Archive: June 8th, 2008 (2)

May 25th

This was Grand Canyon day! It had been years since I'd been to the Canyon, and while I certainly wasn't as eager as Vasi was, I was still pretty excited about it. It was so strange to get up at 3 am and just start driving. Even weirder that I wasn't even driving - that my Romanian friend was driving my car to the Grand Canyon. Who'd have thought? It was a fun ride - we were remarkably awake for the time of day and Vasi certainly took us fast enough...I'm so thankful that his reflexes were good enough to stop in time to not hit elk that were crossing the road. Despite his ridiculous speeds at times I felt safe and was excited for the event ahead.
And what an event it was! We were among the first people to get to the lookout point. We got there at 4:45, a half hour before the sun would rise. Twenty minutes later, the parking lot and the point itself were packed with tourists, but our timing had been perfect and we had front-row seats. Even in the half-light of pre-dawn, the Canyon was impressive, and what an experience it was to watch as the light generally came over the whole expanse. Even before the sun broke through the horizon, the colors started to change, the Canyon became more clear, and the immensity of it all became more overwhelming. There were two thoughts that literally did not stop running through my head the whole time we were there:
1) Romans 1:20, or rather the general idea of it since I don't have it memorized. It reads, "For his [God's] invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they [the unrighteous] are without excuse." Basically, God is just in condemning unrighteousness even in those who have not heard the spoken Gospel, because He has made himself known in the natural world. The Grand Canyon seemed to loudly proclaim this concept to me. To me, looking at that massive expanse and not seeing the power of God there was incomprehensible. And it was a joy to view it alongside a fellow believer who could see God there as well - by God's grace have our eyes been opened.
2) A line from a song we sing at church: "Who imagined the sun and gave source to its light, yet conceals it to bring us the coolness of night?" As I watched the sun show its face on the horizon, I could praise God for His wisdom and creativity in His design of this phenomenon.
I don't know what time it was when we finally tore ourselves away from that lookout point, but we had many other things to see and do. We were pretty hungry by this point, and Vasi was freezing (while I, the native Arizonan, was actually quite comfortable. :-) ), so the next thing on the schedule was a hot breakfast. Then we took the free shuttle to several different stops just to see what our options were, then eventually embarked on a short hike. Canyon hiking is so tricky because it's so easy on the way down that you just want to keep going, but you know there's a long way back. Anyway, we hiked down to "Ooh Aah Point," where we oohed and ahhed and Vasi risked his life by climbing all over things and I just stood by and took pictures. I told him later that had I gone with my immediate family, my mom would have passed out from the places we were standing for pictures, my dad would have not made it out of the Canyon with us (it was hard enough for me!), and my sister would have been livid with us for only bringing one small bottle of water. Vasi says that Americans are too cautious, so I guess embarking on a pretty intense hike with just a little water was very Romanian of us. Or just foolish. :-) Anyway, we made it out alive and it was a fantastic hike that I definitely recommend.
The rest of the day was rushed to say the least. We stopped at one more lookout point after getting to the top, then got back to the car and headed South. We only stopped very briefly in Flagstaff to pick up lunch, then got stuck in traffic from an accident on the highway. This put us behind enough that by the time we got to my parents' house we had about 25 minutes before we needed to turn around and nead to church. We sped through showers and made ourselves presentable, and made it to my church right on time. I'm so glad he got to experience my church, especially because we'd had many conversations about not-so-great happenings in churches, and I wanted him to see an American church that, by the grace of God, is doing many things right. Sadly, we couldn't stick around for him to meet people, because we needed to hurry off to the last night of the Romanian convention.
So the excitement of the day continued. Anyone who has been to downtown Phoenix knows that it is not exactly a happening place in the evenings. The streets that night were for the most part completely deserted apart from participants in the Convention, meaning that the only people on the streets of my hometown were Romanians, which was unbelievable! There were about 2200 people there I learned later - and to my knowledge I was the only one NOT of Romanian descent. I was so exhausted that night though and actually asked Vasi to translate a bit because my mind just wasn't working all that well. Anyway, there were some really good parts of the night but also some things I wasn't sure about. An interpretive dance, for example, that seemed to portray Christ as a helpless bystander to the sin struggles of a believer. I was also surprised by the round of applause in honor of the parents who chose to leave Romania to move to the US for a better life for their children. Makes sense I guess, but it still saddened me a bit because of my affections for that country and those people. There were also some very charismatic happenings at the end that made me a bit uncomfortable. And by the end I literally though I would faint. I hadn't eaten since Flagstaff and had been up since 3 am. Plus I was surrounded by people speaking a language that seemed ever more foreign the more tired I became. Vasi and I tried in vain to make dinner plans with old friends of his who I know from the Romanian church I've been going to. We finally gave up when we couldn't find them in the crowd and they weren't answering their phones. We got some fast food, stopped at my house to eat and upload pictures, then went to my parents' house and crashed. My mind was reeling with all that had happened that day, but the second my head hit the pillow...i was out.