Our first full day in Tibet landed on the day of their annual Yogurt Festival. Our tour guide told us that we must have had very good Karma to come for such perfect timing, because it is basically their 4th of July. We get to the festival very early when not many people had arrived yet. We start walking around to observe the performances and viewing the palaces and temples. A few hours pass and a few of us leave to go get food in another section of the festival. When we come back, we find Sam and Austin playing with a Tibetan family. This family is consisted of about 5 kids, a couple of parents, a grandmother and 4 Tibetan monks. We begin playing with the kids but communicating with the adults was a bit difficult due to the language barrier. Until one of the young girls, who was probably not over the age of 11, started translating for us. We were translating English to Chinese through google translate, and she was translating Chinese to Tibetan to the older members of her family. After a little while hanging with everyone Austin asks the oldest monk if he has any pain in his body. Then he tells us that he does have a lot of knee pain. So, we ask him if we can pray. We begin to pray for him and we ask him how he is feeling afterwards. Through the translation of the little girl he tells us that his knee was feeling so much better. That it doesn’t feel like that without medicine and that he had never experienced anything like that. He then continues to stand up and bend and test his knee out and just looks so happy. He then asks us to pray for his ankle.
We then continue to tell the whole family about Jesus and who we pray too. Hannah brings up the point that it is a very strong possibility that some of them have never even heard the name Jesus. Tibet is considered one of the most isolated places in the world. The roof of the world they call it. China is greatly isolating these people and it was an honor that we were even allowed in.
We then remember that we had a Chinese bible back at the hotel. So, John and Hannah legit run miles back to the hotel to get a Chinese bible and Tibetan Jesus film.
We spent hours with this family and they shared their food and loved and welcomed us into their family picnic with such loving arms. They embodied Christ to us in this way. I cant post pictures to protect this family but please be praying for them. That that bible and film truly touch them and people in their lives.
To also see how God can transcend cultures in any way to reach what He wants was so cool. Its 2019 and google translate was a true gem in more ways than this. And don’t think God cant bring someone in your path who can translate for you. It’s happened more times than I can count. Not much is holding us back anymore in our generation. This was by far one of my favorite days on the race!
