New Jersey Fun Facts (#2)

Those of you who've known Michael or are from the great nation of Texas are already familiar with the second person plural pronoun "ya'll." I would now like to introduce to you the South Jersey/Philadelphia equivalent: "yous" or "yous guys".


Urban Dictionary offered the following definitions for "yous guys":

1. Yous guys are all wrong. Yous guys is a northeast phrase (often used by jersey girls and long islanders) meaning you guys. The extra 's' is not silent and is added for no reason whatsoever.
   "Eh, maybe later I'll meet up with yous guys." "Yous guys keep your mouths shut." "Very funny, least I'm not stupid like yous guys."
   
2. A version of "you guys," which is mostly associated with New Jersey, but is also heard in other metropolitan areas, such as New York and Chicago. It may also be spelled "youse guys" and is much better than saying "y'all." "Yous guys want to go to the concert tonight?"

People really do talk like that up here. At Walmart the other night, the cashier handed us our bags and said, "Yous have a good night." At marriage class, every Wednesday, our small group leaders greet us, "How yous been doing this week?" During post-season every one was asking, "Did yous see the Phillies game last night?" Now they're all asking, "What do yous think about the Eagles?"

Perhaps our brains are over compensating. All the other personal pronouns have singular and plural representations, how come the second person got left out? And we all, in our respective regional ways, are trying to make it better. I wish I had retained all that wonderful history of English knowledge passed on to me by Prof Hagge in English 411, to offer some other sort of explanation as to why you is different that the others and why we feel the need to intercede. But I sold the textbook the day of my final and have not meditated much on those matters since.

I think I'm going to start writing down real-life instances of "yous" and "yous guys" so that yous can see how it's really used.

"And since nothing appears within us

or around us that is not tainted with very great impurity, so long as we keep our mind within the confines of human pollution, anything which is in some small degree less defiled, delights us as if it were most pure"

-John Calvin, The Institutes of the Christian Religion, Book I, Chap I

Faithful in the Face of Persecution

"Dear friends, do not be surprised at the painful trial you are suffering, as though something strange were happening to you. But rejoice that you participate in the sufferings of Christ, so that you may be overjoyed when his glory is revealed."
- I Peter 4:12-13

From May 2004 to July 2009, I lived in the southeast prefecture of a very poor and underdeveloped province of southwest China. This prefecture consists of 16 counties and I lived and studied in the prefecture capital city. In the north part of the county I resided, about an hour and a half bus ride away, there is a village that has grown to be a very small town. Though this town has elements of "town", being, buildings, it still is mostly old school village.

In one of this town's backyards lays 3 graves. These people really don't care for the graves and has offered them to a friend of mine; gravestones, bodies and all. But these graves are special to the rest of us. Here's whats engraved on the tombstones.

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The first grave belongs to a local man:

新故潘公
生于咸丰七年五月十六日为传福音真道不料于光绪二十四年九月二十一日路过重安江遇害寿终四十二岁
孝男义德女桂珠
光绪二十六年三月吉日立
为真道杀害身体
蒙主恩得救灵魂

Translation:
Pan Gong (is most likely his full name though we know for sure that his family name is Pan).
He was born in the 7th year 5th month 16th day of the reign of Qing Dynasty Emperor, Xian Feng (1857).

Because he preached the gospel of the True Way he was unexpectedly murdered at the Chong An River in the 24th year 9th month 21st day of the reign of Qing Dynasty Emperor, Guang Xu (1898). He was 42.

He was survived by a son, Yi De (Yi means righteous/righteousness and De means moral/morality), and a daughter, Gui Zhu (Gui is a kind of tree in South China and Zhu means pearl).

This grave was erected in the 26th year 3rd month of Guang Xu (1900).

Because of the True Way his body was killed.
Because of God's grace his soul is saved.

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The second grave belongs to a Westerner.

主赐尔永生 is written at the top of this tombstone. It means "The Lord gives you eternal life"

Shall Rise Again
In loving memory of William S. Fleming of the China Inland Mission.
Aged 31.
Died Novem 4.1898 at Tsong An. *
First Protestant Martyr in Kueicheo. **

Whosoever shall lose his life for my sake and the Gospel's shall save it. Mk viii 35

Erected by the bereaved family.

必定复活
明鉴光先生来黔传福音于光绪二十四年九月二十一日路过重安江遇害寿终时年三十一岁

Translation:
He will definitely rise again.
Mr. Fleming (I think his Chinese name was 明鉴光) came to Guizhou to preach the Gospel and in the 24th year 9th month 21st day of the reign of Guang Xu (1898) at the age of 31 he was murdered at the Chong An River.

* Tsong An - Chong An, a river and town in Guizhou province. It is the out-dated romanization of the Chinese characters 重安 (Chong An).
** Kueicheo - Guizhou, a province in China. It is the out-dated romanization of the Chinese characters 贵州 (Guizhou).

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The third grave also belongs to a Westerner:

The top of this man's tomb reads 耶稣使死无权 (Jesus makes it so that death has no power)

In loving memory of Charles Chenery whose body lies here waiting for the appearing of his Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.
I shall be satisfied when I awake with thy likeness.

秦公尔锐英人也于光绪二十八年遵 主命来黔传福音引人悔改弃假归真不幸于光绪三十一年三月十四日离世归 主享年三十有二岁
光绪三十一年十月二十一日立

Translation:
In the 28th year of the reign of Guang Xu (1902), Charles Chenery (I think his Chinese name was 秦公尔锐), an English man, also obeyed the Lord and came to Guizhou to preach the gospel, lead people to repent and abandon what's false, and return to the Truth.

Unfortunately, in the 31st year 3rd month 14th day of the reign of Guang Xu (1905), Chenery left this world and returned to the Lord at the age of 32.

This grave was erected in the 31st year 10th month 21st day of the reign of Guang Xu (1905).

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Something interesting that I find is this: Pan Gong and William Fleming were murdered at the Chong An River in 1898 for telling people about Jesus. In 1902 Charles Chenery went to the same area of the same province to do the same thing that got two men killed just four years earlier! It may have been a little different if just the local man was killed and the foreigner got kicked out of the area or vice versa. But the fact that the locals were so hostile to hearing about Jesus that they would kill a foreigner and a fellow local is not to be overlooked. But Charles Chenery went to that place just four years later to serve God. He didn't die of martyrdom. He just died. I don't know the cause of his death. Maybe illness. But the thing that I wanted to point out is this: Fleming and Pan did not back down when hateful men murdered them in a river. Chenery did not back down when he answered God's call to be a missionary in a place where missionaries are killed. These men were faithful in the face of persecution.

"I have learned the secret..."

I googled the phrase "the secret to" and pulled up 43,100,000 results ranging from "the secret to raising smart kids" to "the secret to skinny" to "the secret of Google's success".

People, it seems, are into secrets. The classified how-tos of life that someone somewhere had, until now, been withholding. But thanks to the investigative perseverance of magazine editors all over the world, we now have access to them. About 1,950 years ago or so, there was another certain man, a writer of letters, who revealed to the greater public a secret he himself had uncovered.

In his letter to the Philippians, Paul writes,

"I rejoice greatly in the Lord that at last you have renewed your concern for me. Indeed you have been concerned, but you had no opportunity to show it. I am not saying this because I am in need, for I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances. I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want. I can do everything through him who gives me strength."

How exciting! Paul found the secret to contentment, to release from this weary life into one that is sure to offer satisfaction. But Paul tops the magazine writer's three step plans because he's only got one step.

1. Paul learned the secret: I can do all things through him who strengthens me.
Jesus himself told his disciples,

"In the world you will have trouble."

And Paul, we know, had trouble. In his letter to the Corinthians, Paul wrote,

"To this very hour we go hungry and thirsty, we are in rags, we are brutally treated, we are homeless. We work hard with our own hands. When we are cursed, we bless; when we are persecuted, we endure it; when we are slandered, we answer kindly. Up to this moment we have become the scum of the earth, the refuse of the world." 1 Corinthians 4:11-13

Here's my point. Paul learned thirst by being thirsty. He learned hunger by being hungry. And he learned contentment by recognizing that his situation was what God had ordained for him and that God was going to pull him through.

When Paul was called to become an apostle of Christ, the Lord said of him,

"This man is my chosen instrument to carry my name before the Gentiles and their kings and before the people of Israel. I will show him how much he must suffer for my name." Acts 9:15

And the same Paul wrote to the Corinthians in the same aforementioned letter,

"No temptation has seized you except what is common to man. And God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can stand up under it."

Contentment is a funny word because it means happy but it doesn't. It has no elation or excitement, no swelling to a crescendo in the heart. It simply is, it abides, steady and true. Moments before disclosing his secret, Paul commands the Philippians to rejoice and not to be anxious about anything. He commands these things because they are contrary to our natures and our habits. Contentment, likewise, is against our natures.

And that's why it must be something we learn. I always thought of this passage as if he was suddenly injected with a dose of grace that worked like local anesthesia, protecting him from the pain of circumstance. And I figured the anesthesia was the "I can do all things" part, like doctors calling orders during a code blue, we shoot up our prayers and we get insta-strength to collapse the temple on the philistines. (I'm mixing metaphors, sorry, but I hope you get the gist of my train of thought.) But it's more like physical therapy, I think, where you come and the doctor exercises you in a very specific way and it hurts but your muscles get stronger and eventually you've trained them to know what to do.

So after being hungry so many times, Paul learned how to be hungry and how to trust the Lord and depend on the Lord.

And that's the secret.

Honduras

Last night at Abuelo's house, the family was testing my Spanish by asking me the meaning of the names of Latin American countries and some of the states in the U.S. I had no idea that Montana comes from the Spanish word for mountain (montaña) and Venezuela is Italian for "little Venice" and Colombia is named after Christopher Columbus (I never really thought about it!).

Come to find out, Honduras literally means "depths" in Spanish. Columbus is traditionally quoted as having written "Gracias a Dios que hemos salido de esas Honduras" (Thank God we have come out of those depths) while along the northeastern coast.

Paul, who had suffered much for even greater things than the discovery of new lands, said

For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord. Rom 8:38-39

and

We do not want you to be uninformed, brothers, about the hardships we suffered in the province of Asia. We were under great pressure, far beyond our ability to endure, so that we despaired even of life. Indeed, in our hearts we felt the sentence of death. But this happened that we might not rely on ourselves but on God, who raised the dead. II Cor 1:8-9

I'm thinking that the depths of the raging and vast sea that I face in my life will not separate me from God's love. I'm also thinking that these "depths" are not accidental but are a part of God's plan for my maturity and His glory. In that, I find much comfort and I also say with Christopher Columbus, "Thank you God!"

A New Church Home

Thanks to all of you who wrote or called to encourage us on our "Church Search". Thanks for sharing your stories. They really were encouraging.

We did settle down at a church, Living Faith Alliance, part of the Christian Missionary Alliance. Our first official Sunday was last Sunday, the 3rd, the first Sunday of the year. I'd written in my journal on December 31, "So tomorrow's the new year and I didn't mean for this to be all introspective 2009 and new beginnings and whatever. Honestly, I think I'm too emotionally fragile right now for all that. But I am in my will choosing to believe he will be (is) faithful to me."

December was a hard month for us. A lot of things happened, and a lot of things didn't happen, and I was getting stressed and overwhelmed. I didn't, as I said in my journal, want to reflect on the past year. I wanted to continue living one day at a time, hoping to make it from morning to night, repeating to myself, "The Lord is faithful. The Lord is faithful."

But on Sunday, January 3rd, The Good and Faithful Lord had other plans for me. The talk Sunday morning was about reflecting on the past year and looking forward to the new year. The pastor, through Romans 12:2

"Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind."

and 2 Corinthians 1:8-11

"We do not want you to be uninformed, brothers, about the hardships we suffered in the province of Asia. We were under great pressure, far beyond our ability to endure, so that we despaired even of life. Indeed in out hearts we felt the sentence of death. But this happened that we might not rely on ourselves but on God, who raises the dead. He has delivered us from such a deadly peril, and he will deliver us. On him we have set our hope that he will continue to deliver us, as you help us by your prayers."

led us through and exercise of Biblical reflection.

He said, "The conclusions we draw from a given situation--and not the circumstance itself--determine our attitude and direction." And he showed us that God wants us to reflect and to make decisions as we are transformed and our minds are renewed. And he showed us how Paul did it: after having suffered he explaining that the suffering taught him to rely on God. And that what he needs to remember is that God does deliver and will continue to deliver. So he gave us a little worksheet and asked, "How has God blessed you this past year? And what challenges have you gone through? And what truths did God teach you?" And he gave us some time to think about it and he said, "And what conclusions are you going to draw, what attitude are you going to take on, what direction will you follow in this coming year?"

It felt good to be all introspective 2009 and new beginnings and whatever. And instead of repeating my little "The Lord is Faithful" mantra, I can re-enter relationship with a living God who loves me, guides me, teaches me, and leads me into his glory.

We're not entirely sure if Living Faith Alliance is Calvinist or not. But I think Sunday, January 3rd was pretty good confirmation that we found a church that loves God and loves people and wants to see people love God and love people. And that's good enough for us.

The Church Search

Really, I should let Michael write this post, seeing as he's been the one talking to all the pastors and church secretaries and elders and what not. But since he's on the phone right now, and I'm the one with the inspiration to blog about it, I'm gonna go ahead and write this one.

Finding a good church has been harder than I thought. I often hear a lot of missions mobilizations people talk about how in places like America, people can wander into churches and hear the gospel. They use this to contrast the need for evangelical Christians to go out into "unreached, unengaged" areas where there are no churches for people to walk into. And I believed that when I left America two years ago, claiming the same ambitions of the apostle Paul.

Don't get me wrong, I still think that's true. I remember a friend telling me that in her husband's hometown in central Iowa there were 40 churches for 10,000. In my city in Big Red, there were 10,000,000 people and 2 churches. And I do think that Americans are able to walk into most churches and hear a solid, complete, and biblical presentation of the gospel message. But beyond that, it's hard to find a place to belong.

Maybe we're too picky. We just got married, so we want to go to a church with young married people. We are convicted by Scriptures and the Holy Spirit that missions are our life calling, so we want to go to a church that gets excited about that stuff. We like punk rock and electric guitars, so we want to go to a church that worships in a contemporary and passionate style. And we believe that the Word of God is infallible and the ultimate authority on what it means to be a Christian, so we want to go to a church that delights in the meditation of the Word and teaches it with authority.

Oh, and we're Calvinist.

I don't bring that up to start debates or sit on a high horse or stand on a soap box or whatever. I say that because, well, that might be the part that makes us too picky.

Anyway, so first we started going to churches we knew, churches I grew up in or my family grew up in, and it was nice except for the fact that there aren't young married people, or they don't sing contemporary music, or they aren't yet to the point of being mission-minded.

So we branched out a little, and we started going elsewhere. We went to one church where the preacher didn't open the Bible not a single time. Another time, we asked to talk to an elder about doctrinal views and when we told him we were Calvinist, he told us we needed to study the Scriptures and not be guided by things we'd heard. (That bothered me because he assumed I hadn't, that I'd been blown around on this Calvinist-Armenian debate as if it's something many blow-around people get involved in...)

Then Michael started calling churches out of the phone book, to get some of these questions answered beforehand. He called 10 or 12 churches and most had phone numbers that were out of service, or answering machines with old messages. Only two actually answered and talked to him. And over the last week, a few have called back and talked to him, sometimes at length, about who they are, what they believe, what's happened in their churches, and what we should believe.

Sometimes it's good, but not quite there. Old preachers who are Bible-believing and true to their very souls but hang on to the King James Version as the only trust-worthy translation. Friendly, welcoming people who claim to be reformed but ordain women. Once, Michael has a really good, promising conversation with a preacher at a Baptist church in the next town over. Well, it was good until Michael asked, "Where on the Calvinist-Armeneist (Poor West Texan Michael who doesn't always get his word ending right...) spectrum would your church fall?" And the man began going through each of Calvinism's five points explaining where he stood on each of them. Then he got to Limited Atonement and said, "That's just plain heresy."

I was, at the time, standing in front of the mirror doing my hair when I just about flipped out. I was remembering Paul saying something to the Romans about don't let people call unholy what you regard as holy, throwing bobby pins and mouthing vehemently to Michael, "We are not going to a church where they think we're heretics!"

But that's not the point. We should know better than to expect Calvinist churches to paint their doctrinal stances on their church signs. And we should expect that there are a lot of churches with organs and hymns. The saddest part of this whole experience has been that (1) nearly every church we've called recently experienced a split, and (2) that there are so many churches but so few that are relevant to people who already believe in Jesus, let alone to people who don't.

As we drove home from church today, I told Michael, "I miss Sunday mornings in Big Red. Everybody looked at the word and had something to say and we learned and we grew and we encouraged each other." Why is it that in America, the land of abundance, it's so hard to walk out of church and say the same thing?