Hey everyone! This month with the guys has been more amazing than I think I’ll ever be able to explain. I’ve had some really awesome conversations with the other men and learned a lot already. We’ve been working hard on our contact’s and their neighbors’ farms planting cassava (the vegetable used to make tapioca). They’ve been working us hard but we love every minute of it. We’ve also been working pretty closely with our contact’s goat farm (mostly shoveling poop to use as fertilizer in the cassava fields). To tell a funny story and save a little bit of time, though, I took an excerpt out of my journal and dropped it for you guys below. It’s not as random as you might expect–just read all the way to the bottom!
…Right as we were finishing up, Arun [our contact] started to fill his truck with all the empty water jugs so he could go refill them all. Joshua and I instinctively got up and started helping him and then went with him over to the goat pasture where their natural spring was to help there as well. Both of us were thinking it would be a quick trip, which, I guess the refilling part was but it got pretty complicated after that. First, we helped move the goat herd from one pen by the road to another that was across a small stream and back about another 200 yards or so on the property. We thought that was it but then there were several newborn babies that needed to be carried from one pen to the other so we scooped up five of them–Joshua with three and me double fisting the two smallest that still had their umbilical cords, they were so young–and walked them over to where the other goats were. After that, Arun needed a little help holding one of the females still as he drained her milk because her baby died at birth and she was still lactating.
That’s about the time a huge thunderstorm moved in and completely drenched all three of us. This wasn’t just a little rain shower. This was a Thailand rainforest downpour. Joshua and I went back to the truck to keep somewhat dry (like little pansies, I know) and wait for Arun to finish up and take us back. That plan didn’t quite work out, though. We noticed that there was a lone goat that wandered off and didn’t make it over to the other pen. Joshua bit the bullet and got out to chase her back over to the others while I stayed under the camper cover in the bed of the truck away from the rain. Then, the woman who normally watched the herd full-time out in the pasture–a real, modern day shepherd–found a baby goat that had been hiding as she cleaned out the first shelter by the road. I watched her find it and realized that my attempt to stay out of the rain was about to fail. She motioned for me to come get the baby from her and then pointed to the other shelter and I reluctantly got out of the truck. My shirt and athletic shorts were already soaked from before so I didn’t have much reason to be upset, I guess. Before she handed the goat to me, though, I saw her pick up a straw hat. For a second, I thought she was being nice and giving it to me to keep my head from getting wet (wetter) but then I realized she meant it to be used to cover the baby goat. She set the hat down over the baby, handed it to me over the fence and I was off.
It was something straight out of a movie or something–me sloshing through an intense thunderstorm–through a stream and past several tall trees that I was convinced would be struck by lightning as I ran underneath them–just to bring this cute, snow-white little newborn goat to its mama at the other pen. I had the goat in my right arm and the straw hat in my left protecting it from the rain as I made my way over to Arun and Joshua at the far side of the property. I felt like I was back on the football field doing agility drills trying to sidestep stumps and not fall flat in the mud. When I finally made it to the other pen, I handed the crying goat over the gate to Arun and looked up at Joshua. He was laughing hysterically at me. He got a good kick out of watching me run like a soldier storming the beaches of Normandy through the rain. Instead of a rifle and helmet, though, I was carrying a baby goat and a straw hat…not for me, but for the goat. I still find that extremely ironic.
On the way back to the house with our jugs and trash bins full of water, I turned to Joshua in the bed of that truck and said, “You know, the fact that I don’t see anything too crazy about what just happened says a lot about what our life is like right now.�
Right as he let out a little chuckle, Arun drove over a bump in the dirt road that launched both of us a few inches off the trash bins we were sitting on. When I crashed back down onto mine, it cracked at the bottom and the water gushed out the back of the truck for the rest of the ride back to the house–Joshua laughing at my confusion and disbelief the whole way.
I couldn’t help but laugh, myself, when I thought about how for so long, I refused to give God control of my life–refused to stand up for Jesus to the world, which He clearly tells us to do–because I was convinced that my life would turn boring if I did. From what I knew about Christianity, there was no adventure in it. And I didn’t want to have a boring, monotonous life–not until I had a family, at least, and had kids to make sure I set a good example for. I thought that was the only reason to ever settle down and become the good Christian that I knew I wasn’t just yet. Being good had this automatic boring connotation to it for some reason.
“What lies!â€� I thought. “That was probably the main, underlying excuse I used to convince myself of why I didn’t want to be a strong, Christian man and yet, here I am. I’m in Thailand right now. I’ve been in nine other countries and done incredible, crazy things that I would have never been able to do–even in my old life!â€�
It was just one more misconception that God was proving me wrong about. True Christianity–a life that involves earnestly seeking and following Jesus–is exciting! There’s actually nothing boring and monotonous about it. God is a big God. We live in His creation and He wants to show it to us. He wants to use us to help and bless each other, regardless of the distance between us.
Now, even when I have a family, I don’t want to have a boring life just to “set a good example� for my kids. They need to know how exciting our God is, too, so they won’t have the same misconceptions I had about what a life following Him is like. I want the true God leading my family all over the place just like He was leading me around on the World Race. A little more stability would be nice, obviously. I mean, I don’t know how well it would work to pack up my family and spend a year abroad, only one month in each place we go, but you get my point. It’s about more than just going to the same building two or three times a week and considering yourself to be an “active church member.� The real title we should be pursuing is “Jesus Ambassador,� which involves way more than the same, predictable drive down the road a few times a week. To be an ambassador for Jesus, that means we’re out in the world like He was, acknowledging Him to fellow believers and wayward strays alike. That life has adventure written all over it. It will be filled with amazing stories of blessings and excitement because God will always make sure a life lived for Him is better than a life that is not.
That term, “better,” might mean different things to different people. Sure, there are adrenaline junkies out there and people who have boo-koos of money and can do anything they want but those people, if you talk to them, are probably not as happy as we might suspect. “Better” to me means fulfilled… happy… blessed. There’s a joy that comes with knowing and living with God that is impossible to have in a life lived pursuing something worldly like money or self-acknowledgment.
