Just an Update

Wow, the last three days have been fun. My time basically consist of reading and playing ball. I had more basketball practice on Monday night. We went somewhere in the city I had yet to go. It was very nice. Plus next door was their version of Wal-Mart. In fact I think it is actually owned by Wal-Mart. It was bigger than most of their stores, but it was still no Wal-Mart. The practice was good and we actually learned some fundamentals. Currently the team lacks a lot of fundamentals to the game of basketball. It was here that I found out that I got to play in our first game which was today. This means that I am either second/third string for the first team and they just wanted a few new guys to get some play time or I am actually first string for the second team. At this point I do not care I was just glad to be offered the chance to play.
Tuesday was pretty typical for me. As part of our introduction to Luther we actually watched the recent movie Luther. I had not previously seen it. It was quite impressive. It just amplifies how much Luther endured to make the gospel available to the common man. This is most definitely my favorite class. My early church history class is starting to move along, but is still not moving to the top of my list. It is interesting because I have almost all first year students in that class, but those students are not allowed to take the Luther course because it is labeled third year.
Today was a pretty productive day. I had my second Greek course of the week and then I had my second dose of counseling. I may end of appreciating the class. I am yet to learn much about the skills of counseling that I did not already know and may never learn that much knew information, but I am learning from the class. I have grown up with at least one close friend or someone I could consider a confidant at all times and often more than one. We were asked today to think of a time when we approached someone for help and felt like they just blew us off. Minus minor occurrences of little importance, I honestly was having a hard time thinking of a time this had happened. I do not know if it is a function of good hindsight in choosing who to approach or if I have simply been blessed with good people in my life. The women in my class had no trouble thinking of instances. We did not discuss the instances, but rather talked about how those people made us feel or what they did wrong. It was really eye opening to discover these basic principles of honesty, empathy, listening and caring are truly not instinctive for many people. It was a good lesson and insight to life.
Finally, tonight was my first basketball game. I was placed as third string, seeing that we had 13 guys playing. However, they finally put me in to guard the other team’s big guy. You must understand I am not the tallest or by any means the best offensive player, but I do love playing physical defense. The word physical is not in the vocabulary of European basketball. This big guy was probably only two inches taller than me, but weighed, I am guessing, 270 pounds. Unfortunately for him a lot of this weight was in his upper body and not lower. He scored ten points in the first quarter, however I held him to two points the rest of the game. I think I threw him off guard when I accidentally knocked him to the ground on a rebound. He was not use to getting pushed around. Believe it or not I actually had a decent offensive game as well. I managed to score seven of our sixty-five points. My brother should know I was three for four from the line. As a team we did not play so well. We had a whole lot more talent than their squad, but only won the game by fifteen points. I guess we have only played together for ten days.
Well, I have to go for now. If you are interested I attended a Bible Study last night that had me a little frustrated. We talked about truth from Ephesians, but we neglected to talk about whom the letter was written to, why, and its implications. We simply sugar coated the fact that God loves us. My rant can be found on Jonathan’s blog youareholy.com or colossiansonetwentytwo.blogspot.com