeen hours of traveling. Beirut looks like any other major city at night: a seemingly endless sea of orange lights. While taxing to the terminal, I realized that I recognized it from the news last summer. Israel bombed the very runway that my plan used to land. The fact that I am in the Middle East became quite real at that moment.

So I'm here, but do not have much to share as of yet, except that maybe the hotel's club sandwich is quite tasty. I'm hoping to experience and eat something a little more ethnic tomorrow.