A couple things that have happened in the last few days:

 

thursday night, our college group was joining with several other college organizations from the UT campus for a campus wide, just to join in unity to worship and pray on/for/over UT.  so my friend anthony and i met up with one of our friends jon, who is not walking with God currently, at a restaurant and ate a snack and then went to the service.  so, anthony and i ended up riding to the service with jon b/c he had his grandparents lexus and we wanted to ride in it, well, the whole time anthony was sitting it the front and was practically fighting jon to not listen to Sublime on the way to the service.  so we get to the service and well, i sat next to jon and watched him suffer thru it, he put on a happy face, but i could tell he was really uncomfortable. so, aferwards we decide to go to taco cabana to have a real dinner cause we're all hungry.  so on the way there, like half way there maybe jon decides he HAS to hear this song and we CAN NOT change it.  immediately anthony and i are worried and then this song comes on and starts talking about this guy raping his daughter or something and i'm like 'jon, change the song or i'm getting out and walking'  and so he looks at me, unlocks the doors.  so i get out and start walking and anthony telling jon 'i'm with her' shortly follows me.  so we meet jon at taco cabana and he's really mad/ has his feelings hurt.  so we eat our meal in awkward silence and then finally anthony initiates and tells jonathan how he hates more than anything to turn his back on his friends, but that we both have deep convictions about what we listen to and what we subject our hearts and the spirit living inside of us to, and that's why we left. and jon was like 'so i can't listen to sublime in my own car' and we were like 'you can listen to whatever you want in your car, but we're gnot gonna be there with you to do it'.     so he ended up giving us a ride back to my car and anthony and i had to sit and pray for a while (just asking God to cleanse our hearts and minds, we both felt so dirty just listening to that music for a little bit) before we felt like we could leave.    

 

so just a couple days before this happened, in the 40 days of purpose book that anthony and i and the rest of our church is reading, it was talking about we have to be honest and frank with people.  that we can't sugar coat everything just to avoid offending people, that we have to stand up and walk in what we believe in and live for.  it was really hard to get out of the car and walk away from jon, but i felt like we were honoring God and that was more important than not hurting jon's feelings.

 

THEN friday night anthony and i went and had to drop off some books at school, so there's this African World Beat Cafe down the street and we always see its, so we decided to just go see what was goin on with it.  so we pull up and anthony jokingly goes 'i'll park facin the street just in case we need a quick getaway' complete joke.   so we go in and its weird, not like different weird, but like creepy weird.  so the waitress lady is like 'seat yourself' so we go sit in this corner.  so like there's only two/three other tables occupied and like there's track lights and florescent lights and all the florescent lights are out, so its very dim in there.  and then the wall i was facing had all these huge African masks painted on the wall.  so we just were getting a creepy feeling.  then the waitress walked up and anthony goes 'hey, how are you?' and she's like 'what can i get you guys?' so we ordered this chicken plate and some french fries.  so we are waiting for our food and are kinda talking and debating whether wanted to stay or not and so anthony makes eye contact with one of the other guys in the cafe and got a creepy feeling and then randomly this blender goes off. and this blender sounded just wrong, i don't know how to describe it, it just was like something in a horror movie.  so then we really started to talk about leaving and we were trying to rationalize staying there.  so we get our fries and are just talking, trying to rationalize.  then like right after the waitress brings us our food we hear this ambulence/fire truck siren!!  so we were like 'we need to go NOW'  so we get up and like as soon as we get up we both just hear the word 'RUN" in our heads.  so of course we have to go over and pay and i don't have enough cash, so i have to use my credit card and  it was so scary, i felt like the machine took 10 minutes, so we run out after we pay and like jump in the car and zoom away and are praying and thanking God for taking us out of that place and just asking him to cleanse our hearts and spirits again and so we go to this other cafe we always go to and like we walk in and are waiting to order and like i hear this tune i know and so i go over to the speaker and its a worship song talking about like surrenduring to love and all this stuff and we just start cracking up and so we sat down and ate and had a really good night after that. 

 

and that was crazy cause like we had just been reading about how obedience is like the most important thing we can do with Christ is obey him and so we just felt like 1) it was a test of how quickly we would obey what we heard God telling us to do and 2) we really felt like God is kinda getting our feet wet in the whole spiritual battle in the place we live(its really easy to experience spiritual warfare when you're over seas or on a mission trip, but its so different when its happening in your home town) its tremendously exiciting, i mean its scary, but its like we KNOW that God is moving and doing stuff here.  anyway, and its just awesome to be a part of what God is doing here. 

 

i think one of the hardest things about having to stay home was that i felt like i was gonna miss what God was doing, and so i feel like God is really starting to show me, he's doing stuff in austin too.  God is awesome.