One of my favorite types of ministry this month was our 3-day camping trip to a Himalayan Mountain in Nepal. Our objective was for our whole squad and about 15 people from the ministry we’ve been working with this month to partner with a famous Nepali acting couple who were doing a Nepal earthquake relief project, building 65 homes for earthquake victims. That entailed us packing up a tent, a sleeping bag, and some clothes into our daypacks, taking a 4-5 hour drive to the mountain, and helping out with physical labor tasks for the next two and a half days. These days consisted of long work hours, 4 meal breaks with traditional Nepali food-mostly rice and curry with some vegetables, and breathtaking mountain views wherever you looked.
Our trip started off to a rough start. We got up around 4:00am and were ready outside by 4:30am. Then we waited around for our ministry hosts to meet us, and after some last minute things like making sure all the windows to our house were closed, the lights were off, and the doors locked, we started out our journey walking to the 2 buses at the end of our street around 5:20am. We drove through the city of Kathmandu to a more rural area and got stopped by some police officers who told us in Nepali that they weren’t letting any tourist groups through in the direction we were headed. Our hosts told them we were volunteers that were going to help with an earthquake relief project, but the police officers said something about our buses needing a permit for us to go through. Maggie, one of our ministry volunteers, told our bus that she felt like this was a test and God wanted us to sing worship music so He would let us through. It was about 6:30/7:00am, and only about 8 of us felt like singing, but we worshiped God with song after song. After about a half hour of this, we were told that our 2 buses were going to be let through! God is so good!
When we got there, we were given an orientation to the place where we’d be staying and working by an American man named Kurt and the husband of the Nepali acting couple who was overseeing the project. Kurt showed a few of us where to get water as we followed him down a rocky hand-made staircase, through a cornfield, down more rocky steps into a jungle-like part of the mountain which was absolutely beautiful. There he showed us the natural spring that served as a well for bathing as well as for drinking, with two different places to collect water. We wondered whether the water was safe for us to drink, but he reassured us that the water was cleaner up in the mountains and he had no trouble with it. So we filled our empty bottles by squatting down and submerging them directly into the well. It looked clear and tasted like fresh mountain water.
After getting our tents and sleeping bags situated in the 3 homes that would be our “camp site” for the trip, Kurt showed us to our project site. We were brought to a hill with 4 different levels and given shovels, pickaxes, and a few wheelbarrows and told to split up into groups and level the dirt on each level, bringing down piles of dirt from the top to the bottom of the hill. We were also supposed to clear any fallen branches we found and move big rocks to a pile on the top of the hill and small rocks were supposed to be sent to the bottom. I found that I was best gifted at digging up rocks and throwing them to the side, as well as joining the human rocks assembly line whenever possible because the shoveling and heavy lifting jobs were not easy on my 5′ 0″ body.
As I worked with actual rocks on the mountain, God reminded me of what he told me about rocks in my heart at Training Camp. Way back in June, God spoke to me about how there were rocks in my heart that represented the parts of my story that are hard to share. He told me that once I am able to start sharing these parts of my story, the rocks in my heart will turn into light and I will be like a lighthouse pointing people to Him.
Now that I was working with actual rocks on a mountain in Nepal 4 months later, I was reminded of this analogy and how it applies to me. Some observations I made with these actual rocks are: Every rock is hard, but shaped differently. Sometimes they’re dense and sometimes they’re light. They’re also difficult to fish out of the packed earth and leave your hands covered in dirt.
In the same way, the rocks in my heart are all different parts of my story, each one unique and difficult to share in its own way. Some are bigger, denser parts of my story, and some are like little pebbles that I have almost completely healed from. But each hard part of my story comes with its own process and season of healing. But digging them up out of my heart takes hard work and at first might leave me feeling dirty while I work through things like shame and self-condemnation. But Jesus said that once I am able to share these parts of my story and heal from them, they will no longer be able to hurt me any more. They will no longer be rocks, but light. The kind of light that comes from Jesus redeeming a broken story and making it new. Once I am able to surrender these parts of my story to Jesus and be healed from the hurt they cause me, these parts of my story can be a lesson to others and an inspiration of how Jesus can make all things new. In that way, when I am healed enough to share these parts of my story someday, I will be like a lighthouse pointing others to Jesus.
Are there any rocks in your story that you need healing from? Do you have a parts of your story that have been redeemed by Christ that can now be used to point others to Him?
Praises:
~Thank you so much to the recent donations I’ve received! I am so grateful for your generosity. I have currently raised $14,992, which means that I am now only $2,369 away from being fully funded by Nov. 30th!
~We have arrived in India safely for Month 4 of the World Race! Yay! Our orientation time is almost over and our team will be heading to South India near the coast on Sunday night.
Prayer Requests:
~For me to be fully funded by Nov. 30th! The Lord has got this, but I need your help to get there!
~For my “Coffee and Chocolate” fundraiser. When you want to buy coffee or chocolate, consider donating that amount to me to help keep me on the mission field!
~For safe travel to our ministry site in South India.
~For my team, One Pulse, to serve alongside our ministry host well!
