After a weekend of Fasting, this is how I felt.
Yeah.....In case you ever wanted to know what its like to fast for 30 hours while trying to coordinate the whole event for a youth group, well here is your chance!
That pic is suppose to represent how I felt at the end of the whole thing. If you can tell by looking at the pic, my face is kinda gnarled like an old oak tree, kinda like the face Calvin (Not John Calvin, but from Calvin and Hobbes, perhaps John Calvin when preaching through Leviticus) would make when eating some kinda of pea casserole. (I picked peas, because I hate peas, there just small mushy things with no taste, I don't get the appeal)
In any case, my face is gnarled, kinda like my stomach after eating oreo cookies and mountain dew on an barren stomach. My stomach told my head, "Woh, hey head, what's this moron thinking? How about you make him lightheaded and dizzy. That will stop him from throwing down all that junk."
And it did.
I had to take a break for a minute or two before I went back to the lighter food of chicken soup, cheese and milk. Apparently that stuff is better for you after having not eaten for a while. And I thought I wanted a steak with a loaded baked potato. If I had that I would have been on the floor with the world spinning overhead.
Thats actually what I did have before the famine started on Friday. I ordered an 8 once Sirlion from Chili's and because I had no one to eat with, I got it to go and ate it in the parking lot in my car. Whenever someone pulled up next to me I would close the to-go lid and pretend I was reading the newspaper that was in my lap.
I dont know why I did that, I guess I thought it a little odd to be eating a steak in my Jeep at 11:45 am so I didn't want all those curious peeping Tom's to see me stuffing myself; as if they really cared.
So those snippets were the bookends of my 30 hour fasting story.
Now for the middle. I feel like a Charlie Kauffman film.
Youth Group started at 7 but the prep work for the weekend had taken a couple of days. I spent about 3 hours on Thursday scrounging around dumpters looking for large pieces of cardboard. I would pull my Jeep close enough to the dumpster to hide my endeavor from view of all those interested onlookers I was so worried about. My odd oddessy finally found me half way inside a dumpster behind a TV/Stereo store. The only problem is I couldn't both reach for the bottom dwelling cardboard pieces and cover my nose at the same time. That stench remained with me almost as long as my hunger pains.
Let me remind you, this was prep work for the weekend, not an eccentric hobby.
The idea was that I was going to have the kids play a game where they build shelters out of cardboard boxes using masking tape and then have them divide up into "tribes",(a way of having them relate to their World Vision African identity cards they were to be given), and then take turns trying to knock eachothers shelter down with a ball. It was a great idea and probably would have been a hit with the kids but we ended up scratching it due to lack of time.
So there is a behind a scenes look at the event that never was! You know, like a DVD option to view "deleted scenes" that never made it to the movie.
Another behind the scenes snippet: I text messaged a friend on Friday afternoon with this quote,"You would never guess in a million years what I am doing right now. I am putting wild bird seed in brand new hanes crew socks." If you weren't there on Friday night, then you wouldn't understand. What happens in Youth Group, Stays in Youth Group. If your really interested in my seed socks then ask me about it.
Friday night- everyone starts to arrive. Much like right now, my stomach was hurting. (Its 1 pm and I haven't eaten yet. I am such a lazy consumer of food, last night I decided to order pizza at 9:45 pm)
The lesson went well. I still have no clue if I am teaching the right way or not.
We had worship time, led by Aisquith's youth leaders Andrew and Larry. I have always loved worship time and could "sing of his love forever". I think thats why God didnt give me a good voice and musical ability, because I love it so much. If I had been good at it I probably would have been selfish with it and become too proudful. Yet Heaven awaits me and my new voice will hopefully sound more like a morning lark than a crow. (I like crows by the way)
Suffice it to say, I enjoyed the worship time and I am praying that we are able to get someone(s) to come lead it every week.
Eventually we went to bed. I brought my two single mattresses from home because I am pretty anal about my sleep. Initially I wanted one of them to be for me. But as I heaved them into my Jeep I was thinking I ought to be generous and offer them to my leaders. To make a long story short, I ended up with one anyway even though I tried to pawn them off on my leaders. Don't really know if that outcome was just circumstantial or God just patting me on the back for obeying Him in my desire to display generosity. I think they go hand in hand.
The morning was what I was excited about. I was going to wake the boys up with songs from musicals! It was hard to fall asleep with all the built up excitment in me, it was like the night before Christmas. The early morning air was as peaceful as Switzerland when I invaded with my German made stereo and cracked that quiet air with the song "Good Morning" by Debbie Reynolds and Gene Kelly from Singing in the Rain. I am not ashamed to admit that I really like that song. I thought that the guys would appreciate a good song too.
A couple more thoughts:
Later we divided the youth group in two for a service project. One went to the Christian Community Center and my group went to the Helping Up Mission.
Three guys gave their testimony. All were drug users and dealers at one point. One guy had spent 10 years in jail and had been shot three seperate times. During his testimony he proceeded to take off his hooded sweater, (he had a wifebeater on underneath) and as he flexed his huge guns, he showed us these gnarled white scars up and down his arms from heroine use. This guy had a story.
And the coolest part was that it was God saved him from that story. And he had great theology and understanding of the gospel and his quoting of the scripture convicted me of my inability to do the same.
Back in the car on the way home I asked the kids what they thought, they sayed the place smelled. It did. It was just a funny first impression. The smell reminded me of my time on the Mercy Ship. Just an old place with odd odors wafting and lingering around the air. Following your nose in the different smells was like swimming in a lake going from warm spots to cold spots. (Thats always a weird feeling)
I also decided to talk about food on the way back. You know, kinda rub in the fact that were fasting, to face it and verbalize the experience. I asked them this question, "If you could eat anything in the world right now what would it be?" As the kids were describing the food my mouth was salivating like Pavlov's dog.
The hilarious thing, in a sad kind of way, was that each kid named a fast food joint!
I couldn't believe it, Mcdonalds, Burger King and Chick-Fil-A ranked as the top choices of food for an empty stomach. Just goes to show we live in a fast food generation.
We got back to the church and we decided to create a handprints banner to hang up in the sanctuary. 29,000 is the number of kids that die each day from hunger. We thought we would create a visual for that number, because numbers get lost in translation. Each fingerprint on the handprint would represent one child. To do this each kid would have to make 400 handprints. We ran out of paper and paint. So we only got about 11,800 fingerprints. It still made quite the impression both with us and with the church members on Sunday morning.
I also think the kids liked doing it because they could slap their goopy hands on paper, mimicking the game Hungry Hungry Hippos.
And that about brings us to the break-fast dinner on Saturday night. We blessed the food, we ate, we went home, we went to bed.
We had accomplished something and hopefully that weekend will stay with us. Our lessons focused on the idea of creating a "Life Preparedness Kit". From all the different events of the weekend I feel better prepared to follow Christ in the everyday business of living. From understanding hunger to appreciating scripture memorization, I came out of the event prepared to engage life with a little more refined purpose than before.
