An Irishman eating Mexican in Macedonia

As I have said, truth is stranger than fiction here. Last night I was sitting in a Mexican pub (all the workers are proudly trained in Slovenia . . . which I guess is marginally closer to Mexico than Macedonia) with an Irishman, two Macedonians, and another American. This little hole in the wall was packed out and since we were a group of five, we had to take a table on the first level.

The decor and atmosphere were great, although Mexican music would have been better, because we had just come out of the philharmonic and pop/rock was a bit of a shocking change of pace musically. And inside the pub, there is a second level, almost like a terrance or inside balcony level . . . completely sharing the same air space . . . and I was informed that the upstairs part was the non-smoking section. I choked on my quesadilla when I heard this . . . have you ever heard about peeing in the pool . . . well this is the same effect. But since I don’t generally sit in the non-smoking section anyhow, what does it matter?

The Irishman and his lovely wife (a violinist in the Macedonian National Philharmonic Orchestra) also are folks who know and love Jesus and attend the International Church which I lead on the side. The other two guests with us definitely don’t know Jesus and frankly are barely interested in spiritual things . . . but in this part of the world, we operate on the principle that spiritual interest in God can only grow, when you know some people who have the Spirit of God. Unfortunately, spiritual interest in magic, spells, demons and curses is high and there is a corresponding high number of people who have those spirits around all the time.

People are so far from the living God . . . in the sense that most have never even met a Christian, much less read a bible or prayed . . . that you need to be a patient person and plan on spending lots of time with all sorts of people in Mexican (and every other type of) pubs. Jesus woulda been there, right in the mix (Luke 15:1-2).