Tony who is a Taoist, is one of our connections that we made walking through the Venice strip. Our group decided that learning Kung Fu would be a great in to getting to know Tony and possibly the people in the class. We prepared ourselves spiritually prior to the lesson for a potential dark situation because he seems to hardcore believe in his Taoist ways. We learned that we are actually going to learn Chi Kung which is more about accessing your inner "Chi" or life-force. I was glad to see that we were three of the only four students there. We met Peter who is a middle-aged British man and is a photographer for celebrities. Hopefully there can be some development with him while we take lessons.
We started the lessons and he explained to us the power that can be drawn from the "Chi." The lesson was probably one of the hardest workouts I have done in a while. All the moves require deep concentration and muscle control. As the lesson continued, I realized that this Chi is actually more like a superstition. He kept asking us if we felt a tingling in our fingers, which was simply the blood rushing back into our fingers. The movements are based on fluid motions and a good balance that originates from the gut area, which is where ones Chi comes from. We learned a little more about Tony after the lesson finished. We still have thirteen lessons left and we all see those as thirteen more opportunities to talk to him about Jesus.
Hunger was setting in after the lesson so we went to subway. After that we went prayer walking down the venice strip. We saw the other Tony who was busy singing or rapping or whatever. We made eye contact with us and I commented on his funky top hat thingi that he was wearing. When we turned to walk back through the strip, Luke talked to a Tarot-Card reader named Shelly and that was good. Storm and I engaged in conversation with these rock collectors whose names I cannot remember. They weren't interested in our conversation so we walked on.
Josh's group picked us up and we headed back to the church. Apparently, the other group is not having luck with the approach that our group is taking. Today they decided that a new strategy needs to implemented for their area. They are not discouraged at all in fact they are quite enthusiastic about being creative and finding new ways to get connected. We came back and got some more Z's in.
Essau's family has been asking us to go do something with them since we arrived here so we went to the beach and played volleyball. We had a lot of fun messing around and spending some time in the sun. We had papusas for dinner, I probably completely misspelled that. They are a Salvadorian dish and they kinda taste like tamales.
Tonight we all went to Santa Monica to the promenade. The Jesus argument people were their again but a smaller crowd was around them this time. After looking around and analyzing the situation we continued on. We went to Barnes & Nobles to get Luke a Taoism book so he can connect with Tony. I looked at some of the books about the law of attraction because we heard the other Tony talking about it and I learned more about the subject.
We headed back to the car and listened to the same guys arguing with the non-believers. They definitely come off as closed minded and ignorant. They use non-sensible logic to explain God. In 1 Corinthians Chapter 1, Paul writes about how the Lord put the wisdom of the world to foolishness. It astounds me that these Christians want to use the same logic as these non-believers to try to argue people to heaven. I have more to say on the matter but I do not want to rant.
All in all we had a pretty God-filled day. Here are some things that would be good to pray for over the next couple days:
Josh's team finding new ways to connect to people in Santa Monica
The two Tonys
Santa Monica
Venice Beach
UCLA
Peter (the British photographer)
Bruce
Shelly
Grace and Peace
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