Saturday Night Live

We had our own team version of SNL this past Saturday night. I don't know if I will be able to describe the hilarious intensity of it all but just to give you an idea.....First a little background...Every Friday and Saturday night, we head down as a team into the center of San José; our focus is building relationship and trust with the people as we consistently show up week after week. While much of our intensity is geared towards young people, we do end up knowing and becoming friends with a variety of people. This past Saturday night was one of those nights that while the spiritual intensity and attack was evident, God's grace was abundant and these moments ended up being slightly funny. This was one moment that I specifically remember looking up and realizing the bizarre happenings and laughing for a second to myself.....

Jamie and I were talking to this homeless hippy from Switzerland with a dred mohawk (in spanish--both of our second languages). I look back and kathy (svoboda from colorado) was talking to some man in a suit about his thoughts on God and how his wife left him four days previously. Chicky is wrapped up in an ongoing conversation with a crying drunk 76 year old man with whom we had been taking to a shelter when we stopped to say hello to our blind accordian friend. Josh (woodruff from nebraska) is sitting on the ground staring into space with an exhausted look amidst all the spanish and Ruth (holbrook from miami) was moving between Chicky's conversation and talking (or singing with) Martín. (Martín is our friend the blind accordian player); he can be very persuasive at times. Just ask Ruth. In this particular moment however, Ruth was standing with Chicky...so.... Martín decides since no one is talking to him...to loudly play and sing...I don't know if you have ever been around a live accordian but I will tell you it pretty promptly ended a few conversations...Again, I can't fully describe the intensity and slight hilarity of it to you but I hope it gave some insight to our SNL San José experience.