The Journey

Today I took a journey.  My boss called me and asked if I would be interested in going with him and some people he knew to the Harvester Christian Church's "Journey to Bethlehem" in St. Charles, Missouri, tonight.  It started out fairly awkward when it turned out to be just me, him, and his girlfriend going, but after some time letting the awkwardness fade off, it turned out to be a really cool time!  (literally...IT WAS FREEZIN!)

We started out getting name tickets, I took on the identity of Daniel.  We were told we were going to need them to get through the guards later on.  Then we were separated into groups of 30.

Each group was ushered into the church's santuary during a continual running of a live production of Mary and Joseph finding out Mary was chosen to give birth to Jesus.  At the end of the skit, these three singers come out and sing Silent Night and O, Holy Night.  They looked like Sandi Patty with black hair, Chris Tomlin, and vaguely Rob Bell.  Once we sat through the full production almost twice (no fault of theirs, this thing is CRAZY huge!), we were ushered out to start our journey. 

We got hassled by several Roman guards askin for our I.D.'s and then stopped at several tent camps along the way.  They depicted families traveling the same road, tax collectors taking advantage of you around every turn, the three magi making their way to deliver their gifts, and scribes writing what would become the Bible!  There were live animals all over the place, including sheep, goats, hens, and camels! 

At the end of the journey, you got to see Mary and Joseph with their newborn baby Jesus, and a speaker had us "kneel before the King" while he told us that we have the privilege of him being our King!  Even though it was freezing outside, it was an experience I will probably want to seek out next year!  To top it off, we were walked into a warm room where they served cookies and hot chocolate!  (they made over 400,000 cookies for this event and served hot chocolate out of Gatorade dispensors!)

The whole event was free, the staff and actors were all volunteer, including the little kids they had in the skit that had to do their part, just like everyone else, on repeat every 15 minutes for around 4 hours every night of the production!  That's a heart of service!

and then, I'll state this very briefly, tonight after getting back home from hanging out with the boss, I figured out that even 25 year olds like me have moments that make them feel like 3 year olds.  Why is it that being the one to innitiate talking to people you'll never really had the privilege of talking to in person before can make a grown man weak to his knees? That's all I'll say for now. :)

This has been my journey.