After our prayer walk (on a previous blog), I felt on fire and like I serve such a big God that cares about people, my team and I so uniquely different. And how big and grand his scope is!
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The next day, I woke up at 7am with a much slower go seize the day attitude. I went to gather up all the team money that had been laid out to dry all over the furniture because I thought my bag was waterproof as we walked around in the rain…and it was not. As I gathered it I tried to wake up but it just felt so early. We had a long day previously.
A woman from the community offered to take us out to have an adventure day though and we couldn’t refuse the great offer! Regina (the woman taking us out) picked us up, we got breakfast and were off to the waterfall! A windy road later we arrived and Regina said there are monkeys here that will snatch things like glasses and cameras and food from you. We all got pumped and eager to go explore the waterfall. We started climbing to get to the top and as we got higher and higher the beauty only grew.
The jungle backdrop with the monkeys following close to us was like no place in America I have seen. There was a stream coming down the mountain.
With my team surrounding me, today was turning into a great day.
As we continued to climb we began to get to the end of the trail where it dead ends into a pretty large waterfall.
Walking up to it, the only thing holding me back from running into the waterfall was the rocky water bottom and the fact I had tennis shoes on.
I took off my shoes and gleefully walked into the stream to get to the pool of water where the waterfall was falling into. As we got closer you could hear the pounding of the water falling over the cliff.
It sounded so massive and powerful!
As I got closer and closer it got more and more beautiful. Standing close to a large waterfall while the waterfalls with such force and somehow so elegantly makes your heart happy, there is no doubt about it. There’s not a feeling like it.
I am someone who connects to nature and connects to God through it, it touches my heart quickly and fills me with so much joy. How can you see such a grand thing like nature and animals and think all of it is a coincidence? And if you can admit that there is a creator behind it all, how can you think that he made all this just because?
God wants a relationship with us.
He always has and always will.
The whole bible is about Emmanuel (God with us). From the beginning of how He intended to live in communication with us to the salvation story of how he redeems the connection that was lost. And then stepping it up a notch, knowing that God made the earth but sin entered and it is not perfect BUT that he will make a new heaven and earth to come. How in the world can my mind grasp the TRUE beauty of our Gods mind? It can’t, I can only imagine. He is so amazing!!!!
As my friends joined me next to the waterfall we just kept looking at each other just in awe of the up-close beauty of this. Then we came out but there was still some of us that were lingering by the waterfall.
We decided to worship God. We sang How great is our God, Reckless Love, Down to the River to Pray, then we decided to get back into the water and pray. We were praying for our team, we were praying for Indonesia and Bogor specifically.
We stood there talking to God it was so powerful. You could feel the atmosphere change next to that waterfall. Our hearts were full. We screamed “puji tuhan” (Praise the Lord in Indonesian)! It felt like we were walking with Jesus through just a smidge of His beauty that day.
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Coming home from the waterfall we got invited to a family worship service and Kimberly, Erin, and I went. We sat there and for the first time, after being in Bogor for 3 weeks, heard a man tell his side of how we got to Bogor.
The Lord facilitated him to be at Zeboath (the church we found) the day we were there. This man was one of the helpful deciding factors of why we got a place to stay and serve. He spoke on our behalf to stay. He told about how he didn’t have to be to church until later but the God prompted him to leave a traditional party he was attending early to be at the church early. As soon as he showed up he was asked to help figure out what to do with these bules (white foreigners).
God’s hand is so big. Not only was he there to guide us, but he guided other people to be there to receive us. This day was so encouraging and soul edifying. It’s what the team needed and what I needed.
