Colorado: Day 6

I woke up on Wednesday feeling much better than I had the day before. The group ate breakfast and met to pray and talk about the day. Then Josh, one of the Horizons staff, led us in a Bible study. Honestly, I do not remember a lot of the details of the study, but I do remember that at one point he talked about different cultures of the world. He said that we live in a world that tries to preserve cultures because we think they are good and unique and beautiful. He also presented the idea that sometimes cultures can be unique and beautiful and go against the word of God as well. Just because a culture had historical significance and value does not make it good. He used the American culture as a prime example and then went on to different cultures around the world.

After the Bible study we broke as a group and ate lunch. The food at Horizons was always wonderful and we always enjoyed it to the best of our abilities, sometimes even by going back for seconds.

After lunch, we went up to clean the upper room. Personally, I think it's awesome that they actually have a top floor called the upper room. It was basically the attic and had a lot of random stuff laying around. For the next few hours, we moved cabinets around, trashed old junk, and organized files. After that, the upper room was a little more presentable. After cleaning, we broke off and all did separate things. A few of the guys went to the mountains again, a few of us hung around Horizons and played games or read, and some of us took much needed naps for a few hours.

The guys that went up to the mountains came back with one of their party missing. Riley had decided not to ride back in the van with the guys, but to walk back down the mountain to the Horizons house by himself. We all thought he was insane and were kind of worried about him. But at dinner our prodigal son returned and was received with raucous applause.

That night after dinner, we went to CU to hear another speaker. This particular speaker did not bring a message of peace and tolerance to his audience. He had a reputation of being a very outspoken Muslim leader from the area. His talk was titled "The Glorious Qur'an" but he spent the night pretty much just bashing the Bible and the Christian God, saying that the Bible had many errors and could not be believed. Personally, I like to hear people give their honest opinions about what they believe, but this guy was not simply giving his opinion. He was mocking Christianity and actually laughing off our beliefs as foolishness. A few of us had to leave and go out to the lobby to pray.

After hearing this guy, we stayed for a bit and talked with some of our Muslim friends we had met before making our way back to the Horizons house. We met as a group and talked about how we felt about the speaker. All of us pretty much felt sick to our stomachs at the blatant disregard of respect. It is a hard thing to sit for an hour and a half straight listening to a guy laugh and smirk about how stupid your religion is. It was a hard night. We prayed for a while and went to bed, feeling discouraged and angry.