In Nepal, the Lord blessed me with an adventure pup for the day, and a lesson through him. First of all, you should know a little bit about my love for adventure pups! I’m obsessed. I follow like 5 ‘camping with dogs’ type Instagram accounts. I’ve already named the adventure pup I want to get in 2018 (Keda… cute, right?). AND to top it all off, my farewell photo for The World Race was my brother’s adventure pup giving me a hug.
Well, we were only in Month 2 and I was missing dogs. I try so hard not to pet stray dogs, but sometimes I give in. Especially because there have been SO MANY in India and Nepal! For the last 10 days of Nepal, we went into villages. The second village we went to we were staying in a church, and the pastor told us we could set up our tents if we wanted to! [praise for answered prayers!]. In this particular village there were LOTS of dogs. They came around the church yard to hang out with the strange people who showed up, and I pet them all! They seemed to be pets of the neighbors, so I figured it was probably safe, and I couldn’t not pet them…. These dogs were rowdy at night, specifically there was one dog who seemed to talk to himself from about 2AM-5AM.
I left my tent one morning around 5 to use the squatty, but when I stood up out of my tent this dog came over to play. I pet him for a bit, talked to him, and then he walked with me around to the backside of the church. I said goodbye thinking he would run away when I closed the door to the ever so lovely squatty potty. But when I emerged back into the light, there he was! just waiting for me, with his tail wagging and his tongue out.
“hey buddy!” I said as I started to walk towards him. When I got close, he jumped up and gave me a hug like my brother’s dog does! He just wanted to play so I walked across the road to the field and watched the sun ascend and kiss the mountains. The dog came with me, and chased off any other dogs that tried to come hang out with me. I was still pretty sleepy so I walked with him back to my tent, and played tug of war with the shirt I wore to church the Sunday prior because out of all of the clothes on the line, he chose THAT ONE to rip down! I contemplated inviting him into my tent for the last few hours of snooze, but since I was sharing a tent with my teammate Michelle, we had the whole floor covered with inflatable sleeping pads and I didn’t think that would end very well. I pet him saying goodbye thinking he would be adventuring somewhere else when I woke up. I got out of bed for good around 7, and he was sleeping in the shade of the tent.
I went about my morning, drinking coffee/tea – we never could decide which one it was – and eating a sugarless donut… for real it was the fried dough with no sugar topping at all. That day we were going trekking, so we were all getting ready for a long walk up a mountain. We hung out with the neighborhood dogs, and decided they all needed names. I was laying on the ground with my new friend pup, and my teammate behind me was trying to help name him.
“Well if your brother’s name wasn’t Rocky, I’d name him Rocky.” She said to me.
“He can be a Rocky.” I said as I pet the dog. Once all the dogs were named, and our food was eaten, we set out on our way.
“Bye Rocky, have a good day!” I said as I got up to walk away.
“You can come with us if you want…” a squad mate, Matthew, joked in the direction of Rocky. We walked an 8th of a mile down the road and stopped at a small store for snacks if anybody wanted to buy some. I turned around, and sure enough Rocky had followed us! We started walking again and I stepped in stride with Rocky along the road. He seems kind of old, and it was hot, so he was a little slow. Every time we passed through shade he stopped there and I thought for sure he was done walking with us. I had to keep up with the group so I would walk, looking back at Rocky who would find some energy and walk briskly to catch up with us, and then slow down again. We walked through the village in this yo-yo pattern but when we started ascending the mountain I thought for sure he was done, at this point I was the last person in our group and usually when we hike I’m at the front. So I took off and made my way to my friends who were at the front of the group chatting with the squad along the way. Eventually we made it about half way up the mountain and stopped to regroup, after about 3/4th of the group was there, Rocky turned the corner and made his way up to the shade we were sitting in! We all cheered him on and pantomimed him saying things like I’m a Nepali mountain dog, of course I can make this hike guys. We found a rock that had a sort of bowl shape and gave him some water, and he ended up hiking with us all of the way to the top of the mountain and back! Roughly 10 miles in total. At one point on the hike down Rocky was chasing monkeys like our dogs chase squirrels!
Once we made it to the top of the mounted we had some quiet time to go pray over the valley, and spend time with the Lord. We all scattered about, and Rocky went and stood on the edge of the hill looking over a valley. I wondered what he sees when he looks over a valley like that. How differently do dog’s see the world than we see the world? And then the Lord asked me how differently do we see the world than He sees the world? When I look at a valley I see things like look how spread out the houses are, look at the mountains way off in the distance, look at how the river dances through the valley. I don’t know what the Lord sees, but it’s probably something like look at all my children, whom I love. Tyler, right there, he’s struggling right now, but Jason, across the street, he’s got what Tyler needs, and next week big things are going to happen. But for an ENTIRE world. Not just a valley, not just a city, but THE WHOLE WORLD.
