Every time I have gone to a village in any of the countries we have been to so far, it feels like I am traveling back in time. I can’t help but draw parallels from the bible to the way the people of the villages live their lives everyday. The simplicity with which they live their lives is something that I want to learn from. It is beautifully challenging.
Life in the villages has shown me that people adapt to what they have been given. For so many of us we complain that we didn’t get the newest I-phone or a new outfit for school this year. It is amazing to see the ways people here use what they are given to get by. They are innovative with reusing things and dont waisting anything. Lord help me to remember the simplicity with which we are capable of living in. To be thankful for the little things like running water, consistent electricity, and the ability to run to the market whenever we want to.
I think the thing that makes me stop in my tracks every time, is when I see men and women who carry heavy loads on their backs. Here in Nepal they even use a strap that goes around their forehead to help secure the load. It blows my mind seeing these tiny humans carry such large loads. I once saw a man, in the city, moving a full sized refrigerator by himself into a second story flat. He was using one of those forehead straps and his friend helped center it on his back with the other end of the strap on the bottom of the fridge. He started bending over and then just powered that thing up the stairs. It was incredible. I’ve seen women carrying large pots of water on their heads while carrying children strapped to their back. It blows my mind how they do it. Over and over again when I see people carrying heavy loads, God reminds me to pray for their spiritual load as well. So many of these people have never even heard the name Jesus. He wants to carry their heavy loads. He wants to carry it but how can he if they don’t even know he exists?
I am also amazed at the way people farm whatever land they have. I have seen the most amazing mountainsides being farmed. They carve out small flat plays and it looks like stairs going up the side of the mountain. When we were in Ecuador helping to build the wall we had to level out small sections of ground to stack the cinderblocks on. I remember how hard it was to level out that ground with only a shovel and a pickaxe. So to see the sides of mountains looking like stairs so that they could farm there blows my mind. It makes me wonder how long it took for that family to start that farm? How many generations have been living on that land? It reminds me of this passage,
“To Adam he said, “Because you listened to your wife and ate fruit from the tree about which I commanded you, ‘You must not eat from it,’ “Cursed is the ground because of you;
through painful toil you will eat food from it
all the days of your life.It will produce thorns and thistles for you, and you will eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you will return.”
I forget that before we had all these fancy farming machines, man had to do everything by hand. Planting, weeding, harvesting, tilling and the cycle goes on and on.
It is beautifully challenging.
