A View Through the Window

Last weekend Cara and I had the privilege (or misfortune) to sit in Starbucks for a few hours while we waited for a concert to start down the street. We were seated in front of a huge window that looked onto the active, and sometimes not so active, street outside. After about an hour of drinking Chai Lattes we were bored so.....the window being our only source of amusement we looked to it for entertainment. Here's a sample of what we saw:

1) Mysterious cop hang-out - Did you know the police of Hamilton have a secret hangout spot right outside of Starbucks? It's true. No kidding! The entrance is an insignificant metal door set slightly back in a grove. Where does this door lead? Who knows. What I do know is that a large group of cops will occasionally loiter outside the door and then all enter inside. What do they do? Cara and I speculated that they have a ton of donuts (American ones) that they eat only in this secret place so that New Zealanders don't make donut jokes about them. Of course we Americans obviously have no problem with making police donut jokes so I'll continue with our observations. We watched the loitering cops talking together, then they noticed a parked car and began to walk around it. They'd clearly found something interesting about this car. Suddenly a ticket pad was pulled out and a ticket placed on the car windshield. Ha ha, the driver clearly picked the wrong spot to park that night! Later the cops came out of their secret hangout carrying "suspect" packages that they placed in a police car. I'm thinking donuts people!

2) The powder pink hoodie gang - Yeah, I don't know who told these guys that pink hoodies were cool, but I do know that there were three of them walking around in them like they were 'Da Stuff! Hmmm....I really wanted to say to them "That's a cute outfit you're wearing. Did your mommy buy that for you?" The worst part is that a couple of them had their hoods up. They looked like pink munchkins.

3)Acrobatics on some stone pillars - This teen started doing silly jumps across some low stone pillars. There was no one else on the street but he and his friend so maybe he felt more bold to do something stupid. Of course he had to have noticed the two girls in the window across the street laughing hysterically at him. On second thoughts, maybe we were the reason he was showing off his acrobatic skills.

4) Wrong way! - The street outside of Starbucks is two-way and then becomes one-way at a roundabout. Most cars notice all the "Wrong Way" and "Do Not Enter" signs at the roundabout and just turn around. But not the car we saw on this amusing night. It saw the signs and kept going, even though there were cars coming down this one lane, narrow street. It was quite a funny sight to see this car maneuver around the other cars coming in the opposite direction. Luckily they were all going slow.

5) The Yellow Submarine - This is the place where the concert was being held. During our hours at Starbucks we had a lot of time to reflect of the advertising of the Yellow Submarine for the bands that would be at this hole in the wall place. Their poster advertised the bands but didn't say what time they would start playing. In fact, the only time mentioned on the poster was "happy hour 6-9pm." Naturally, we thought the concert started around 6pm. Apparently we were wrong. We arrived at the entrance to the Yellow Submarine around 6:15pm only to find the doors locked and the gate down. Huh? That's when we decided to hang out in Starbucks for a while to see if the concert would actually happen. We realized it might possibly happen when the lead singer from Kissed by the Moon rode past the window on his skateboard. This was around 8pm. He rode up to the locked door and sat down. Our thought was, "Did they tell the bands when the event would start?" Eventually the doors opened around 9pm and the bands started to play around 10pm. Yeah, it was a long night. We're still not really sure why the poster advertised a 'happy hour" that didn't exist. Random. But Kissed by the Moon and Radiator were awesome! And at least we had the view through the Starbucks window to entertain us.

V8's (and I'm not talking about the drink)

This weekend something crazy happened in Hamiton. The V8 Supercar's raced through the city streets to compete for a really big trophy. I'm not joking. Just a block away from my flat cars raced at ridiculously fast speeds, making skid marks on the ground and occasionally crashing into big cement barriers. Just a few weeks ago I remember thinking, "Why would a city spend so much money on repaving roads, building stands and structures, and closing off major city streets just for a three day car racing event?" It seemed pretty silly to me. Still does. But it was interesting to see the excitment it generated around me. The racers came, the city was abuzz, and so was my church family.

My church, City Bible Church, was excited because here was a chance to show the love of Jesus to so many people who would be right on our doorstep. Our church building was located inside the V8 track. Cool huh? With such a prime location, we decided a great way to show the love of Christ was to serve the people who attended the race by opening our Cafe all weekend for them. Sunday service was cancelled and the church family rallied around the Cafe vision that God placed in the heart of the elders. It was amazing to see the amount of volunteers who helped with food prep, food service, promotion, kids games, cleaning, security, and most importantly...praying. I think there were over 80 helpers. I feel incredibly blessed to have been able to stay in Hamilton to help with this outreach. It was hard. There were times when the Lord definitely had to change my attitude about service. But the end result was God's glory being revealed to those who stepped through the doors of Cafe Agora, and His blessing on those who served Him so faithfully.

Funny thing. Cara and I had tickets to see the racing on Friday. This being my first race car experience, I was amazed at the speed of the cars and the noise they made as they flew around the track. Of course, the excitment of this wore off pretty quickly for me and after awhile I thought, "You see one fast car, you've seen 'em all." Yeah, Cara and I pretty much saw a couple of races and then socialized, etc. for the rest of the time. The thing I find ironic is that we managed to get into the ticketed area each day of the race even though we didn't care that much about the racing. Our church had tickets that floated around from person to person and we unintentionally managed to get ahold of some of those tickets not once, but twice. We also watched some of the race the free way by peeking through the fences along the road/track. The fences were covered in black plastic to prevent people without tickets from seeing into the track, but New Zealanders are industrious and they found all sorts of ways to get a peek - from standing on roof tops to standing on ladders, from climbing in trees to just pulling down the plastic on the fences. It was hilarious to see people lined up against the fences.peeking to get a view.

OK, now I just want to take a few minutes to comment on a disappointing aspect of the V8 supercar races. While I was amused by the cars racing on the city streets and blessed by serving at Agora, my heart was broken by the emphasis on sex and alcohol that accompanied the racing. There were tons of beer companies promoting their drinks. Some people took advantage of these promotions by drinking early in the day until they were pretty slushed (drunk) by the time the racing finished in the evening. Also, many major companies, car and beer alike, had women walking around in skimpy outfits promoting their companies. It was clear their sole purpose was sex appeal and men were were falling left and right for it. When I saw these women I felt a mixture of embarrassment, disgust, and sorrow for them. Unfortunately, instead of going to them and showing them the love of Jesus I pulled away from any contact with them. I shouldn't have done that and I had to ask the Lord for forgiveness for that reaction. I can hate the sin but not the sinner. These women need to know they have the love of the Savior and don't need the fake attraction/lust of the men at the V8's to feel special.

I just want to conclude by saying that that this event and CBC's involvement with it were bathed in lots of prayer. It was great to be able to at any time go off to a prayer room in Agora and just pray for the outreach and any other matter of the heart. I took full advantage of that room. I know God worked in a mighty way at this event and I may never know all that He did, but I am confident that He heard the prayers of His people and influenced the racing weekend as a result.