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A tad of rain.

After getting thoroughly soaking wet yesterday, it feels good to sit here at the Justice Prayer Room writing this (the old-fashioned way with pen and paper, which is obviously typed in at a later point to actually post it on the blog). The atmosphere is chilled, and more importantly, I am dry and warm. I was neither dry nor warm yesterday. You might be wondering how come I got so wet. If you keep on reading and you will find out…

Yesterday was the, oh so popular, St. Patrick’s day here in the USA (and I suppose the rest of the world also, though maybe not quite as big a deal in every nation on the globe). Did you know that St. Patrick grew up in Great Britain and was abducted and taken as a slave to Ireland when he was a child? Later on he returned after God speaking to him in a dream and planted hundreds of churches (I am assuming that he was freed and went back to Great Britain in between or it would be hard for him to return). The reason I posess this well of knowlegde about St. Patrick is that we were doing a survey with people to start conversations.

Well, this saint is celebrated with a huge parade here in Kansas City, and IHOP-KC do a float (i.e. contribution in the parade) in it. They participated last year and one first place, which is quite cool! There were plenty of plans for this year, but extremely heavy rain (it seriously chucked it down, some would say it rained really massive cats and dogs) meant most of what was planned out had to be left out (maybe they could save it for next year is my thought on the matter). We still had our large green mountain with a poor soul being St. Patrick on the top holding a cross. Bless him, he looked so cold in his St. Patrick’s costume covered by something which looked like a light-green plastic poncho thing…I don’t think he was very warm up there. The rest of us basically sang and did actions accompanied by drums (as opposed to a live amplified band). It was good though, and I think those who watched it enjoyed the energy and joy exuberating from us (both the meagre number faithfully sharing in the very cold and wet experience by standing along the parade route, as well as those a bit more comfortably positioned inside malls (read: shopping centres) looking out through the windows (that’s where you’d find me had I not actually been walking in the parade). So it was cold and wet, yet looking back (and having forgotten what it feels like to be shivering and soaked) it was really good! We chatted to people before the parade, but those who had ventured out were few and the huge masses of people were lacking for obvious reasons (in case you’re wondering what those reasons were: it rained and was cold).

So now I can add this to my list of “been there, done that” things. I have marched in a St. Patrick’s parade wearing green (nicely hidden under my waterproof jacket which didn’t really prevent my jeans and trainers from getting soaked) and praising Jesus.

Life apart from that is still good! Only 4 weeks left now. Time is flying, but I intend to make the most out of every moment!

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