I don’t want to lose these moments. Don’t want them to blur into the part of my brain that forgets and lumps it all together, without distinction.
I want them to stand out.
I want them to be remembered.
I want to recall the sound of pouring rain on rooftops of brick and tin.
I want to remember the faces of store-owners and children that populate this tourist town.
I want to notice the delicious smells of chai tea and spicy food, the clean smell of rain, the disgusting smell of body odor and dirt and garbage.
I don’t want to forget a thing.
It’s surreal being here. I never really thought that I would be back so soon, but it is an incredible blessing to know that yes, here I am. Sitting in a room at the Hotel Himalaya Yoga in Kathmandu. A place where just a year and a half ago, I was put on team Rooted.
Where I said goodbye to Beauty for Ashes.
Where I cried on a rooftop about feeling forgotten and unloved.
Where I bought a drum which I later gave away to a now-friend / then-stranger in Rwanda.
I love this place.
P squad has their debrief here and it reminds me of my Race. Reminds me of my people, my family, my year, my journey. It’s so similar. I know that everyone is on their own journey but it seems like we all go through the same stages. All need the same encouragement. All struggle with the same things.
Disbelief. Frustration. Abandonment. Submission. Bitterness. Apathy.
I’ve had pots of the same tea that I was obsessed with back them. Eaten the same falafel wraps. Seen the same stores, the same wares. It hasn’t changed.
It’s still heavy – a place where the people worship false gods (and lots of them), where the store owners haggle for the best price and try any tactics necessary, where the streets wind and turn for miles and only the taxi drivers know for certain which way to go.
It’s the city where I first started to embrace the freedom that the Lord has given me. Where I grew in my identity, shaved my head, and smiled with a joy that I didn’t know that I had. It’s where he began such a great work in me. Though it had undoubtedly started before that, this is where I learned. This is where I understood, better.
This beautiful lady, Drianna, shaved her head while we were there! Check out her blog!
Me, November 2011, right after I shaved my head.
This is the land of trekkers and backpackers and adventurers. Where we wear baggy pants, and don’t wash our hair, and laugh until it hurts. Where we make friends with ease from countries around the world that share our sense of thrill and wit.
I love this place.
Yet my heart breaks for it, and as the water comes from the sky, it echoes the feeling that my heart makes. Clouds are crying. Over the desperation. The poverty. The idolatry. The greed. The loss. The sin. It weeps over the things that happen in this city, to this city, because of this city.
How desperately your Father loves you, Kathmandu! Do you not know? Have you not seen? His goodness is abounding, his love eternal. Oh, how my heart hurts to think that you do not know your Father.
Sleep has been hard to come by here. Maybe it’s because these few days are on the tail of Training Camp, maybe it’s because of the 44-hour travel day that brought me from Atlanta, maybe it’s because of the time difference.
No matter, my body aches and my eyelids close at times that I would prefer to be alert. This is a drowsy city – one that lives and breathes tourism – and it knows not to wake up before we do. The stores open no earlier than 8:00 am, and the streets are quiet by 11:00.
Which makes waking up at 5:00 each morning unfortunate.
So I sit here, on my bed, laptop and Bible open, unable to connect to wifi. I can’t get to my emails, or anything, for that matter. Philippians 1:8-11 comes to mind, and I look at the underlined passage in my book, now tattered and worn from a decade of use and travel.
“And this is my prayer, that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight, that you may be able to discern what is best and may be pure and blameless until the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ – to the glory of and praise of God.”
That’s my prayer for today, too. To be pure and blameless. To discern what is best. For my love to abound in knowledge and depth of insight.
It’s also my prayer for P-squad. Well, one of many prayers.
Second generation P. I adore them. I’ve been working with them & for them these past few months since starting my job; I’ve seen pictures and facebook statuses and blogs. I’ve heard their names, replied to their emails, heard their stories.
Here they are, in the flesh. I have finally met them. And I’m overwhelmed by the Father’s compassion for them. I find myself crying over the stories they tell during meetings; I pray for them in a fashion that I’m not always familiar with.
Desperately. With a conviction and urgency that comes from wanting so much more for them. They are the next generation. They are the ones continuing this whole World Race thing. They are the ones who came after me.
Jesus, may my ceiling be the floor they start from.
You have so much in store for them Abba.
I wouldn’t say that I “never expected” to love so many people that were previously strangers, but these past two weeks have caught me off-guard. First S-squad at Training Camp, and now P-squad. The Lord certainly is expanding my capacity for His love.
It’s a love that I know moves mountains.
It melts hearts of ice.
It radically changes lives.
It never quits, never ends, never fails.
That’s the love He has for this squad. For me. For Kathmandu.
And that’s what I’ll bask in these early mornings as the rain comes down and the city wakes up.
His love.
I'm moving websites and will no longer be blogging here on the World Race page!
New blog at jennamalinen.wordpress.com.
Click HERE to go check it out.
