I want to see miracles, see the world change...

I don't quite have the words to adequately describe my experience... but I know it makes my heart ache.

Three nights ago, at 3:30AM, I was leaving a club in Cuba after spending hours dancing the night away with some Cuban boys. One of them, who had patiently been spending this night teaching us rhythmically challenged Canadian girls how to dance, was waiting with us to make sure we got our bus safely back to our resort and we got into a conversation about life in Cuba.
We talked about how the guys who work at the resort try to make out with all the girls. While to us it seems like they are all big players he explained that in Cuba the girls don't have access to nice clothes and make up so when all these girls come in with their light skin and expensive clothes and get themselves all dolled up it is exotic to them, being with these girls is how they can experience the world... because most of them will never leave Cuba.
How foreign that is to me. While my friends are more and more being spread out over the world and I aspire to spend a great deal of time traveling he can say with such confidence that he and everyone he knows will likely never have the opportunity to leave the small island country where they were born.
Then he talked about how they work at the resort for 20 days straight and then go home to rest and see their families for 10 days. For this sacrifice they are paid 18 pesos for every 20 days that they work (about $25 Canadian). He said that he gives some of the money he makes to his Mom for the up keep on her house, and that the jeans he was wearing cost him 25 pesos, more than his month's wages. Yet I can see that he loves his job, he spent all this extra time with us teaching us to dance and wanted to meet us the next day before we left to give us a present and say goodbye (he who has so little wants to give something to us). In fact all of the staff were so friendly and energetic and seemed to be having fun, yet they were not making enough in 20 days of work to buy themselves a pair of jeans...
Lindsay and I did meet him the next morning, away from the lobby because the staff are forbidden from coming to say goodbye to the guests,and he gave us both beautiful pictures that he had painted (as well as working at the resort, he teaches fine arts at a boys school). Before leaving I gave him all the money I had left, 20 pesos (about $30 Canadian), more than doubling his salary for this month. I'm not saying this because I'm proud of it, because its nothing to be proud of, I'm not going to miss that money... I'm saying it because it is so ridiculous to me that an amount of money that means nothing to me is worth so much in his hands, that a big difference can be made so effortlessly...

But I don't... we don't.

Our eyes are closed.

On a hot night under the stars in Cuba mine were momentarily opened... and it broke my heart.
I pray that my eyes would not close again, that God would change me through this experience, that I would make a difference.

And still my heart aches...

dazed and confused...

yup thats definately me right now, dazed and confused! Dazed because I've been studying for way to long and my brain isn't working quite right anymore... confused because I have no idea what I'm doing!!!
My dad called me today and told me that he thinks I could make alot of money this summer if I came home and worked in the film business for a few months. We tried this last year and it didn't really work out, I ended up scrambling around looking for a job and by the end of the summer was working two jobs to make up for it. But he's sure this time will be different. Now I dont know what to do, I would be giving up so much by going home, but I could potentially gain alot too.
If I leave I'm missing out on alot of fun with friends, I will have to give up at least one of my DE classes, and I will be absent for the formation of the new Embassy Leadership which I would really like to be apart of. I would gain alot more money, the ability to take whatever job I want for july and august to get experience and not worry about how much I'm making, and possibly not have to work next year, giving me more time to do the stuff at Embassy I want, volunteer for the crisis center, and work on my thesis.
What do I get if I stay here? Alot of fun with Cassie, Danie, Lisa, and whoever else is around, a few classes out of the way, being involved in the formation of the new Embassy leadership, free time, independence... but no job yet which means being strapped for cash, being broke at the end of the year when I want to travel, needing to work next year...
WHAT DO I DO??

Let Your will be done 'cause thats all I want to do...

When I was in grade 11 the leader of my care group invited some of her friends to come to our bible study, she called them 'Prayer Warriors'. At the end of the night they took some time to pray for us each individually. One of them, her name is Beth, after she prayed for me told me that she could feel that I was a rock, full of the holy spirit, a firm foundation while the people around me were on shakey ground. To be honest it really freaked me out, I had only been a Christian for a little over a year so I kind of put the whole thing in the back of my mind and didn't think about it much.
Three years later, just after first year of university, my old care group got together for an evening just to catch up and pray together, Beth came. At the end of the night she took me aside again and said almost the same thing... You are a rock, your prayers are powerful... THREE YEARS LATER she says the same thing to me. Obviously this is something that God was speaking into my life, it comes to my mind everyonce in a while, but mostly it confuses me... what does it mean??
Jesus called the apostle Peter 'the Rock'... after the Embassy retreat I started to read through the gospels where they talked about Peter and read the letters he wrote... trying to look for some clue as to what my purpose is... I got sidetracked by end of term chaos... I'll have to get back to that when I'm done...
Why am I thinking about this now? I'm not really sure... maybe because I didn't get that job that I wanted so badly... I've had the worst luck with jobs and I'm just wondering what God wants from me, where he wants me to be... and that anxiety about the summer turns into anxiety about my life... which brings me back to the question WHO AM I? WHAT IS MY PURPOSE?... which brings me back to that time when Beth told me 'you are a rock'...
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Some food for thought:
(If anyone is reading who is interested let me know your thoughts on this!)

"When the church began to doubt its own integrity after the Darwinian attack on Genesis 1 and 2, we began to answer science, not by appealing to something greater, the relmof beauty and art and spirituality, but by attempting to translate spirituatl realities through scientific equations, thus justifying ourselves to culture, as if culture had some kind of authority to redeem us in the first place. Terms such as 'absolute truth' and 'inherency' (a term used only to describe scripture in the last one hundred years or so) became a battle cry, even theough the laws of absolute truth must, byt their nature, exclude ideas such as Jesus is the Word, He is both God and Man, the Trinity is both three and One, we are united with Him in His death, because these are mysterious ideas, not scientific ideas. In fact, much of biblical truth must go out the window when you approach it through the scientific method." -Donald Miller