This month has been one of my favorites. This month was different. This month was living in a dream. Nepal has always been a place I have wanted to visit but it never seemed possible. It seemed too far away, too remote to get to. Well that is no longer the truth.
Flying into Kathmandu from Cambodia, I froze when I stepped off the plane, granted I was wearing shorts and sandals (nothing new, I know). I have been chasing summer every country I have gone to so far. It was a nice feeling to step off a plane and see your breath. A drastic change from everywhere else I have been on this journey and that continued as I walked the streets of Kathmandu. The sights, the sounds, the smells were all so different from anything I have ever seen or experienced. Walking through narrow streets having cars and motorcycles barely miss you as they whiz past. From the beginning, this month was unique.
That was no different when we met our contact. I watched him walk into the lobby of our hotel. He was no more than 5’2″ with long black hair, wearing sunglasses and a North Face Summit Series down jacket. He looked like a Sherpa or professional mountaineer; he was someone I wanted to know. By the end of the month Reuben has become one of my favorite people in the world. My friend Hannah describes him best as a 40 year old Peter Pan. A man that gets things done but enjoys every minute and has so much fun doing it.
From the very beginning, Reuben (the guy I just described) told us we were family and he treated us as such.
Working with Reuben has been one of the most rewarding experiences I have had. He is a man that does not know the meaning of the word quit. He is the energizer bunny, just keeps going. He is a pastor of a church, the director of an orphanage, a husband, and a father. He has also started and built a school in the village where he grew up. But most importantly he is a son and he loves the Lord. Everything he does, he does to expand the Kingdom in Nepal. Sometimes that has landed him in jail. And the crazy thing is he has done this for most of his life. He was thrown in jail for the first time when he was 14 because he preached to a crowd of people. He knows no fear. He knows and understands the power and grace of God the Father.
During my time with Reuben, I learned how to make concrete by hand and actually became pretty good at it. I also hiked 4 and a half hours into the Himalayan foothills to a remote village, where I camped for almost two weeks. I moved 1,000 pounds of concrete a half mile with out any machinery or gadgetry. Yes, you read that right…1,000 pounds by hand. Also, I moved 1,000 bricks that same distance; built an add-on room to the school in that village; bathed in a river, and had no electricity or wifi. I crossed the same river 14 times on our hike back from the village.
There were times during all this that I found myself getting frustrated at how long things were taking or thinking “what is the point of all this?” The point was that there is purpose in everything.
There was purpose in moving every single brick and there was purpose in the hikes. For me, there are times that I question the purpose because I cannot see the end result. I struggle with that and I have struggled with that especially after being removed from leadership. I like leadership and I like being a leader. Being removed from leadership was not an easy thing. I thought it was because I had done something wrong or that I was not good enough. I felt like I had failed. And satan keeps feeding me those lies. But this month, I learned that there is purpose in everything and that there was purpose to those first three months of being in leadership and there is purpose now. The purpose now is that I needed rest. It has been 10 years since I have not held a title or position of leadership.
It’s funny how Papa always knows exactly what you need when you need it. I need this time to rest and just focus on my relationship with Him and learn to be comfortable in my own skin. Papa gave me this month to see that everything has purpose and that there is purpose in the learning and there is a reason for the journey. (Lyrics from Steffany Gretzinger). There was a purpose in everything. If we didn’t move those bricks and that concrete then a school wouldn’t have been built. If that school hadn’t been built then those children would continue to grow up without an education and maybe without the opportunity to hear about Jesus.
I could go on and on about this month. About how I got see the world’s tallest mountain or about how I decided to follow my friends and jump off a more than 500 ft bridge…TWICE! The best part was being surprised at our hotel before I left for the airport. Reuben surprised us to come say goodbye. This was this first time a contact has done this and he brought us a gift. When He saw me in the lobby, he yelled out my name and jumped to my arms to give me a big hug. He gave each of us a scarf. A scarf that is given those who climb Mt. Everest. As he passed them out he said this: “You, have done much more than climb the highest peak in the world.”
You see there is a purpose, a purpose so much greater, so much higher than anything we can comprehend.
