Hey everyone,
I have made it safely to Chiang Mai, Thailand! We flew from Kathmandu to Malaysia, and then to Bangkok. From there we had an 8 hour ride to Chiang Mai in the most amazing bus I have ever been in. We had a surplus of leg room and could recline nearly all the way flat. The seats massaged your back, and there was a stewardess that brought everyone drinks and snacks. Ridiculous.
I wasn’t planning on writing about Nepal out of laziness and because of the video my friend KG made, but then I figured that it was probably a good idea to indeed write one.
Nepal was my favorite month yet. I was with two teams and we got to cross a river 14 times to get to a little remote village. There were times when the water came up to my shoulders as I carried people’s packs over my head, and different parts where the current was threatening to push me over. After about 5 hours or so we made it safely to our destination. It was definitely one of the most fun ministry related things I have done on the Race.
While in the village we collected small rocks and sand from the river beach and hauled it in sacks up a steep hill to make bricks for an extension for a small little school.
During my stay in the sticks I was reminded that He is in control; A lot of things aren’t dependent on me. I found myself in different scenarios where I felt that I needed to speak encouragement to some of the people I was with, but then the opportunity wasn’t available in the way that I thought it would be, and everyone was already in good spirits. Or, we had a situation where one of the teammates was throwing up a ton while in the village–we had no phone service or wifi and no electricity–and I thought to myself “Ok I’ve got to figure out what we need to do, and I have to take this person back to civilization to a hospital.” But then I learned that our only option to get the individual back to a good hospital would be to fly em’ out because there were elections going on–it seems like there’s always some sort of elections or political unrest in every country we go to–and so all of the buses were shut down. So we ended up not leaving early, and everything ended up being ok.
I would often go about trying to figure out what I needed to do in order make things right, and then I would find that He had His own way of doing things, and that I just needed to continually look to Him for the path to walk.
Highlights from the month:
- The journey to the village.
- Getting to hold a chicken as Brad cut its head off (still waiting on the video, hang in there).
- Boom boom time and climbing a little rock/mud face above the river. Boom boom time is when we bathed in the river–that’s not a phrase we coined, it was our contact.
- Sprinting up the steep hill with a bag of sand.
- Almost always getting to be barefoot and shirtless while in the village
- Attending one of the church services in the village; people were so passionate and thankful even with having so little.
- Bungee jumping and doing the world’s biggest canyon swing
- Getting my first tattoo in Kathmandu!
- And eating at an American owned restaurant in Kathmandu called Southern Comfort for Thanksgiving! It was an endless buffet, and it was a huge blessing. They even had last year’s Super Bowl on tv!
