Hi Dad,
Happy Easter.
How’s tax time going?
Did you eat a vegatable once in a while like Mum asked?
Los Angeles is good.
I‘ve just extended my stay here at the hostel to last for the whole nine days.
There’s just too much stuff going on.
I’ll go to San Fransisco another year.
I met a guy at the hostel yesterday and just like that he said let’s go for a drive.
We cruised up the Pacific Coast Highway in his Red Ford Mustang.
After dinner he came up to me and said he’d paid $600 for the right to skip the line and get a table at an exclusive nightclub up the road… for me, him, and two random Swedish girls.
I was just going with the flow
trying to keep my eyebrows low.
The only problem was that once we got to our table the waitress told my sponsor that he had to buy two bottles of booze with the table.
And the cheapest bottle was $400!
He pulled me away from the Swedish girls and explained that he was a little short on cash and asked me if I could chip in $200.
I gave him everything in my wallet: $60.
It was a sweet club with great music.
I danced it up and drank too much trying to get my money’s worth. It ended up being a pretty cool night.
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You know those televangelists you used to watch on TV on Sunday mornings?
I went and saw one preach live today.
I took the bus about a half hour south to a large cathedral.
The bus was full of colorful and well-dressed Church goers.
Many were praising Jesus already and they offered friendly conversation.
I met a woman who was also making her first visit to this particular cathedral.
I told her my religion as a kid was going for a walk in the forest with my family on Sundays.
And then on Easter you would hide chocolate eggs at the top of the mountain.
The congregation was about 4000 and 99% were black.
The music was very good.
The dramatization of Christ’s resurrection was excellent.
There was about fourty actors and singers and even a live donkey.
It was scary and terrible when Jesus bore the cross to the hill and joyous and powerful as a wire lifted him up to the ceiling for his resurrection.
The preaching was also good.
Not too many excessive hallelujias or amens, and a lot of nice ideas:
“With god, your problem is no problem.”
“It’s all right now.”
It’s easy to make fun of these crazy evangelicals.
They hold their hands in the air and get all emotional.
And the stalls outside the church are even weirder.
They sell everything from popcorn to rapper t-shirts.
But the service was incredible.
We sang together and gave each other blessings and encouragement.
I have to admit: at the end of the sermon, I felt chains of stress drop from my shoulders and tears roll down my cheeks.
I was one of the dudes with his hands in the air.
And then to finish it off the whole show, there was a surprise performance by Stevie Wonder!
Wow.
Everybody at the hostel is really jealous of me.
