Week 1 has been a mad series of events. We started by serving at a ministry at a church in Mongolia that welcomed us in with welcome arms as we loved on kids, worshipped in Mongolian, ate a plate called Horse, drank goat milk tea in a Yert (Mongolian house/tee-pee), blowed up balloons for them, learned a traditional Mongolian dance, did yard work for the church, climb a mountain, and so many other things. Truth being told. It felt like vacation. Yeah, we have to use a squtta-potty and sleep on sleeping pads and I miss home but everything else felt like it was to easy.
I remember praying and writing in my journal “God, is this the journey you have called us too? Where is the challenge?”
God listend.
God hit us.
We went to our next ministry and we got feed and it was maybe 9 at night and I was turning into a pumpkin (Pumpkin=Hudson wants to be in bed). Then, as we are doing dishes the pastor rushes in and says. “Men, we must go. Storm coming and we need to go.”
So we go. We head back to the cabin and as we look out at the horizon we see the lightning flash as it strikes the side of mountains that are close by. We feel the wind from our face and we could tell the storm was going to ran cats and dogs and possibly a couple cows too.
We throw on our jackets and grab a furnace and we cut firewood for the next 30 minutes as the thunder rolls behind us. Itching closer and closer. Adrenaline pumps through our veins and we are laughing and joking as we go.
We then throw the furnace and firewood in the back of a Prius and we take off. The cats, dogs and cows rain hard from the sky. We go through backroads and mud holes that I didn’t think any Prius could handle.
After 30 minutes we arrive. To a Yert in the middle of a neighborhood. Inside was a man that held my heart and broke it.
We walk in and its a single man on a mattress with a 1 inch pad, ground soaked with rain coming from the roof, and four pieces of furniture to his name. The man appeared to have trouble seeing, had black coal powder over his hands, spiders crawling on his bed, maybe 80 years old, weighed maybe 100 pounds soaking wet, and a handful of clothes to his name. The joking stops and the adrenaline quickly turns into brokenness and my heart comes to a screeching stop and shatters.
The boys go out to work on tarps but the man started to get up and the spirit yanked me. I go over and slide on his pants, put on his socks, dust the spiders out of his shoes and stand him up. I am in shock and as it hits me what we are doing. My eyes start to water so I head outside to cover the streaks that flow down my cheek with the rain.
We get the tarp up and we place the furnace inside the house and our job was done. We place our hands over him as we start to pray. I cry and as I try to speak the words get stuck in my throat…my heart must of gotten stuck in my throat.
We drive away and I look at my hands covered in ashes and rain and try to realize if that was a dream or real. We pull up back to the house after more off-roading in a Prius and I head back to the room and I cry another river.
I remember thinking my phone is worth more then probably everything he has, house included.
I try to process and wake up after a short rest to find out that there had been 4 shootings that same night and it took one of my classmates that was a grade older than me. I break again.
Questions flow through my brain and whatever is left of my heart. How do I still call you a good God? Why am I not the man in the Yert? Why wasn’t I shot back home? God, what am I supposed to do with this? What can I do? I can’t save every Yert, every broken person, every shooting in Denver. God….what?
I am reminded that He holds us as we cry.
I am reminded He did most of his work with the poor, the sick, the people on the borders, the forgotten.
I am reminded I have many blessings from the Lord and one is being able to see this.
I am reminded Mathew 5: 3-11.
I am reminded that this is why I am here, to see other pain in the world and find God.
I am reminded that the body of christ is doing work and that the work is truly glorifying his kingdom.
I am reminded that God is the good shepherd and he loves each of his children.
I am reminded that even though I don’t have financial poverty I have other areas of poverty, like believing Christ is good all the time, even if I end up in a Yert by myself when I am 80.
I am reminded that God has his hand in all and my job is not to question his ways but to praise him and hep when I can.
God give me faith like that man. Don’t let my heart come cold to the broken. Keep walking with me as I cry. God use me.
What a way to end week 1. 47 to go.
