Dream Analysis

CN Tower, Toronto

My cousin, Betsey, does life coaching, and she offered to analyze a dream for me.  The one I picked out was a doozy:

We lived at the top of something like the CN Tower in Toronto (or the Space Needle in Seattle, but I don’t know the city).  Because we lived there, we didn’t have to wait in line for the public elevators.  At some point my lifelong friend, Maggie, came to visit.  She brought me something, but I don’t remember what it was.

Then I went out and forgot my key, so I had to buy a ticket for the elevator like everyone else.  My Companion (I don’t remember who it was) told me that I should explain that I live there, so I did.  The Ticket Lady was in her 60’s and sort of gruff.  She said that I had to buy a ticket and use a public elevator, but she would go up with me, and refund my money when she saw that I really do live there.  The tickets cost $7.50 each, and they were gray and long (about 6-7 inches) and a little thinner than tickertape.

The Ticket Lady told us to go ahead and get in line.  She busied herself with closing up her ticket booth.  There were 5 ticket booths, all of them manned and lines at each.  But the lines moved pretty fast.  My Companion and I had gone to the booth at the far left.

We went through an opening in the wall directly behind us and into the waiting area.  The line for the elevators was in a wading pool, the water was nicely warm and clean, and amazingly less crowded than the ticket lines.  People really enjoyed the pool as they waited for the elevator.  There were 3 elevators, but they were in a straight line, not curved as you would expect around the tower.  The middle elevator had an enclosed area that hid the people waiting from view.  It was common knowledge that the enclosed area was a Jewish bathhouse.  So I stood in line for the elevator on my right because I’m not Jewish.

The “wading area” for all 3 elevators was between 2 playgrounds for a really tough inner-city elementary school, and we were separated from the playgrounds by cage-like wire.  As my Companion and I waited and enjoyed the water, I looked at the kids on the playground.  One boy on a swing turned and made eye contact with me.  And he gave me the most malevolent look I’ve ever gotten—and he was young, about 6-7 years old!  That look made me shiver.

Then it was our turn to get onto the elevator, and the Ticket Lady was in the pool area, but she didn’t make it onto our elevator.  The elevator was wedge-shaped (like a pie, with one curved side) and it was like an amusement park ride.  There were wire seats that looked like lawn chairs and we were supposed to seatbelt ourselves into the seats.  But the seats weren’t bolted down.  I pulled mine (on the curvy side at a corner) into alignment with the other seats before I sat and buckled up.  The ride to the top was quick, and at the top we met the Ticket Lady.  We knocked at the door and Mom let me in.  The Ticket Lady was gone, but I was sure that she had gone down to get our refund.  Mom scolded me for leaving without my key, and said, “Those bathhouse Jews are homosexuals.”  I said, “All of them?” and she nodded emphatically, “ALL of them!”

I hadn’t felt threatened by the Jews (gay or not, though I doubted that they really were gay), but the kid on the playground had really scared me.  This dream was populated by lots of people I knew, both in our apartment and down in the wading pool.  But the only people I can recall are Mom, Fleur, and my youngest son, Kevin.

The way Betsey analyzed my dream was to actually show me how to analyze the dream myself.  Together we picked out the things that seem to be important symbols and themes: the tower, the elevators, Maggie, whatever Maggie brought me, the key, the tickets, my companion, the ticket lady, the refund, the lines, the ticket booths, the opening in the wall, the waiting area/wading pool, the Jewish bathhouse, the playgrounds, the cage-like wire, the boy on the swing, the wire seats, Mom, the Jews, and Kevin.

Then we went through, item-by-item (or person-by-person) and Betsey instructed me to “be” the item or person.  And she asked me these questions:

1. Name three adjectives to describe yourself (without thinking too much).
2. (Item/Person), what is your purpose in this dream?
3. (Item/Person), what are you trying to tell/show Alisa?
4. (Item/Person), do you have something to say to Alisa?

 

I took notes, but not on the things that didn’t seem important, so here are some of my notes:

• Tower – tall, see everything, over everything; “Come up here!”
• Elevators – open, waiting, enclosing; “Let’s go up!”
• Maggie – “There are gifts all around if you open your eyes.”
• Whatever Maggie brought me – “You have gifts that you have not opened.”
• The key – gold, shiny, important; “Open it up!”
• Tickets – “I am a substitute key.”
• My Companion – “I’m here to remind you!”
• Ticket Lady – “I have tickets for you.”
• Refund – “Things lost can be restored.”
• The lines – I don’t think the lines were significant.  I live in a big city (Milan), so lines and crowds are an everyday thing.
• Ticket booths – “I have tickets for you.”
• The opening in the wall – “I’ll take you to a different reality.”
• Waiting area/wading pool – “Take a moment to relax/This is a safe place to relax.”
• Jewish bathhouse – Chosen, exclusive “You’re not one of us.”
• Playgrounds – “If you forget your key, you’ll be in danger.”
• The cage-like wire – thick, impenetrable, transparent
• The boy on the swing – “I’m gonna get you!”
• The wire seats – Cold, uncomfortable, unsteady
• Mom – Home, safety, love; here to reassure; “Everything is going to be OK.”
• The Jews – Chosen, rigid, conservative; “You’re not one of us.”
• My son, Kevin – Young, irresponsible, unpredictable; here as a symbol; “You grew out of this phase, so will I!”

Betsey then gave me her perspective:

You live at a higher level than others, always moving up.  Maggie reminds you of gifts that you haven’t opened.  Gifts may be related to keys and tickets.  Your companion is a guide, so is the Ticket Lady.  Lost things can be restored.  There is a place that you can get to with substitute keys.  There is an opening from one reality to another, from busy to tranquil.  There is an unwelcoming, exclusive place.  The playground area is scary and menacing.  Mom is reassuring and reassuringly normal.

Then I told Betsey about my interpretation:

In a nutshell, this is a Rapture dream.  The tower-top apartment is the heavenly destination.  The tower says “Come up here!” just like in Revelation 4:1.  The elevators are a conveyance to take me higher (they never went down!).  The unopened gift is my belief that we don’t use the gifts God has given us to the extent that we ought to (like the first century Christians).  Maggie and my Companion both are the Helper, the Holy Spirit (perhaps the Ticket Lady was also the Holy Spirit).  The refund is the restoration of things to God’s original design.  The playground is the world left behind after the Rapture.  Mom’s warning about the bathhouse Jews was weird and completely in character, therefore reassuringly normal.

The Rapture has been on my mind for about a year now.  I believe that it’s going to be soon.  Don’t get left in the playground!  Come up here!  God is good!

Seattle’s Space Needle

Curing Loneliness with Bonnie and Clyde

The Free Throw Wizard’s book

I had a dream last night:

I was kidnapped by an elderly couple.  They were so notorious about kidnapping people that they were nicknamed Bonnie and Clyde.  Then they kidnapped me, and I found out that they are really nice people.  I could see that they kidnapped people because they were lonely.  When I got the chance to escape, I did.  But the next time I saw them, I voluntarily got into their car.

Immediately, I recognized this as a dream about the retirement apartment where I live with Mom (my residence when I’m in the US).  It’s an independent living facility, which means that they provide no nursing care.  Basically, it’s an apartment complex with a communal dining room and lots of group activities.  Because we eat almost all of our meals together, we have developed a group of friends here.  Of course, there are some people that we are closer to than others, and there are some who we actively avoid (like the man who put a gift-wrapped tube of KY jelly into Mom’s purse on her birthday).

Loneliness is a universal plague, and even more so among the elderly.  Some of them have lost their spouse, some have lost their siblings, and some have even lost children.  And when all that loss is piled on top of the loss of normal faculties (hearing and vision), loss of health, and loss of independence, many become depressed.  Depression perpetuates and exacerbates loneliness so that it becomes an ever-more vicious cycle.

Today, I voluntarily let myself be “kidnapped”—twice!  The first was Benny, who always wears a Jesus cap, indoors and out.  He’s a sweet guy who loves the Lord and loved his wife.  They had been married for 52 years, when she had a catastrophic stroke and died a few years ago.  He’s never gotten over the loss.  When he talks about meeting Jesus face-to-face in a near-death experience, his eyes tear up.  And when he talks about his wife, the tears overflow.  But he’s always got a friendly word and a ready smile.

The second one was Fred, who always wears a basketball jacket and cap.  I had seen a painting up in the hall outside the Game Room, and noticed that his name was on it.  He had painted a church in Rome, so at lunch I complimented him on the painting because I knew it for a church in Rome even before reading the title.  He was very excited to have his painting noticed and recognized.  His wife died just before he moved in here as the very first tenant two years ago.  Then he told me something else about himself: he’s the Free Throw Wizard—he’s shot over 2 Million free throws without missing.  And here’s the really amazing thing about that: he shoots from behind a stack of boxes eleven feet high—he can’t see the basket.  In fact, he gave me his book titled Free Throw Wizard, and you can watch him on You Tube: Free Throw Wizard.

Here’s the thing: it only cost me a bit of time, but in both cases, I made these men happy just by being available to listen to them tell me their stories.  Sometimes you’ll meet a Free Throw Wizard, and other times, you’ll just help somebody find a reason to smile.  Either way, it’s all good.  And the bonus is that a good listener is never lonely.  God is good!  Now get out there and share His goodness with some lonely people.

Dream Diary

Shh . . . I’m dreaming

I have had lots of God-given dreams, and other dreams of personal significance.  From the titles of two of my books—half of what I’ve written! (Laughing in My Dreams and Dancing in My Dreams)—it’s obvious that dreams and dreaming has played a part in my life.  And dreams are one way that God speaks to us:

For God does speak—now one way, now another—though no one perceives it. In a dream, in a vision of the night, when deep sleep falls on people as they slumber in their beds, he may speak in their ears and terrify them with warnings, to turn them from wrongdoing and keep them from pride, to preserve them from the pit, their lives from perishing by the sword (Job 33:14-18).

But of course, not every dream is a God dream.  Those other dreams can be useful in helping you to understand how you’re feeling about certain things in your life.  For example, when I was a new mother being woken every two hours to nurse my baby, I had a dream that I was trying to vacuum the house and I had half a dozen little kids hanging onto my legs and pulling on my shirt.  I was feeling overwhelmed, and the dream helped me to understand that so that I could look for help to do all the things I needed to do.

Have you ever had an interesting dream, and you wanted to remember and understand the dream, but it faded away too quickly?  Of course, that happens to all of us.  You’re too sleepy to get up and search for a pen and paper, and then if you do, the dream is mostly gone (if not altogether forgotten) by the time you do.  I believe that we all dream, though many people say that they never dream.  I have heard that if you keep a pen and paper handy, and write your dreams down, you will become better at remembering your dreams.  So I decided to give it a try.

Actually, what I did was get a regular diary, and start recording the daily personal words that God was giving me (which I wrote about in yesterday’s post Devotional Journal).  Since the dates in the diary start about a month before I bought it, I began writing my dreams on those blank pages.  [That’s why the picture of the page (in my recent post Swedish Fish and the Nice Young Man) where I wrote my dream of November 4, says August 23 (in Italian).]

The dream mentioned above was a Rapture dream because it had a nice young man holding the door open for me, and as soon as I woke up, I knew that He was Jesus.  And in the continuation of that dream, we were in a car, going around and picking up all the other people who had sprouted like us.  I’ve had a lot of Rapture dreams lately.  But in looking through my dream diary I was caught by this one:

The Thorn

I only remember that someone had stepped on a thorn and it was very painful.  They were asked to rate the pain on a scale like in the doctor’s office.  I don’t remember the rating, but it was high-end.

I had thought that this dream had to do with the divorce and the possibility of running into my ex or one of his family here in Texas because I had driven through his last known location just that day.  But in light of recent events (see Kicked When I was Down), I think it may have been a prophetic dream, speaking about the events that would happen a week later, when I was passive-aggressively thrown out of Barbara and Leo’s house.  That was very painful, and more so because of the way that they did it.

I don’t want to keep going over and over and over this thing.  But honestly, how do I handle family get-togethers?  I have always believed in forgiving people as quickly as you can, but never allow them the opportunity to hurt you again.  Am I wrong about that?

Well, in today’s devotional, I believe that God is telling me that in this case, I am wrong.  Love demands that we make ourselves vulnerable.  My flesh is screaming NOOOOOOOO!!!!!  But I’ve got to crucify the flesh, take up my cross, and follow Jesus.  Two days ago, the Lord gave me 1 Samuel 7:12-13:

Then Samuel took a stone and set it up between Mizpah and Shen. He named it Ebenezer, saying, “Thus far the Lord has helped us.” So the Philistines were subdued and they stopped invading Israel’s territory. Throughout Samuel’s lifetime, the hand of the Lord was against the Philistines.

Then yesterday: “Isn’t this what I said, Lord, when I was still at home?  That is what I tried to forestall by fleeing to Tarshish.  I knew that you are a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abounding in love, a God who relents from sending calamity,” (Jonah 4:2).

Then today: “For who is God besides the Lord?  And who is the Rock except our God?” (Psalm 18:31).  I feel like with these three passages the Lord is telling me to forgive, let myself be vulnerable again, and show all those involved what grace really looks like.  And God will be my Rock, my Stone of Help through this.  Oh, God!  It’s hard!  I have never told my side (not to them), and God is telling me not to run away from the pain when all my flesh screams for me to run away and never look back.  But this is a path I’ve got to walk, and I can do it only through the help of my Rock.

God is good!  Even with all of life’s thorns, God is good!

Devotional Journal

Today’s page from my Devotional Journal

At the end of August I bought a diary, and started recording the daily personal words that God was giving me.  Since the dates in the diary start about a month before I began keeping my devotional journal, I began inserting dreams on those blank pages.  That’s why the date on the page pictured in my post of November 4 (see Swedish Fish and the Nice Young Man says (in Italian) August 23.  (Tomorrow I will write about some of those dreams—stay tuned!)

Here’s how my devotional journal works: after prayer time, I always ask the Lord if He has a word for me for today, and He gives it to me like this: I get the impression in my mind (sometimes hearing His voice) of a verse.  For example, today’s word, He said in my mind: “Jonah 4:2.”  So I looked it up, having no idea what it said.  All I knew is that by the fourth chapter of Jonah, Nineveh had repented and been spared, and that Jonah sat outside of town, angry that God had spared those rotten Ninevites.  So here’s what it says:

O Lord, is this not what I said when I was yet in my country?  This is why I made haste to flee to Tarshish; for I knew that You are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, and relenting from disaster.

Forgiving Nineveh is no small thing when you understand how offensive sin is to God.  People sometimes think that the God of the Old Testament had a terrible temper and that His anger was way over the top.  But the reality is that sin is so vile and offensive to our Holy God that His justice cannot allow it to go unpunished.  The God of the Old Testament is the same as the God of the New Testament.  The difference is that Jesus took the punishment for our sins, so now we can enjoy God’s mercy.  See how Jonah describes Him in this verse: gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, and relenting from disaster.  That doesn’t sound like most people’s idea of the Old Testament God, but He is the same yesterday, today, and forever.

So, here’s what this verse means to me, personally: I have resolved the robbery issue as much as possible at this time, so this morning my mind went back to the thing with Barbara and Leo throwing me out of their house (see my recent post Kicked When I was Down).  Why go over the whole thing again?  Honestly, I would rather forget it and move on.  But here’s the thing, they involved a family member—one who has always been ready to think the worst of me.  I will have to go to family get-togethers with this person.  I’m not going to slink off like someone who was in the wrong, but family get-togethers with him could be very uncomfortable for me from now on.  Nor am I going to stop speaking to him, although I feel very threatened and defensive, and not at all ready to see him again.

I hate confrontation, but the passive-aggressive way that Barbara and Leo treated me was very hurtful.  And my family member’s willing involvement in that passive-aggression was very hurtful—even more so.  Nobody ever asked for or heard my side.  Then I found out that there was also gossip about me and this situation, and still my side has never been told.

So what to do?  I don’t want to ruin the next family gathering, but every meal at his house will leave me feeling scrutinized to see if I clear the table and wash the dishes.  Of course, I’ll have to—and promptly.  And if he tells me that I don’t have to wash dishes, then the whole thing could come exploding out of me.  I don’t want that, either, but my side has never been told.

Through this verse, I see the Jonah in me and my attitude.  I feel the Lord telling me that I must forgive.  Forgive them (which I have already done) and forgive him (which I’m trying to do).

What do I want?  I want to forgive, forget it, and move on.  I want my emotions to catch up with my intellectual decision to forgive.  I have learned that there are some people that I need to forgive every time they come to mind because the hurt goes so deep.  But I know that if I faithfully hold onto that decision to forgive, eventually, the hurt will be gone, and the offense forgotten.

Forgive like God, who truly forgets the offense.  God is good!

Swedish Fish and the Nice Young Man

Swedish Fish & my dream journal (ignore the date!)

I had a strange dream.  I guess that’s an obvious statement since dreams are almost always strange.  I have been keeping a dream journal since the end of August, and two of my books have the word Dreams in the title (Laughing in My Dreams and Dancing in My Dreams).  I don’t dream every night (at least I don’t remember dreaming every night), and not all dreams are from God.  But I’m trying to remember my dreams and write them down before they fade away, in an effort to understand the workings of my own mind better.

God-given dreams are always memorable.  God often speaks to people through dreams:

For God does speak—now one way, now another—though no one perceives it.  In a dream, in a vision of the night, when deep sleep falls on people as they slumber in their beds, He may speak in their ears and terrify them with warnings.  Job 33:14-16

So here is the dream I had, I call it Sprouting Branches:

I was visiting a resort, and after a day there, I started to sprout thin branches like a tree or a vine.  I was embarrassed and didn’t want my family to know, so I tried to hide my sprouts.  Then a family member confided to me that she had begun to grow roots, and she showed them to me.  They looked like my branch sprouts, but came off of her feet and ankles and went down, whereas mine came off my torso and arms and went up.  She wanted to cut off the roots so that she could continue to move about freely.  I wondered if cutting them off would hurt, but I didn’t really consider cutting off my branches.  Then as I was walking toward a building, a nice young man held the door open for me.  He smiled at me and said (as if he knew about my hidden sprouts), “It’s OK, everybody in here has them.”

Then I woke up, and immediately I understood that the young man was Jesus, and that the door was a symbol of the Rapture.  Then I fell back asleep and the dream continued:

I was in a car full of people, and we were going around, picking up sprouted people.  We were going to take them to a class that would explain to all of us what was going on with the sprouting.

When I prayed about this dream, I had a couple of Rapture verses in mind, but God gave me 1 Thessalonians 4:13:

Since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, through Jesus, God will bring with Him those who have fallen asleep.

The Bible often uses the term “fallen asleep” when speaking of His people to mean that they have died.  I hadn’t thought of it before reading this verse, but I think the people who were growing roots had died.  Perhaps the sprouting people were dying, though I don’t really think so because I was sprouting, and thanks be to God, I enjoy perfect health.

So then after church yesterday I went to eat a late lunch at (of all places!) Church’s (get it?  after church, I went to eat at Church’s)—a fried chicken fast food place.  They were short-handed, and the kid at the counter was having a lot of trouble taking orders because he was unfamiliar with the register.  So the service was lamentably slow, and many customers were unhappy both with the slowness and with the orders being filled incorrectly.

One lady there had a tiny baby in a carrier and three very active children: a little girl about three years old, and two boys, about seven and eleven years old.  She had left the children seated at a table, guarding her purse.  As time dragged on, the children found it harder and harder to stay in their seats, especially with grandma at the counter, and distracted from them.  Every so often the grandmother would holler at the kids to “pipe-down and behave yourselves!”  Although they were active, they were well-behaved.

The oldest boy had a soft bag about the size of a lunchbox slung across his shoulders.  He was standing near me, looking into the bag when a flash of light came from the bag, surprising both of us.  He looked up, blinked a couple of times, and grinned at me.  I grinned back and said, “Did you just take your picture?”  He laughed and said, “Naw, it was just the flash.”  A few minutes later, he carefully took the large camera out of the bag, aimed the flash, and tried to take the baby’s picture.  The flash didn’t go off this time, and I don’t know if he got her picture or not.  He carefully put the camera back into the bag and closed the hasp.

A few minutes later the boy with the camera bag approached me and gave me a packet of candy: Swedish Fish, which are like gummy bears.  I thanked him and we exchanged smiles.  I finished my meal about the same time that the grandmother finally got her order.  She gathered her children and went out to the parking lot.  The boy with the camera bag held the door open for his little sister, who had run back in to get her grandmother’s purse.  He saw that I had cleared my table, and waited, holding the door open for me, too.  I thanked him and again we exchanged smiles.

This boy was unusually conscientious and polite, and generous to give me some of his candy just because we had shared that funny moment with  his flash.  As I got into the car, I remembered the nice young man from my dream, and thought about the similarity of this experience to that dream.

There are some people who are hostile to Christians, and I’m not an underground Christian at all.  But even though there may be hostile attitudes from time to time, I know that God loves me.  I know that He will hold the door open for me, welcoming me into Heaven when the time comes.  God is good!

Cousinly Love

One of my friends on Facebook is my cousin, Carmelita.  Her posts are always funny and clever and interesting.  And here’s the thing, I had never met her before.  We’re fourth or fifth cousins, and we met through her work on the family genealogy.  Carmelita lives in Austin, so I wanted to meet her while I’m here.  We arranged to meet at her house, where she could show me old family photographs—old like from the 1800’s some of them.

I gave myself an hour to get to her house, which the GPS said was plenty of time.  It wasn’t.  A smart device like that, and it didn’t take traffic conditions into consideration!  I arrived about 20 minutes late.  Carmelita wasn’t upset about that because she was working from home, so she could just continue working while she waited for me.  She came out and hugged me in the driveway.  Then she said, “Gosh!  I hope we like each other!”  I said that I didn’t have any doubt because I already like her, based on her posts.

We went into the house, and her house has lots of great photos taken by her husband, and lots of cool very Texan stuff.  I love her house!  And she has three very affectionate cats.  Yes, Cousin Carmelita and I are definitely compatible!  She brought down the panoramic picture of the 100^th family reunion, and I showed her Mom and Daddy and Grandma and my older son.  She knew my branch of the family very well.  Our family descended from a Texas pioneer couple who had thirteen children.  The family grew exponentially from that beginning, so it is a very large family.  I’m from the oldest daughter, while Carmelita is from the fifth son.

Then I discovered that we have even more in common: Carmelita writes.  Today she is starting a novel for National Novel Writing Month.  The idea is that you write a 50,000 word novel in one month.  It doesn’t have to be a good one, but it must have a beginning and an end.  This is not her first time to write a novel for the contest.  I was impressed.  I’ve written two novels three-quarters of the way through, and then lost interest.  For me, the problem is that I find real life so much stranger and funnier, more tear-jerking, exciting, gut-wrenching, and unpredictable than anything I could possibly make up.

Since I am making up for a severe Mexican food deficit, she took me out for dinner.  The food was not traditional Tex-Mex, but excellent and unmistakably Mexican.  We were surrounded by pirates, witches, fairies, and zombies—it being Halloween.  Austin people celebrate their weirdness and encourage each other to do so with the ubiquitous bumper sticker: Keep Austin Weird.  I’m sorry, but I think the rest of the world is just not weird enough.  I love Austin!

We returned to the house, carefully dodging trick-or-treaters, and I met Carmelita’s husband, Nigel.  They seem to be a really good match.  He’s just as funny and nice as she is.  Before I left them, Nigel took our picture with our great-great-great-great grandparents (well, a picture of them).

We meet at last!

You know, I think Cousin Carmelita and Nigel like her eccentric missionary cousin from Italy.  I certainly like them!  God is good!

Speaking at Church, Part Two

In praying before any speaking engagement, I always ask the Holy Spirit to come and speak through me—though the actual words are more like: “God, if You don’t show up, I’m screwed!”  And I pray like that until I feel that release that says that Heaven has heard, and God has responded.

Unfortunately, that doesn’t make my physical symptoms (dry mouth, shaking hands, etc.) go away.  But I carry on nevertheless, and that’s what I did at church last night.

There was a really good turnout—about 30-35 people.  I had a PowerPoint all ready to show them, but no way to connect my computer (with its HMDI port) to the TV screen (with its S-video port).  Oh, well!  Rather than worry about that, I just forged ahead, and they all listened intently, even without the visuals.  I only knew one person in the room.  That means that the church has continued to grow in my absence.  God has always put me into growing churches, so I love that.

Since I didn’t know them, I could easily assume that they didn’t know much, if anything, about me.  So I started with how I had come to this church and ended up in Italy and my call to ministry (recounted in most of my books, but in greatest detail in Graceful Flight).  My story reveals that I am not a super saint, but just an average person.  This was important for them to know because people tend to think of missionaries as perfect people who have their lives together.  Nothing could be farther from the truth.  I know some missionaries with defects far worse than I’ve seen in the churches in the US.

I don’t remember what all I talked to them about, but at one point I was led by the Holy Spirit to speak about Catholics.  Someone always asks about why there are missionaries in Italy, since it is a Catholic country.  Italy is a Catholic country, and the vast majority of Italians identify themselves as Catholic.  But many of them only go to church for weddings or funerals.  And there is a vast difference between faithful (faith-filled) Catholicism and the superstitious practices of pseudo-Catholicism that are very common in Italy: kissing the picture of a saint instead of praying; crossing themselves whenever they pass the door of a church, but never entering in; hanging a rosary on the rear-view mirror as a kind of “insurance” against accidents.  They live like the rest of the world, cheating on their taxes, having affairs, stealing from business partners, etc.  But because they have been baptized (as infants), and they do these superstitious practices, they think that that they are good with God.  In reality, they have no relationship with Him at all.

The Charismatic movement among Catholics has been around in the US for decades, but it is only just beginning in Italy.  I told them about how God has used my Catholic friend, Gessica, to show me true faith among Italian Catholics.  The truth is that we don’t need to “convert” Catholics.  What we need to do is to help them discover true faith.  And when you do that, some will come out of the Catholic Church, wanting to explore faith that has none of the old rituals; while others remain in the Catholic Church, enjoying a fresh understanding of the meaning behind the familiar rituals, and sharing that with other Catholics.  Several of the people there have Catholic family members, and this gave them hope for their families.

The response to my talk was overwhelmingly positive.  Because I had shared about Kalisz, Poland, and taking Italian worship to the Feast of Tabernacles for the first time, someone asked me what Italian worship sounds like.  Here’s where my nerves betrayed me: I went completely blank.  They named some songs that I know in Italian, but I simply could not remember the words.  Oh, well!  If every talk went perfectly, I might be able to claim some of the glory for myself.  But as it was, God got all the glory because in my weakness (and nervousness) He revealed His great power to teach and reveal the important things about missions in Europe.  God is good!

Speaking at Church

My gut clenches, sweat beads on my upper lip, my mind races is twelve different directions, my mouth goes dry, and my hands shake—why?  Because I’m speaking at my church this evening.  And it’s not because anybody has twisted my arm—I want to do this.  When I’m in the US, I want to speak as often as possible to anyone who will listen about Europe as a mission field.  But I’ve always had a fear of public speaking, and even though it usually goes really well, and the audience is very sympathetic and supportive, that fear is lurking just out of sight, ready to make my voice crack or make me forget what I was going to say.

Fear of speaking in public is one of the most common fears around.  Most of us would rather face a roaring lion, armed with nothing but a Twinkie than speak in front of an audience.  But like I said, I want to do this.  Facing-down this fear is the measure of how strong my calling is for Europe.  If I didn’t do this, I would feel like I had abandoned my calling.

Europe is the forgotten mission field.  A professor of foreign missions at Abilene Christian University told me that he asks his students at the beginning of the semester what is the mission field with the most need.  They invariably answer Africa.  Then after he has demonstrated to them that Africa is far more Christian than Europe, he will ask them again, and many times the answer is still Africa.  The economic need tugs at their heartstrings, even though Europe is in far worse need spiritually.  Operation World calls Europe by far the “most secular, least Christian” continent on earth (pg. 79).  Europe also has the most un-reached people groups of any region in the whole world—including the Middle East.  Africa is now sending missionaries to Europe.

• Slavery – Human trafficking is epidemic in Europe because the relaxed borders have made it easier to transport people from Eastern Europe (primarily Ukraine, Czech Republic, Moldova, and Romania) to Western Europe (Italy, France, Spain, the Netherlands, and Germany).
• Poverty – People think of Europe as a rich peoples’ playground.  And it’s true that rich people do vacation in Europe, but the average European makes far less money than the average American, and lives a simpler life.  Furthermore, the third world exists throughout Europe at the edge of every city: in gypsy camps of staggering poverty.  The gypsy children live in shockingly unsanitary conditions.  Many gypsy children are denied an education due to their nomadic family life.  Gypsy children are expected to bring money back to the patriarchs, the grandparents.  They beg, steal, or work as prostitutes to bring money back to the family, and if they fail to bring back money or to bring back enough money, they are beaten.  Sometimes their legs are broken and set in crazy ways that will turn your stomach.  Sometimes their legs are cut off—giving them more sympathetic appeal.   Many gypsy children are sold to sex traffickers or organ traffickers.
• Homelessness – Homelessness is a huge problem.  Budapest has an estimated 30,000 homeless people.  I saw lots of homeless people when I was there, and the homeless of Budapest are unlike homeless people I’ve ever seen anywhere else.  There are so many of them that they have simply lost all hope.  They don’t even ask for money, they just curl up in doorways and in the subway entrances.  (This is all recounted in my book, Look, Listen, Love.)
• Suicide – Suicide is rampant throughout Europe, especially in the current economic climate.  Fourteen of the top twenty countries with the highest suicide rates are in Europe.  Switzerland legalized suicide in 1941, and under Swiss law, you do not have to have a lethal diagnosis to ask for physician-assisted suicide; you don’t even have to be Swiss!  That means that if someone is depressed and wants to end their life, they can go to Switzerland, which is conveniently in the middle of the continent, and pay a doctor to help them kill themselves, and they don’t have to get any kind of counseling.  In fact, the doctors would be against counseling because they make money on each suicide.  Now suicide is also legal in the Netherlands. In Milan, where suicide is still illegal, and Switzerland is only an hour away, about once a month or so, somebody jumps in front of a speeding subway train.  In fact, it is such a common occurrence that people have lost all sympathy for the victim and his or her family, instead they just become annoyed at the inconvenience that the suicide has caused them as they rush through their day.
• Drugs – The city of Amsterdam is uniquely problematic because they have de-criminalized both prostitution and marijuana.  Legalizing pot use has been discussed from time to time here in the US.  The arguments for legalization seem very logical and reasonable, particularly when it comes to saving taxpayer money and law enforcement manpower.  But before getting onto the bandwagon, you should take a trip to Amsterdam to see what legalized pot use looks like.  Marijuana is only legal in the marijuana coffeehouses, but it doesn’t stay in the coffeehouses.  And because pot is legal, tourists think that other drugs are also legal—they are not.  No matter how harmless you may think it is, the fact is that marijuana is a gateway drug.  The dealers of illegal drugs situate themselves along the canal in the Red Light district (more about that in a moment) and peddle their drugs to passers-by.  They don’t stand around looking villainous, but instead they are very friendly.  The dealers speak English and often the major European languages.   Amsterdam is the number one partying destination in Europe, possibly in the world.  So lots of young men travel to Amsterdam for legal sex with prostitutes and legal marijuana use.  Many of them are lured into trying the harder drugs as well.  The result is that the streets of Amsterdam are filthy with trash and vomit and people that are either homeless or too high to remember how to get back to where they are staying.  The streets are also very loud all night long, with the sounds of hell-raising.  There are so many people who are addicted to heroin that the city has started giving out free needles to try and keep the risk of HIV transmission low.  So the parks are full of addicts that are shooting-up.  And the free needle program has done nothing to stop the spread of HIV.  Prostitution – Legalized prostitution in Amsterdam was supposed to help prevent the spread of HIV by having the Dutch Minister of Health responsible for making sure that all the window girls stayed healthy and conducted business in ways that reduced the possibility of transmission (i.e. washing the customers and using condoms).  However, that has turned out to be impossible to enforce.  Plus, the presence of legal prostitutes has not stopped or even slowed down illegal prostitution in the Netherlands.  Let’s face it, supply follows demand.
• The idea behind legalizing prostitution seemed like a good idea, but prostitution plays a part in all the above behaviors, like a European version of “what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas,” but worse because of the whole drug issue discussed above.  People believe that the window girls are independent businesswomen—they are not—at least not all of them.  Many of the window girls come from other countries, mostly Eastern Europe and Africa.  Those girls got there because they answered ads for jobs, and some even paid intermediaries who turned out to be traffickers to get them illegally into Europe.  Few, if any, of them set out to work in prostitution.  Like I said, the relaxation of borders within the European Union has actually worked to the traffickers’ advantage.  And even if some of the women are voluntarily working in the windows of the Red Light district, they have invariably been sexually abused as children.  As a woman, I can tell you that no little girl dreams of having dozens of sweaty, smelly men use and use and use her all day and all night long.  Prostitutes use the same survival strategy that victims of physical abuse use: they have learned how to zone-out and not be in their bodies while it is happening.  Despite the lies that the johns tell themselves, that doesn’t sound like it’s something they enjoy, does it?  All of this means that Amsterdam, an otherwise lovely city, has become a haven for potheads, traffickers, drug dealers, and drug addicts.
• Cynicism – The young people of Europe are among the most hopeless and cynical in the world.  They go to university only to find that they are still unemployed and unemployable.  East European youth are leaving their homelands in droves, seeking employment in the west.  The employers take advantage of that desperation and pay them lower wages, and giving them the jobs that West Europeans don’t want.  Most of the janitors in Italy are Romanian, Bulgarian, Ukrainian, or Polish.  Because they feel powerless, the youth are drawn into witchcraft and satanism.  They recognize that there is genuine spiritual power therein, but don’t have the discernment to know the good from the evil.  Turin, Italy is the European capital for satanism.  Every so often, there is a ritually sacrificed body (either human or animal) found in the woods near Turin.  It has become such a common occurrence that the news agencies have stopped reporting these findings.  Many of these young people consider traditional religion a waste of time, and they don’t want to hear about anything of a religious nature.  For this reason, missionaries in Europe have had to be very creative in sharing the Gospel.

I could continue, but I think this post is long enough.  So, I take a deep breath, pray for at least an hour, and go pour my heart out for an hour or so about Europe.  Suddenly, I understand exactly what Jeremiah meant when he said that if he tries to keep silent, God’s Word is like a fire shut up in his bones.  God is good, and I want more missionaries to share His goodness with this lost and dying continent.