I am so thankful to be in the jungle of Nepal. Yes, I wake up sticking to my mat like glue every morning, I am constantly getting new bug bites all day every day, I feel like I am walking like I am in a constant shower all day and all night, I am inhaling as much salt as I can every meal, I want to cry every time the fans shut off when I am going to bed, and I am watching where I sit and step so that I don’t end up with some scorpion on my foot or backside. Life in the jungle is not what I thought of when I thought of Nepal.
My team has been learning about comfort this past week. God doesn’t care about it. At all.
We have nights of laying on our mats getting ready to fall asleep when the power turns off.
The ladies all sleep under the same mosquito net and earlier in the evenings we put the mosquito coil to help keep the little blood sucking biters out of our sleeping area so it is an extra 10 degrees warmer due to the smoke heat and the body heat that we all produce.
So when the power turns off everyone lets out a moan. I only laugh at the situation because what else are we going to do about the power and laying under the net? I did not think that living in the jungle would be easy and I knew I would face trials of many kinds. I want my heart to be joyful because I know that facing these trials, my faith will develop perseverance. Perseverance must finish its work so that I can be mature and complete, not lacking anything (James 1:2-4). I want a challenging month. The challenge was just different than what I wanted, so far.
One night was extremely tough for a lot of us because we were sweating as we laid there and the power turned off around 7pm, came back on for a few minutes and then turned off. We all tried going to bed around 8 waiting for the power to come back on. Most of the nights it came on at 9. Not this night. We just laid there, in the sauna. It was one of the hottest nights we have been in Nepal. It was not very pleasant. Some of us threw temper tantrums, fell asleep, cried out to God to turn on the fans, tossed and turned, or grumbled. I have learned to be thankful for every situation and know that God cares about each and every one of us, He just does not care if we are comfortable or not. I always thought that this meant that He did not care about my feelings and emotions about situations, such as if I was nervous about preaching in front of a group of people. I learned much more that night.
I prayed not for my comfort but turned and gave God thanks for letting me be able to experience the life of each villager’s night on this night. Not everyone has air conditioning, a fan or power to help cool them down on the hot jungle nights. I feel like my life here is still very Americanized because we get to sleep on mats and stay together in a church instead of sleeping out on the hard ground out in the middle of the bush. I only got to taste what the weather feels like for these people who work hard in the rice fields for long hours of the day and come home to a small bamboo and hay structure that they call home.
God, thank You for letting the power not work all the time and for not caring about my comfort as we spread Your love down here. I am so thankful that I get to see how Your people in Haripur, Nepal live and that You have given me the opportunity to love on them.
