First of all I want to thank you all for your prayers over my health and the health of my squadmates. For those of you who don’t know, I was sent to see a dr. at the hospital here in Dhobigat. The doctor assessed me and then decided it would be best if I went straight to the emergency room for treatment that evening. They gave me fluids through an IV, a few shots to help me stop throwing up, as well as a couple pills (I’m not super sure what they were, but I’m thankful for them!). It was definitely an experience to spend a few hours in a Nepali emergency room, but The Lord is so good and I have been healing since then and so have most of my squadmates.
We are now officially in South Africa and I am officially behind in my blog posts. Internet is non existant where we now live so it has been sporadic occurances when we travel around the city. Forgive me for the tardiness in this post! Also, I’m almost at my next financial goal! I’m at $10,418 and need to raise $11,000 by April 1st! If you want to help, you can donate easiest through my blog at the “suppor me” link at the top!
Now, onto my blatent disobediance to my parents. (Sorry mom and dad)
On one of our last days in Nepal, I did what my parents told me never to do. I intentionally left my passport at home. I left money, phones, numbers of our contact, and all my belongings and got in the back of a man’s car in a foreign country. A man who I never met before. A man who had another man in the car with him. He picked me up on the side of a highway in Nepal in the mountains where there we really not many people.
That day was faith day. We were told that we would be modeling Jesus’ call to the disciples in Mark 6:7-13. In this particular passage, Jesus tells the disciples to go out 2 by 2 have authority over demons and sicknesses and preach the gospel. He tells them not to take any money, any food, or even extra clothes and to stay with people who receive and leave those who don’t.
Our task was simple: Go out without money, food, water, transportation, or a plan and listen to the Holy Spirit as he directs you to love on people.
In theory.
Let me tell you, when I left our flat, I still had my purse on me with my passport, paper, emergency money, pens and my phone for pictures and such, as well as my water bottle. No one was going to tell me not to have water or my passport at least. “Forget it,” I told my team mate. “They don’t tell me” I belligerently thought.
I definitely wasn’t thinking about the Holy Spirit when I made that declaration.
Fun fact: Holy Spirit isn’t about to be confined by human fear and desires.
By the time we finished worship, quiet time, and a short message on Mark 6 as a squad before heading out, Holy Spirit clearly told me to leave it all at the place we were meeting. All of it. The Lord gave me a vision of myself on the side of the road wanting water and simply just asking him for a drink, and waiting for it to be provided, just as if I asked one of my friends at their house. No fear. Just simply “Dad, I’m kinda thirsty, can I have some water?” I knew that I needed to obey. Before we left, I ran back inside and put my purse, my passport, my granola bar, my emergency money, my phone, and my water back in our meeting house.
And that was it. We started walking.
I was walking with two of the most beautiful souls on this squad, Bridget and Katie. Bridget and I had just spent the weekend together in a place called Nagarkot (which is a mountain town high enough above the suffocating smog of Kathmandu that you can actually breathe and even see some of the Himalayan mountain range on a clear day). I knew The Lord had more for me to learn from her free spirit, her unconditional trust, and her beautiful friendship. Katie and I had briefly talked at the airport leaving the US and made plans to spend more time but until this moment, we hadn’t been given the chance.
I started out with my two sisters, so ready for the day, but with a little fear and anxiety about how we were going to travel and eat all day. Bridget had a vision of a motorcycle, and a feeling that she wasn’t supposed to come back with her shoes but rather give them away at some point throughout the day. Katie saw a mountain in her prayer time that she felt drawn to, and I simply wasn’t sure. I felt like we were going to eat momo’s at some point in the day (which are very popular Nepali meat dumplings) but I wasn’t sure if that was actually The Lord or just me being me and wanting to eat momo’s for the rest of my life.
We started walking down a road I hadn’t been on before and headed towards this random mountain in the distance per Katie’s vision. We started following an old woman who was herding cows. She seemed to not mind the 3 white girls cheerfully following and watching her every move so we kept on with her until we got to a river and some slum housing. We decided to pull off and sit with some women from the slums who were just sitting in a circle. After some time, we decided to keep moving. We ended up along the side of this extremely polluted river. The banks of it were actually a trash dump. We began to pick our way through the dump and look forward to what we might stumble on after we got out of it. At one point as I stepped over mounds of glass and bio waste, I glanced to my left and saw an old man poke his head up from behind a large mound of trash. My feet started going towards him on their own and Bridget and Katie simply let me wander. We all approached this man and realized that he was actually an old shepherd and was feeding his small flock of sheep in the dump along the river. There were 4 tiny lambs that had recently just been born. I greeted him with the traditional greeting of hands in a prayer motion in front of your chest and a respectful “Namaste.” He responded in kind and then started speaking in Nepali. We told him we didn’t understand. I instead decided I had to pet one of the baby lambs because…I mean…there were baby lambs. I pointed to myself and then to one of his lambs as if to ask if I could pet it. He shook his head (the Nepali yes which is fyi extremely confusing to the rest of the world). Too bad Rachel isn’t good at wrangling young lambs though. He literally stood there laughing at my struggle to touch the baby animal, walked over to the lamb as it ran from him and simply plucked it up by the back leg. The lamb protested but then as he tenderly cradled it and brought it to me to pet, it calmed down. We spent a few more minutes with the shepherd as he clearly showed us the little lamb was a boy and rambled on about a few more things. We all patiently stared, smiled, and nodded as he chattered on in Nepali and then left him and kept walking.
We couldn’t figure out how to cross this almost black river to get to the mountain we decided we would go to. As we were walking by the river and behind some construction sites, we came across a group of men in the construction sites. I instantly felt very unsafe. I told Bridget and Katie that we needed to turn around and not go near this area alone. As we turned, this little woman came up behind us wearing an beautiful baby pink Sari. She instantly crossed the road with a huge smile on her face and began speaking quite animatedly at us. After trying to convey that we wanted to go up the mountain in the distance but that we didn’t speak Nepali, we didn’t have any money, and we didn’t know where to go, she grabbed Katie’s arm and urged us on down the road we had just turned back from, but the fear was gone from my heart.
She escorted us through the construction sites to this long, metal, walking bridge that lead us across the river. She continued leading us up this highway and ultimately up part of the mountain until we realized that she was leading us to a Buddhist temple at the top of the mountain. We told her we didn’t want to go to the temple just the mountain and ended up parting ways with her as she continued to chatter on in Nepali. We then happened on a “guest house” (which just means it was a hostel). We stopped into the property to see if there might be an opportunity for food or something. It was empty except a couple guys who worked there. They were very confused why three white girls waltzed into their compound and simply sat down at a table outside. When one of the men came over to ask us what we were doing, we explained to him that we were on an adventure Jesus told us to go on and that we had no money. He looked at us in disbelief and said “Americans! With no money? Impossible. Show me your money and I will feed you.” We showed him that we weren’t carrying anything and we really didn’t have any money. We asked if he would teach us how to cook something and that we would clean in return but he said no, but gave us a bottle of water. After a confusing conversation about the differences between Shiva and Jesus and the fact that the man believed he was the same thing as a god, we felt the situation escalating and decided to move on. We went across the street and sat down for a few minutes to think and pray about what the Holy Spirit would have us do next. We decided we would continue trekking up the mountain that we we originally heading towards. After hiking up the highway road for about 15 minutes, two of our squadmates zoomed by on the back of 2 mopeds. We stopped to cheer them on and wave and they shouted “We’re on an adventure!!” Instantly, I couldn’t help but think joyfully, “What will our adventure look like today, God?” No sooner had I thought that than an extremely fancy black car pulled up alongside of us. Katie ran up to the window and simply asked the man driving if he would give us a ride up the mountain. He had a friend in the front seat with him and a large bucket of paint and laundry in the back but told us to hop in. It was the fanciest car we had seen since leaving for the world race, and suddenly, we were inside of it not knowing the owner, the name of the city we were in, where he was taking us, or what the rest of the day looked like, but there as no fear and no intimidation in our hearts.
Keep reading at Part 2 in the next blog!
