Crossing KCU

God’s Classroom

I was walking alone through an extremely crowded casino—it was the typical Hollywood portrayal of the average casino in Las Vegas. There were so many people engaged in so many different activities that I could barely register everything that was going on around me. The flashing neon lights and the endless cacophony of voices made it difficult to concentrate on any specific scene. I had the feeling of helplessness, as if I was a lost child in the midst of all this chaos. I did not know why I was there or where I was going next. As I moved through the casino it seemed as if there was no way to get out, and a sudden, deep sense of panic began to take hold in the pit of my stomach.

Then all at once there before me stood a man. He was very calm and at peace with the surroundings. Though he had on dark sunglasses, it seemed as if he was studying me, as if he was seeing through me. Then he motioned me to come forward to where he was standing, next to a giant window with massive curtains drawn tightly shut. I moved forward slowly. I did not recognize the man at all, and he looked like no one I had ever seen, but for some reason that I could not explain, I felt at ease around him.

As I reached the place where the man was standing he stepped to the side and said very solemnly, “I have something important for you to see.”

Then, placing his hands on the rope release for the curtains, and with one great heave downward, the massive curtain tapestries covering the window slid apart to reveal a sight that I will never be able to forget.

The view to which I was now a witness was frightening. On the other side of the window, spreading out for what appeared to be hundreds of miles was a vast sea of fire. The fire was alive, and it moved up through the air and covered every surface as if it was the only substance in this other world. There was no ground, there was no sky, there was nothing at all of green, blue, or brown, only fire everywhere.

Then I saw the people, floating through the air past the window in front of me—some close, and some far away. They were floating as if there was no gravity, and looked as if they could have been in space, except for the fire. The fire also covered them as they writhed and squirmed in the air to get free of it, but they were covered in it from head to foot, completely mummified. They were in utter torment, and there was nothing I could do about it.

I ran away from the window, disgusted, frightened, and sick from what I had seen. I moved back through the casino, desperately searching for any way out of this madness. Then I suddenly bumped into a friend of mine. It was Jake, my old friend from the high school youth group, who I had also worked at the newspaper with. A single look into his eyes told me that he was suffering from the same situation that I was in. Without speaking we moved off through the casino together with a renewed sense of purpose. We had to stick together if we were going to make it out of this horrible place.

And then everything began to get foggy, and the whole place began to disappear. I had been having a dream, and it was time to wake up.
_______

I felt something cold and wet rush over my chest as the car landed upside down and sent me slamming into the underneath side of the roof. The first thought that came into my mind was that I had cracked open my chest cavity and blood was rushing out all over the place. I had hit my head and banged my knee pretty bad, but I was so full of adrenaline that I immediately lifted myself up and looked around the cab.

“Hey man, get me out of this seatbelt,” came a frantic cry from my friend Jake who had been driving. Being a little guy, his seatbelt had held him firmly in place, and even now, with the car being completely upside down, he was still sitting perfectly in his seat as if nothing had happened.

“Hang on a minute,” I replied as I realized that the liquid I had landed in was just from the cooler which had spilled its contents all over the cab. It was completely dark, so it took me a few moments to find Jake’s seatbelt release. As I pushed the button he went tumbling out of his seat onto the roof of the car.

Five minutes later, after forcing open the passenger door of Jake’s Geo Metro, there we were, standing on a road in the middle of the Nevada desert in a raging blizzard. Neither one of us could believe that we had not been seriously hurt. In fact, we were only slightly banged up and bruised a little bit. On the opposite side of the road was a sudden drop off that ran about 200 feet straight down from the side of the mountain we were on. Thankfully, the ditch on the side of the road we had landed in was only a couple of feet deep.

I was in a daze of sorts, still living in the few moments that had transpired just before we had crashed. It was around two o’clock in the morning, and Jake was driving down the side of the mountain while I was dozing off in the passenger seat. We had run into the snowstorm about an hour or so earlier and the further we went, the worse it seemed to get. I had woken up as the car began spinning in circles. My immediate reaction was to pray, and as I yelled for Christ to help us, the car hit the embankment on the side of the road and went flying into the air.

Having packed our bags for a spring trip to California, we hadn’t expected to get caught in a blizzard during April, and in Nevada of all places. We were only about 30 miles from the nearest town, Ely, which in turn was the only town within two hours of every other direction, but it didn’t seem likely that someone would be coming along in the middle of the night. Since we didn’t have a cell phone there was no way we could call for help. Even so, it was only about 10 minutes before a guy came rolling up in an SUV and called the highway patrol for us.

It turned out that the car was completely totaled, and as the police gave us a ride back into the town of Ely, we wondered how we were going to get all the way back home to Indiana with no vehicle and very little money. The highway patrol officer we were with took us to a small motel, and we struck up a conversation with him on the way. He found out that Jake was a missionary and that I had studied at a Christian college for awhile, and this got us into a discussion about spiritual matters. He was in his mid thirties and had been going to a church for a few months, mostly because his wife had been bugging him to go. He was struggling with his faith, but he had resolved to keep seeking God, and it was encouraging to talk to him. He dropped us off, made sure we got a room, wished us well, and that was the last we ever saw of him.

Jake and I spent the next few days surviving on the food we had salvaged from the car, which consisted primarily of Vienna sausages, canned tuna, and bread. Our main task of course had changed from spending time on a beach in California, to figuring out how to get back home with no transportation. We pulled out the atlas and noted that Ely was in the central-eastern part of Nevada, and the nearest town was about two hours north in Wendover, Utah. Our situation was complicated by the fact that Ely had no Greyhound station, and no real way to get out of the town. The only possible way out it seemed was to take a shuttle bus to Las Vegas which ferried people there and back a few times a week, but this was expensive, and we would be going in the opposite direction. We both realized that our best bet was to somehow find a ride, or possibly even hitchhike to the Greyhound station in Wendover.

We began combing the local phonebook for a church that might help us out with a ride. This seemed only logical to us. But after an entire day spent calling every single church of every denomination listed in the phonebook, no one would help us. Having resigned the effort we were both pretty depressed, but we took some time to pray and ask God for help, and then we went to bed for the night.

At about eight the next morning we were woken up by a loud horn blasting away outside the door of our motel room. As we opened the door there stood two elderly gentlemen with kind faces and a huge Chevy truck. They were Mormons, but had heard that we were stranded, found out where we were, and came to help. I think they said something like the priest from the Catholic church had given them a call to see if they would help us, then told them where we were. At any rate, we were grateful that God had answered our prayer.

So we packed up our bags hopped into the truck with them and headed off to Wendover, Utah and the Greyhound station. During the car ride they talked to us about what they believed, and Jake and I talked to them about what we believed. I had talked to Mormons before, but it had always been in the context of them coming over as “missionaries” trying to convert us. This was different. Here were two old guys, willing to spend their day helping out a couple of complete strangers. We had a good chat with them on the way to the bus station. These guys were just happy to be helping someone in need, and as they dropped us off a couple of hours later we were grateful for these “good Samaritans” that God had sent our way.

But getting to the bus station was only the beginning of our journey back to Indiana. We took the Greyhound to Salt Lake City where we were stranded once more by another large snow storm coming off the Rockies. What was supposed to be a quick transfer from one bus to the other, ended up being an entire night. And that night spent within the confines of the bus terminal was one of the strangest of my entire life.

Early upon our arrival, still in a panic at the thought of spending all night in the bus terminal, Jake and I had tried unsuccessfully to rent a car with an army soldier from Chicago so we could drive ourselves home. We had met the guy during the ride to Salt Lake City where Jake had struck up a conversation with him. The three of us took a cab to the airport where we wasted an hour figuring out that we weren’t old enough to rent a vehicle. Our new friend decided to fly back home, so we spent the next hour talking to him before he left. We discussed the military and what was going on in the Middle East and China, and what we thought the future might bring in terms of global conflict… just the average stuff that guys talk about when meeting a dude in the military. Our new friend was a Christian too, so when he found out that Jake and I were both interested in the subject he opened up like a book. He was a black guy from Chicago, and since we’re a couple of white farm boys, we had a pretty good talk about how awesome it was that Christ transcended all barriers of race and culture, etc., and how cool it was that we had met him there so randomly, and then we all prayed together before he got on his plane and left.

During the cab ride back to the bus terminal Jake struck up a conversation with our driver who turned out to be a Shiite Muslim from Iraq. He was a really soft spoken and kind gentlemen until Jake, being ever inquisitive, decided to get a little personal with his line of questioning.

“So, Ahmad… aren’t Shiites the really violent kind of Muslims?” asked Jake as I was sitting there sinking down into the back seat not saying a word.

Ahmad answered loudly in his thick Arab accent, “Of course not my friend, those violent people are all the Sunni Muslims.” He went on to recount several atrocities that had been committed by Muslims in various countries throughout the world during the past thirty years or so, and made a point after each one to say, “A Sunni did that.”

Jake went on to ask the guy several more questions, and then he got really quiet and sat there thinking about everything this Muslim man had just told him. I thought the questioning might have been over until Jake piped up all the sudden, “So what do you think about those Jews over there in Israel?”

At this point the man erupted into a highly animated rant and began yelling, “What?” really loud as he looked back over his shoulder at Jake. “The Jews! You want to know what I think of those Jews?”

“Yeah, sure,” Jake replied leaning forward in his seat with the look of an eager toddler about to receive an ice cream cone.

“Well,” returned Ahmad as he lowered his voice to an interested whisper all the sudden, “Do you want to know the real truth about this, or do you want me to just tell you what most Americans want to hear?”

At this point Jake is about to climb out of his seat with anticipation and I admit, I was starting to get a little curious as well.

“I want a real answer,” said Jake, “Tell me exactly what you believe about this.”

I don’t know if it’s a cultural thing, but this Arab guy got really loud, and he was pretty much yelling back at Jake. But I think it might have been because he felt so passionate about what he was saying, and not necessarily because he was angry. Either way, Jake’s question had clearly struck a nerve, and it completely changed this guy’s demeanor.

“I’ll tell you what,” said Ahmad. “In ten more years (this was in April of 2001)… in ten more years there will be no more Jews. In ten more years, no nation of Israel. They will all be wiped off the face of the earth.” He went on to repeat this basic set of phrases several more times. I was thankful to get out of the cab as we finally pulled up to the curb outside the bus terminal.

As we got out of the cab Ahmad, smiling really big, shook our hands, helped us get our bags out of the trunk, told us to go in peace, and then off he went as we stood there trying to make sense out of what had just happened. I had just ridden in a cab with a man who sounded like Adolf Hitler when he talked, and yet he was as nice as could be to the two of us. It was a paradox that we didn’t have the luxury of really thinking too much about as we headed back into the bus terminal.

I was starting to feel a little sick, as we hadn’t had any real food for several days. Also, I hadn’t had a shower for a couple of days, and I hadn’t been able to sleep very much. I didn’t sleep at all that night in the terminal. I would sit in one of the chairs for awhile and then get up and walk around outside the front doors for a few minutes to let the cold air wake me up. By the time morning came I was starting to feel like I was one of the homeless people that were trying to huddle into the terminal so they could keep warm or sleep on the floor. But the difference was that the police kept coming through every so often and running them out. I had to show the cops my bus ticket one time so they knew I wasn’t one of the homeless. Throughout that night I found myself in one conversation after another with people who were homeless, each one with a different story to tell.

There was Jenny, this girl who just sat down next to me at some point in the middle of the night, tapped me on the shoulder and introduced herself. She was leaving on the same bus as Jake and I, but she was wearing a dirty dress with a leather jacket that was way too big for her, and she had no shoes. She looked like she was starving to death, but when she talked she sounded as if the world had actually treated her the way she deserved—the way every human being deserves to be treated. She had been living on the street for awhile, but had finally gotten enough money together to get a ride back to her mother’s house several states away. Periodically, as we were talking, this guy who looked like he had just stepped out of a 80s rock concert would come up and start bugging her to go back to a hotel with him. She kept telling him no, but eventually she gave in, and we never saw her again. I knew she was supposed to be on the bus with Jake and me, but when we pulled out of the station in the morning she was nowhere to be seen. God only knows what ever happened to her. I’m still haunted by the fact that I didn’t try to talk to her more. I think if I had just spent more time talking to her she would have stayed in the bus station. But I was so consumed with my own situation at the time, and how uncomfortable I was, that I couldn’t really see where this girl was who was sitting right next to me.

Then there was Monty, a Native American man who I had talked to for a few minutes when I was outside catching some air. He was running full speed down the sidewalk when he passed me as I was sitting on the curb. As soon as he passed me he abruptly stopped as if he had hit a brick wall, spun around, and then plopped down next to me. He introduced himself, asked me what my name was and where I was from and what I was doing. Then he asked me if I had seen the cops go by in the last few minutes. I told him yeah, and pointed to the street where I had last seen a police cruiser roll by. Then he told me how two guys had just tried to kill him, and he had beat one of them up really bad. Then he shook my hand, said he was glad to have met me, and jumped up and started running full speed down the street again.

There were dozens of people like Jenny and Monty, all struggling to find a place in the world which had failed them, rejected them, abused them, and pushed them aside. I was about 22 years old at the time, and this had been my first real encounter with homeless people. It was an enlightening experience to say the least.

It took Jake and I another couple of days to get back to Indiana. By that time, we were both so exhausted that we could hardly speak. I remember going home and sitting in the bath tub for a couple of hours, and then sleeping for about twelve. I remember washing off all the dirt and grime, stuffing myself on mom’s home cooking, crawling into a nice warm bed, and then thinking about all those homeless people who were still back in Salt Lake City, fighting for a few moments of sleep on a cold, nasty, concrete floor. I thought about how that was their life, and this was mine. And probably for the first time, that kind of thought didn’t bring any sort of comfort to me. In fact, it made me decidedly uncomfortable. I had talked to some of those people, I had sat with them in the terminal, I had traveled across the country with them, I had listened to what they had to say and heard their stories. They were real to me now.

It had been exactly one year since I had been expelled from Kentucky Christian University. There had been many trials and lessons during that year, but this had been the capstone experience. This was the experience that pulled me out of my comfortable Christian bubble, and it opened my eyes to real struggle, real need, and real life. God had effectively used Greyhound to show me what a real mission field looked like. And I realized that I didn’t need to go to the other side of the world to find people who needed God. There are people everywhere who need God. The real point of following Christ, is to just go wherever he is leading.
_______

It took me another few months to realize where Christ was trying to lead me. He had been trying to tell me for a long time, but it was something that I had just not wanted to hear. I was having a conversation with a friend of mine one night in a truck stop, and I was telling him about everything that happened out West, and how my plans to go to Asia had failed, and how I knew God wanted me to follow him, and that I was supposed to be doing his work and no one else’s. My friend, who had a really blunt way with words, asked me point blank why I didn’t just go back to K.C.U. And as I sat there, trying to think of a good reason why that was completely out of the question, I heard the Holy Spirit whisper quietly to my soul, and I knew that my friend was right.

The only reason that I had refused to go back, was because there was too much hurt and bitterness in me to accept that it was God’s will. I couldn’t hear what he had been saying, because I didn’t want to hear it. I was willing to go anywhere in the world at that time, no matter how dangerous or how far away it was.

But there was one place I wasn’t willing to go… back to the place where I had failed—where I had alienated and hurt so many other people. In the days following that conversation in the truck stop, God began making it really clear to me that a willingness to go anywhere in the world except Grayson, Kentucky, was still from God’s perspective, an unwillingness to follow wherever He wanted to lead me. That’s when I realized the simple truth of the lesson God had been teaching me all along; the lesson of obedience, and the willingness to only concern myself with what he wanted me to do. That’s when I knew that I had to go back.

“That servant who knows his master’s will and does not get ready or does not do what his master wants will be beaten with many blows. But the one who does not know and does things deserving punishment will be beaten with few blows. From everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded; and from the one who has been entrusted with much, much more will be asked.” –Luke 12:47-48