Just to throw a little brag out real quickly, I’m currently
sitting in my hammock which is hung out on the front porch of the house I’m
staying in right now.. When the
sun comes up in the morning, I will be able to see clearly again that I am, in
fact, surrounded by the Himalayan mountains.
I was also recently made aware that I maybe shouldn’t be sleeping outside in my hammock because there is a legitimate risk of being attacked by a Leopard while I sleep. That’s just legit. I wouldn’t even be angry if I died at the hand of a leopard while sleeping in a hammock in Kathmandu!! (except that I don’t want to die cause I want to make it back to the states alive if at all possible…)
I’m not going to pretend like Kathmandu isn’t an AWESOME
place. It just really is awesome
and there would be no sense in me trying to convince you otherwise. We went
down into the city today and checked out all the markets. I bought some really stupid looking
pants and a really sweet looking shirt.
You win some, you lose some.
Here is a question that I have about people in
Nepal/India: How do they
differentiate between each other?
I mean I know that they don’t “all look the same”. That’s not what I mean. They definitely look different. But think about it; if you’re in the US
and someone asks you what a person looks like, we generally have 4 generic
go-to descriptions: hair color,
height, eye color, and sometimes weight.
For a guy, you might throw in whether he has facial hair.
Here’s the deal though, in Nepal at least, EVERYONE is
short, has black hair, has dark brown eyes, is thin, and has no facial
hair. What in the world do you
say!!? I don’t think anybody really
knows.
OK, so I want to share something that’s been really awesome
the last few days. It is kind of a
long process that Jesus took me through very quickly I think. Or at least it’s a long process to talk
about. So I will probably split
this guy into two blog posts.
I have, for a very long time now, operated out of a
legitimate fear of pride. The idea
of pride creeping into my life terrifies me and I’ve never really realized
before that this fear of pride is actually not a good thing. I have always thought that it was a
great thing because it kept me on constant alert for pride in my life.
I think that this fear was birthed from some things that
certain people in my life have said about pride as well as a few sermons that I
have heard over the years about pride.
It has definitely been around for a while though.
During this last month that I spent in Moldova, Jesus did
some amazing things in my life. He
completely shattered the way that I previously understood His love; He took me
to a sweet new “secret place” intimacy in worship; he taught me so much about
self-sacrifice; etc. It was just a
really really good month. I’m not
going to go into greater detail than that as far as what He taught me but it
was really a month that I cherish now.
My contact from this last month (Vitalie) was an amazing man
who loves the Lord. God has been
doing some crazy stuff in his life this past month though. Some days it seems like the whole world
crashed around Vitalie and then Jesus would give us perspective so that we
could see that it was just the first step in a building process. Then, the next day, something else
would crash down and we would have to seek the Lord again.
I really felt like I laid down all that I had this month
though. The Lord promised me that
if I would just deliver the truth that He spoke to me for Vitalie, then I would
get to see some of His (the Lord’s) perspective through the whole
situation. I am very glad that He
let me see some of His perspective too because if I hadn’t, it would have been
a REALLY hard month.
Anyways, when we jumped on the bus to head out of Cornesti
(where Vitalie lives) and begin our travel to Nepal, I sunk into my seat
(shotgun) and let myself begin resting for a couple days. However, about 20 minutes into the
drive, Vitalie let me know that He had found out just that morning that one of
his close friends and fellow church leaders was going to be moving away.
His heart was definitely heaving from having just received
this news. The Lord immediately
was faithful to begin speaking to me some things that He wanted me to speak to
Vitalie. Some truth that He wanted me to speak into Vitalie’s life about the
GOODNESS of the Lord.
We had an hour and a half of car ride for me to share this
stuff with him. However, something
inside of me decided not to share.
I pretty much zoned out for the final hour and a half of the trip.
