My testimonial experience... :)

october 2, 2008

alright...i have lots to type, and it’s already 12:30 in the morning, so i gotta make this fast. in the last 60ish hours, i have slept for 5 and ½ hours. now i will tell you what we’ve been doing to keep us all so busy...
on monday, we learned “locked.” it is a human video set to the skillet song: Locked. it is pretty awesome, but we practiced for four hours straight, and so it was pretty intense. then we started STOMP. i actually, honestly, can’t remember what days we did what, so i’m just gonna type out some stories in random order:
STOMP is going to be awesome; the scene is in a restaurant, and we are “cleaning up the place.” there are lots of cups being smashed and spins and bangs and cool stuff—but i have a really hard time with my part. so i’m a waitress and i have to hook-throw a cup over my head to this guy in the back so he can throw it in the trash and have it break. the issue??? my aim is a little off... the first time i threw it i almost took off Como’s head (he’s one of the drummers in the back). literally, the cup was only a couple inches from his head!!!! that happened a couple of times—all of them were very close calls. so, as a preventative measure, the boys decided to set up a wall made out of music stands to block Como’s area. no joke, i hit that wall about five times—and i just couldn’t get my aim right!!!! i did get pretty frustrated with myself because it was like, seriously??? i can’t throw a stinking cup in the right direction without almost killing someone????? GRRR!!! but besides those mishaps, it was pretty fun!
today was very interesting... after sleeping for 2 and ½ hours last night, we had prayer at 7am. staying awake for that might have been the hardest thing i’ve done the whole time i’ve been here. i have to close my eyes to pray cuz otherwise i get distracted, but i seriously kept falling asleep—and i was standing up!!!!!! i’d barely catch myself as i was losing my balance after zoning out and starting to fall asleep. it was pretty bad...
then, after prayer, mike tells us that we are going to go downtown and do some street evangelism. we had to share our testimony of what God’s done in our lives with random people. i have a few good stories from that experience:
i was so nervous, but really i was almost too tired to care if people looked at me like i was crazy...i was actually more afraid of the people that actually said yes and then i’d have to sound eloquent or at least somewhat intelligent! well, the first person i approached was a lady standing on the side of the road—she looked nice, somewhat older, and like she had nothing to do at the moment. perfect, right? so i walked up and said hi, shook her hand and introduced myself, and then asked her if i could tell her what God’s done in my life. the second i said God, she totally shut down on me. she said, “you know, i’d rather not. goodbye.” i was like, cool...i have been rejected...now i don’t have to be so afraid. the next people i talked to was a young woman and her little daughter. she said she was already fine with God and didn’t want to hear my testimony. the third couple i talked to was really friendly. the wife was trying to take a pic of her husband, so i offered to take one of them together. after that, i introduced myself and they were really nice and told me their names and stuff. then i asked if i could tell them my experience with God and the man, no joke, put his arm around his wife and dragged her away from me saying “no. no...” i think he must have had a bad experience with church or religion at some point in his life before...
by this time i was about ready to cry because 1) no sleep and 2) nobody wanted to hear what i had to say (and it was an assignment—no pressure!!!!)
so as i’m walking dejectedly along the sidewalk, i see this lady in a wheelchair, going over to the dock to just stare out at the water. i was like, hey, she can’t out-run me, so i’m gonna go talk to her. as i approached her, i heard her talking, but she didn’t have a cell phone, and no one was around her. when i was too close to just turn and walk away, i realized she was talking very conversationally with a nearby pigeon. yeah. so anyways, i very eloquently said, “kaylee. my name.” i blame that on a sudden and selective case of dyslexia. anyways, she looked at me like i was a poor pitiful and handicapped little child (and yet she was the one talking to the bird...go figure) so she let me tell her my testimony. well, i was so excited that i sat down next to her and set my hands on the ground beside me. and i gracefully placed my left hand in a pile of green pigeon poop. that right there is the story of my life. anyways, that conversation ended very awkwardly, and so i was seriously about ready to give up, when, as i was walking and praying that God would send a divine encounter, i saw this lady who looked to be in her young thirties walking along the sidewalk in no big hurry. i told God this was probably my last person (how much rejection can one poor boot-camped-out master’s student handle their second week???) anyways, we made eye contact and so i said hi and asked if i could walk with her for a minute. she looked at me funny but, with the cutest accent was like, “ya, sure.” i used her accent to start up a conversation, asking her where she was from and stuff. she was born in brazil and her name is sandra. well, i told her why i moved to san diego after she told me her story, and i explained master’s commission and then asked if i could tell her my testimony. she was like, “with God?” and i was like, yep! she then told me that she believes in God and loves him. she loves praying at the beach and in the outdoors because God can hear her everywhere and he will never let her down. i think that we had about the same core beliefs about God, but i think she had a few random “god is in all things” statements thrown into our conversation. but the coolest part was that i almost broke down crying when God used her to speak to me. she said, “no matter who rejects you, or how many times people choose not to listen to you, never give up. God is on your side, and he will never leave you or let you down.” it was seriously so cool because when i asked God for a divine encounter, i thought i would change somebody’s life, and maybe God did use me to do that...but more than that, i was changed. this woman spoke truth into my life that i really needed to hear in that moment. it was so invigorating!!!!
after we got back to the church, we started learning another human video called iris. it’s a secular song, but it really gives a good message. i got a main part, but only because i have the coolest roommate ever and she didn’t want it when they gave it to her. the leaders haven’t really seen any of us perform, so they didn’t really have preferences; they were kind of just sticking people places. i love my part!!! it’s sad, but really powerful. i’m a girl who gets abused by her father and then runs to her boyfriend to save her, but really she’s just settling for him because she doesn’t think she can have anything better. there are other scenes, but that’s my part in it...
well anyways, we actually ended up performing all of our dramas tonight and sharing our testimonies in front of a small group of the youth students. we did the two big group dramas, and then two other ones that are both small group (everybody’s only in one). that was such an adrenaline rush!!! i mean, we learned all of this stuff in the last two days!!! it was insane!!! but now i’m going to go to bed...i just thought everyone should be updated on my life... we did get a nap in the park today which kind of helped sustain me, along with God’s grace. i’m doing great emotionally, and physically i’m exhausted but hanging in there. boot camp is almost half-way done, and so i know that we can all do it! i see such a transformation in all of us already, and seriously this is only our first “for reals” week of master’s. i can’t wait to see what’s coming next... i love you all!!!