I know, I know...

...it has been forever since I have typed anything on this blog. I am doing my best to get back into it from this point on, but with a full-time job and full-time school, I can't make you any solid promises.

As for what has been going on lately: my life has been pretty routine. Since I returned from Brazil, work has consumed most of my free time and then in mid-August I threw school into the mix. Anatomy and Physiology is kicking my butt right now to say the least. I still have found a lot of time to read, though. I have been reading quite a bit. Mostly Christian studies, the thicker (content-wise) books include: Knowing God by J.I. Packer and Orthodoxy by G.K. Chesterton. Both books I would highly recommend to anyone who loves studying what they believe. I have also had enough time to fit in a few fictional novels one by Chuck Palahniuk who is one of the better current, non-Christian writers of our time, a little crazy though.

I am gearing up to leave the country yet again with a good group of people. It is going to be a great trip and I look forward to heading out for a few days. It will be a good reminder of this year for me. Pray that we will make an impact.

Also, as a side note, it is fitting to tell you that since very early on in my stay in Malaysia, I felt a very strong calling toward the country of Myanmar. I didn't quite understand why, as it is a closed country to most westerners. Last night, however, I discovered that there is a community of Myanmarese refugees withitn a mile of me. Isn't it funny that God brought Myanmar right to me! I will hopefully be joining Michael and Wit from the church to go hang out with them soon. Pray that we will influence those people.

Hopefully it won't be two more months before I update!

Another day, another continent

So I think that I owe everyone an apology. I haven´t updated once since I have returned from Asia. I figured that since I was now In South America I would go ahead and update for my loyal readers. São Paulo, Brasil is my exact location, Campo Limpo if you want to get technical like Canaan Chapman behind me reading over my shoulder. I am down here with our churches partners and a group of people from our church. We have been doing some things around the favelas of the city. It has been a great trip so far, but since this computer is moving like refrigerated molasses, I am going to save most of the details for when I get back, but suffice itto say that myslf, Canaan Chapman, and Philip Elliot are giving Allen Kinble a really interesting time. Thanks for reading! God bless.

Goodbye Penang

I am sitting at the Penang international airport as I write this. I have been stressing a little bit because the flight to Taipei was pushed back an hour and 15 minutes. I didn't know how long my layover was in Taiwan so I was worried because I am ready to get back to Nashville. Luckily, after finding a free wi-fi network at the airport I checked my itinerary and my layover in Taiwan was 4 hours. China Airlines seems to have done me a bit of a favor since now 2 of those lonely hours I can now spend with Adrian at the Penang airport since he is waiting on his flight to KL which departs 10 minutes before mine does. Maybe I should say God did me the favor and not China Airlines.

It has been a really somber day for all parties involved. I didn't get to sleep until around 5:00 AM and then woke up at 8. I guess I am just anxious to get home. That is only one of the emotions destroying my peace right now, really. I am so excited that I get to play with my sister and see my friends and family face to face again in less than 36 hours, but I am heartbroken to leave a country that I have grown to love. I am also heartbroken to leave a group of people that I have grown to love as well. It was so difficult to actually walk out of the door to the car. We put on "The Scientist" by Coldplay on the loudspeakers as we left and this could have ruined this beautiful song for me personally. I will never be able to hear this song again without the memory of walking out the door and leaving behind the people who have become a 2nd family to me. I don't mean to sound like I have left them for good or turned my back on them, just referring to the fact that I literally walked out the door and left them behind because I had to.

I came here 6 months ago not knowing what to expect, and the funny thing is, I'm leaving 6 months later still not knowing. I guess life is just like that. Here I am sitting at the airport after the most solid 6 months of my life, and now I am more confused than ever. It is funny how many doors open to you when you are in line with God's plan as opposed to when you aren't. I came with a goal to attain direction and I got more paths. I got direction, absolutely, but now there are more alternatives and that is the hardest part. I want to be back in Asia so soon, but I know I need that piece of paper that says I'm qualified. It will open more doors, and after a lot of prayer I know it is the right decision, but the toughest part is knowing that it is going to take time to get it. I will be in America for a couple of years finishing school. I love everything about America, but my heart beats for this place. I know that it will be hard to leave family and friends again in the future, but the end result is so much greater than what I would get sitting around chasing what I want, and not chasing what I need. I'm going to finish school and I'm going to love spending the time in America, but it will be great when you have to come to another country to see me.

Even though this journey has come to a close, minus the 30 hours of flight I am looking at ahead of me, I will continue blogging. I will continue to keep everyone updated on the things going on in my life and how I am continuing to work at changing the world for the kingdom, but I am just going to continue taking it one day at a time. I have Camp Whatever a week after I get back and Brazil just 2 more weeks after that. I am also working full-time again this summer to make some cash. I have a lot on my plate, but it is par for the course. I look forward to more adventures in the future, and I also look forward to letting you in on the stories. For now, the adventure is rediscovering home. See you soon, I have to catch a plane to America.

48 hours and counting...

I have only 2 days left in Malaysia. It is unreal to me how quick these months have gone by. I described it to my parents as bittersweet. It is going to be so good to finally see friends and family face to face again, but I love this region of the world and can say with a good amount of confidence that, at some point in time, if you want to visit me it will require a trip to southeast Asia. I feel like I have a place here and that this region is where I am supposed to be.

On a light note, we saw the new movie from M. Night Shyamalan called The Happening, with Mark Wahlberg a.k.a. Marky Mark, as the lead role. Possibly the strangest movie I have ever seen, but I really enjoyed it. I am personally a fan of Shyamalan's very artistically strange representation of psychological thrillers. I am no movie making expert but I know enough to say the Shyamalan knows what he is doing with camera angles and shock factors. I wouldn't recommend this movie unless you know what you are getting yourself into. I loved it, but you may not.

It has been a rough week due to the Euro Cup soccer games. They are broadcast live here which means they don't come on until midnight and 2:45AM. Two games are played every night. We haven't been getting much sleep since our past few nights have been spent at various food stall locations until the wee hours of the morning. It helps to kill the time, though, since we are completely done and today and tomorrow are absolutely free. We are trying to get everything done that is exclusive to this area for one last time: Batu Ferringhi for tourist shopping, Balik Pulau for Siam Laksa(the angels themselves are employed by this food stall), Georgetown for Wan Than Mee and fresh fruit, the incredible taste of durian and mangosteens, etc. We have such a huge list of things to do in the next 36 hours.

Sunday at 2:15PM, my plane departs from Penang, Malaysia and it will take me about 30 hours of travel time to get back to Nashville. After I hug my family, we're going to Cracker Barrel. I have been thinking about that breakfast for six months, since I have known my arrival time in Nashville was 7:45AM for my whole stay. I am torn between Uncle Herschel's favorite and the Sunrise Sampler, decisions decisions. Then we are grilling out that night. I have considered making a list of different foods that I have missed out on for the past 6 months, but I am not going that extreme. All I can say is that corn beef and cabbage is going to be had within the first week. Anyways, I seem to be rambling on my blog so I'm going to sign off for now. I need to take a nap so I can be ready for the soccer games tonight. If I don't blog again before I come home, see you soon!

Nepal Final Phase pt. 2

Here are some pictures just for a little taste of Nepal: Walking to the base in Kathmandu, Patan Square, The typical hammer and sickle symbol for the beloved Maoists, Sitting on a hill overlooking Pokhara valley, and the building of the god monument for an annual Hindu festival. More pictures later, on to the 2nd half of yestrday's story...

After our hot spring bath, we walked back down to the bottom of the valley to our guest house in Thambuchet. We worked with the children at Pastor Balkrishna's school again and did some open air evangelism very similar to what we had done in Butwal. We didn't have much time left here so we figured it would be best to utilize every second for last minute relationships. It ended up being a pretty good program we did on someone's front porch for about 95% of the villagers.

The next morning we woke up at 5:30 to take a bus over the ridge to our starting point for our hike. We totalled about 30 hours of hiking for the whole two weeks and most of these hours were spent in the last 5 days on the way to and from Gosai Kunda lake. It took us three days of hiking up, up, up, to our final location at the lodge on top. Our first stop on the way was a village called Thulo Syaphru, where we stayed with a Sherpa pastor and attended a church service with him before we hiked to the next village the second day. The songs the Sherpa people were singing were the most beautiful harmonies I have ever heard. It took us two days of hiking many hours to get to the top but it was worth it after we fought ourselves so much about whether or not we could get to the top. One the way up there was such an intense cloud cover that our visibility was only about 10-15 feet in front or behind us, if even that much. This was the most beneficial thing that could have happened since if we had seen how far up we actually had to go, it would have been a whole lot more discouraging than it was. When we were almost there it was sleeting on the path. The frozen rain felt like it cut through our faces. We sat at the top in the lodge eating garlic soup, to help fight the altitude sickness that we all had a bit of a taste of. Our South African leader and one of the teammates of our group actually had to walk back down because of the level of their altitude sickness. We began to pray for them as they started walking and the frozen rain was turning into heavy snowfall. About 10 minutes later, the snow stopped and everyone of us felt like a million bucks. Our teammates were on the way down and we were getting warmed up and drying off and hadn't really enjoyed the lake any. We sat there in the lodge for an hour or two and I decided to go walk around before the sun set and take some pictures. In that two hours of time after we prayed, the snow stopped and the clouds had left the sky above us. We stood at the top and realized that we were above most of the clouds as we were at 14,400 ft. This was one of the most beautiful things I have ever seen.

We spent the night in the lodge that had no heat more than a wood burning stove in the middle of the dining area where they mostly burned coconuts and yak patties (yes I do mean poop). I had to sleep in a full thermal suit with socks, gloves and a hat with a stitched on scarf that you may see more of this coming winter. I almost froze to death and only slept about 2 hours the whole night. The next morning I was very ill with nausea and a headache and didn't feel decent until I yakked up (no pun intended as there were no yaks in the mountains this time of year) all of my rice and potatoes from the ngiht before. I walked down to the lake and we prayed a little, but I walked back up because I felt sick again. The lodge owners were cooking our breakfast and I couldn't even stand the smell because it was making me sick so I packed my things and started to head down the mountain by myself because I knew that the altitude was affecting me and I needed to go lower and lower until I felt better. I left before everyone else and they caught up with me and passed me because I had to stop many times due to the nausea. We got to the half way point down the mountain in a village called Chandanbari where there was a yak cheese factory that I didn't get to enjoy since my altitude sickness had spawned into a virus of sorts. I laid in bed all day with a fever, headache, and nauseous feeling but a bowl of tomato soup and a good nights sleep perked me right up for the other half of the mountain down the next day. Our porters were drinking Nepali homemade millet liquor called rhaksi the whole 5 days, but this day one of them got particularly beligerent and we are not really sure how he didn't fall off the mountain. I didn't agree with paying him for the days work because the other porters had to carry his load to make up for his drunken stupor, but we paid him when we got to the bottom at my disapproval.

We hiked off the mountain to a town called Dhunche. We were all so ready to get back to Kathmandu so we ate a nice expensive meal, which in Nepal is about $4 worth of food, and went to sleep with 7 AM bus tickets in hand. We were almost sweating blood praying for safety for the bus ride home and I actually think at one point I prayed "God if it is possible let this cup pass from me." I learned a bit about the power of prayer as we woke up and carried all of the luggage to the bus and the bus driver said "No buses running today." It was the first day of Nepal's new title as republic instead of monarchy. It became the first annual celebration of this brand new, two-day holiday. Nepalis everywhere were celebrating and we were stuck in Dhunche for another day. I spent 5 hours in my room that day playing games on my iPod, considering the worth of pulling my teeth out for entertainment. We tried to move our flight back so we wouldn't be pressed for time but Thai Airways didn't have another flight running all the way to Penang for another week. We "had" to rent a jeep to go back to Kathmandu (Praise the Lord!). We piled up in a jeep the next day and made it to Kathmandu in a safe vehicle. Our prayers were answered. We made it to Thamel, the tourist district, for one last night of souvenier shopping and good food before our flight the next day and now here we are in Malaysia killing time until our trip to KL before our flights home.

Nepal Final Phase pt. 1

Alright, we are finally settled back into Malaysia and eating good fattening food again. I lost quite a bit of weight in Nepal, especially over the past couple of weeks, but now that I am in the capitol of eating I might not be quite as different as you might think I would be. It is said of the Malaysians that they only eat once a day and that time spans the moment you wake up to the moment you go to bed. Just warning you. On to the more important issues...

The last two weeks we spent in Nepal were incredible. It kicked off with the worst bus ride any human could endure on this planet. Some of the duration of the bus ride was spent with me sitting on top which was a result of getting kicked out of my seat by a lady leading a Hindu pilgrimage to Gosai Kunda lake, where our team would later be hiking to and having prayer there. I was a little frustrated with this lady at first but I was on top of the bus, so I couldn't complain. As I sat there on the top, I heard a familiar voice and turned to look and there was the very same lady sitting next to me. Despite kicking me out of my seat, she was an awesome lady. We developed a friendship and as we moved around the bus we always ended up close by each other somehow. She announced how happy she was to be sitting by me again in Nepali on the bus inside when we moved down. I thought she was joking, but my middle aged friend was quite serious that she enjoyed my company. The next thing I know, a man of around 70 sat on my lap and put his arm around me. This wasn't so bad, save for the fact that I was already sitting on rice bags in the middle of the isle. This bus ride, as I said, was the worst any human could ever have to endure. We sat on this 40-50 passenger bus that had a head count of 110 people sitting somewhere on this bus, be it top or inside, for 12.5 hours on a bumpy gravel road placed nicely on a ridge that the bus easily could have fallen off of at any shift of the weight. My prayer life has never been healthier, and there were times I was planning an escape to myself if I felt the bus begin to roll. We made it to our location nonetheless.

We began the last two weeks in a village called Thambuchet, located in the Langtang area of northern Nepal. This was our "base of operations" for the first 8 days. We worked with a local pastor in a neighboring village called Goljung. It was about a 15 minute walk between the two villages and there was one church in the two villages. The pastor, Balkrishna, was an incredible man with an incredible vision to see all of the people of his area break out of the stronghold of Buddhism and embrace Christ. He personally had come from a religious background mixed between Hinduism and Animism. He has a heart for his people group, called the Tamang people, because they remain an unreached people group in this location of Nepal so close to Tibet. In Thambuchet, we mostly worked a lot with children at a Christian school the Balkrishna runs.

That sunday, we hiked up to the next village, called Tethangchet. It was about a 3 hour hike up a mountain in the rain. Luckily, we bought ponchos before we left for this area, but unluckily, wearing these ponchos was like wearing a portable sauna, so I think I actually ended up covered with more sweat than rain water. In Tethangchet, we had a church service with another pastor who works closely with Balkrishna. This village is where we got a taste of how hard it really is for the people that live up in these mountains. With only a trail to get to your house, and ropes to carry your supplies, you really only have the essentials where you live in your 1 bedroom stone or wood house. After the church service, in which a very old woman renounced Buddhism at, we hiked back down the mountain only to hike up even higher on the neighbor mountain to a village called Tatopani. Tatopani, literally translated "hot water," is a bit wealthier than most villages in the area because of the amount of tourism that comes through this location. It is called Tatopani because there is a natural hot spring there that is perfectly safe for bathing. After eating Daal Bhaat, our every night meal of rice, lentil, and curry potatoes with pickled chilis, and almost freeazing to death, we stayed the night in a guest house here and the next morning all of us had a bath in the hot spring. There were two pools, one with warm water, the other with blazing hot water. The guys had to bathe second but we got there and took our time and it was the best I felt over the whole time we spent in Nepal...

The rest of the trip I will blog about tomorrow before we leave for Kuala Lumpur, where we will be until Saturday. Not positive if I will be taking my computer or not so enjoy the blog posts just in case. Thanks for reading!

Farewell Nepal

Well I am officially back from my two weeks in the Himalayas. I don't have much time to update, but I found a few minutes to get down to the internet cafe to write something informative. In a couple of hours we head back to the Kathmandu airport to fly back to Penang where I will spend the next two weeks before I head back to the beautiful USA. I'm covering both sides of the emotional spectrum with happiness since I am going to be around my family and friends but also sadness since I will be leaving all of my friends here behind. It is a bit bittersweet to come back, but I am excited nonetheless.

I don't really have the time to give you the updates on the past two weeks now, but suffice it to say we spent a lot of time with a people group called the Tamang where they have a few church locations in the mountains. We also spent some time with some Sherpas and hiked up to 14,400 ft. altitude to pray over a Hindu pilgrimage site called Gosai Kunda lake. I have some great pictures to share very soon! Next time you read from me it will be from Malaysia.

M.I.A. for a couple of weeks

Well, I'm blogging to you now at the risk of getting banned from the internet cafe since I had to snoop around and change some settings on this computer. For some reason blogger wouldn't let me sign in. It is obviously fixed now.

Butwal was a great trip. It was even greater when I got the medicine and my sickness began to dissipate, but even until that point it was good. We arrived at the church we were staying at and hit the sack early because we had been on a cramped Nepali bus for 8 or 9 hours. When we went to Pokhara we took a tourist bus. It was such a nice, comfortable ride. On the way to Butwal we had no such luxury. We found ourselves on a Nepali bus with minimal leg room. These buses typically stop to pick anyone up with an utter disregard as to how much room is on the bus. I found a few times some Nepali men almost sitting on my lap. It was a good experience.

The first full day we realized this place was no walk in the park. The heat was incredible and the amount of mosquitos far outweighed the heat. Malaria is not out of the question for anyone of us we are speculating. We began the first day walking around handing out tracts and speaking with Hindus, Buddhists, Muslims, and even some Christians out in the open with no problem from anyone, and as my dad mentioned on his blog I ended up speaking at a drug rehab facility and 8 men embraced Christ. We carried on this open air evangelism for a few days, including speaking to crowds of people on the street and visiting villages that white men have never been to. It was incredible. After the first few days we led a seminar for the church we were staying and I ended up speaking for over an hour about sin and repentance, something I know quite a bit about, making it very easy. And Saturday as typical for Nepali churches we attended service, played in the children's ministry, and then had a free day. Sunday was a free day but instead of sitting at the church all day pulling the teeth out of our heads, a few of us chartered a van and went and visited Lumbini, a town on the border of India that is also the birthplace of Buddha. Nothing really spectacular there: a tree, some old ruins, and some temples. It was an experience, though, and I am glad I can say I have been there. The bus back to Kathmandu was worse than the first as 2 different ladies were a bit sick and vomiting in the middle of the isle right next to me off and on for the whole bus ride. I'm back nevertheless.

As my dad also mentioned on his blog, tomorrow begins the most difficult segment of my trip. We leave at 5am where we have an 11 hour bus ride ahead of us that our South African guide, Wilhelmine, described only with the word "horrific." We are not exactly looking forward to it. but we will be in a national park area known as Langtang trekking around. We originally thought that it was going to be mostly prayer, but we have learned that we will be trekking through the Himalayas to different villages and staying. We were told we would be able to take only a couple of showers for the whole 2 weeks, if we are even capable of those 2 in the first place. This will be the area where we encounter the leeches, lack of water, fatigue, and physically strenuous activity. I have never been more excited. We had to rush out yesterday and by warm clothes because we will be trekking through snow for many hours at a time in a very high altitude area. Pray for our bus ride, and our physical health. Also be prayerful of the people we will be coming in contact with. We will be in the stronghold of Buddhism where there is no distinguished race, only religion. There will be absolutely no communication with the outside world, so ths will have to serve as the last information from me until I get back. Thank you for your prayer and thanks for reading.

Also, to mom, dad, zac, and jadyn: I will try to call before we leave, but if I can't then I apologize. I love you all and will be blogging again in just a couple of weeks.

Pray For Seth

As you know, because of Seth's location, he doesn't have a great deal of time or the ability to get to a phone very easily.  Communication, at best, has been very minimum since he headed out of Kathmandu.

I talked with him just before leaving and he was pretty sick.  I'll spare you the details, but let's just say that his GI track in on the blink. He was running a pretty high fever and quite frankly was miserable.  He was concerned about even getting to make the long bus ride, but at my urging (because he would be there alone for the next 10 days), he medicated heavily and headed out, or at least I assumed he had because I had not heard from him.

At 11:30pm on Thursday night, our phone rang, of course stopping my heart and causing me to run haphazzardly into the living to find the phone.  I was happy to hear Seth on the other end.  He sounded much better than the last time I had talked with him (no fever this time), but he is still pretty sickly.  All of his symptoms point to Giardia, which is an intestinal parasite (oooh, I hate that word) that comes from water.  He has every symptom.  He called to check with Dr. Mom on what he should take to treat it.  Fortunately, medicines are available and easily accessible without a prescription.  

I gave him name of the medication that he needed, Flagyl, and jumped online to check the doseage before he hung up.  He was going later that evening to the pharmacy and see if he could find the medication.  I did give him a back up plan if he could not find the Flagyl.

He called this morning to say that he had found and purchased the medication at the local pharmacy there without a prescription from Dr. Mom.  He was able to get the Flagyl and already had 2 doses in him.  He purchased a 7 day course of antibiotics for a whopping... 

...that's right, .21 cents, something tells me that the price of medications in the US is a little bit high!

He's still making numerous trips to the bathroom, losing weight, and feeling pretty wiped out, but having a great time. He's seeing Nepalis cross the line of faith and that, after all, is why he's there!

If you would, when you pray for him, pray specifically for his health. Thanks for your faithfulness in reading, commenting, and most of all for praying. This Mom is very grateful for your encouragement to both Seth and to me. Love you all!

Amy

Back from Pokhara, leaving for Butwal!

You will never appreciate life more than when you are on a Nepali bus on a road that winds around the sides of mountains with the most insane drivers that exist on Earth driving on the same road as you. After the first twenty or thirty near head on collisions I became accustomed to it and rather enjoyed the ride. I can't say the same for the ketchup club. The ketchup club is what we have dubbed the Canadian girls on our team. The name refers to a statement made by our friend Ken, from Minnessota, who lives in Penang. In a discussion about spicy foods he looked at the Canadians and said, "You're from Canada. Of course you don't like spicy food. The spiciest thing you guys eat is ketchup." It should also be noted that at particuar resaurants in Malaysia, Ken has a specially cooked food named after him that he invented.

Pokhara was an incredible city. The guy that was being our "guide"/translator was from Pokhara so we actually stayed for free at his church and visited with his family too. One thing that was reinforced to me while we were in Pokhara, is that Nepal is not a place to come if you are not willing to be physically challenged. We went to the top of a hill to pray over the city and the trail to get there was not easy, but I take pride in the fact that I was second to the top. Second only to our Nepali guide. I tried to hide my gasping for air, but I didn't do a great job. In spite of the clouds/dust in the air, we still couldn't see very many mountains. This seems to be clearing up a little as it is raining a little more. It was a well-spent couple of days in a beautiful city praying.

Thanks for all the prayers to this point. Be praying for team members stomachs. We are watching what we are eating and drinking pretty carefully, but some stomachs, including mine, are being effected in a not-so-nice manner. Pray for this especially because tomorrow we leave for Butwal. It is an eight hour bus ride. On top of the eight hour bus ride, the average temperature in Butwal is over 100 degrees and many places we will be do not have electricty. After the nine days there, we head up to Tatopani. Tatopani will be a welcome change because it is at around 4000 meters above sea level so it will be a bit cooler there. Pray also for the hearts of the people we talk to. Thanks for following!

Soon to be a travellin' man

A cyber cafe is now up and running quite close to our guest house, which makes e-mail checking and blogging quite an easy task. Unfortunately, this cyber cafe has opened just a few days before we head out of Kathmandu for the first time. As far as I know, on Tuesday we will be heading to Pokhara, which is about six hours away. If we don't go to Pokhara, which is a possibility, then we won't be leaving this city until Saturday, when we head to Butwal, which is a hot and sticky city close to the border of India. This is good and bad news. Good news, because we get to see some of Nepal and minister in remote villages, and bad news because we are enjoying the night-time drop in temperature here in Kathmandu, the first inkling of cool weather I personally have had since January 6th.

After Butwal, we come back to Kathmandu for a very short time and then head to northern Nepal to a place called Tatopani. This is where the bungee jump will take place, if it takes place at all. We have been pretty comfortable here in Kathmandu. It is the travels where we are unsure of sleeping arrangements and food and things of that sort, but we have already seen God work in the lives of children and adults here in Nepal.

I will try to keep you posted on the happenings, but other than a couple of orphanages and a church service we haven't been able to do a lot yet. The brunt of the stories should come out of the villages and travels. Thanks for the prayer and encouragement through the comments! I should be able to get one or two mroe posts on here before we head out of the city. Thanks for reading!

Bringing Portuguese to Asia, one Westerner at a time

Well, here I have found myself in an internet cafe with incrededibly slow computers, under a time constraint, doing my best to update you guys via a broken keyboard. Some letters have to be hit with a sledge hammer to work almost.



So far, Nepal has been incredible. We have been to the two largest Bhuddist temples in Nepal and heard the catchy little Buddhist chants, that if you are immature enough, like most of our team, you can hear completely off the wall English phrases in them. They have so many handy crafts that catch your attention and occasionally you see a Westerner who is making a fool of theirself trying to stick to Buddhist tradition. I have taken many pictures but have no way of putting them on the internet at all. The posting of those photos will have to wait until I get back to Malaysia and have a decent internet connection again.



Yesterday we went to an orphanage, run by friends of the base here, and played with the children for a couple of hours before we went to a praye meeting at the main base. It was so much fun playing with these children, and of course these Nepali orphans have a special place in my heart considering how close a once-an-orphan little girl is to me in my life. We had a blast together and had most of them not had semi-Wastern names I wouldn't know any of them if I was asked. We are helping the very same orphanage move locations from in he city to a building right next to the base outside of the city. The base is in an absolutely beautiful area in the middle of rolling wheat fields and hills that almost qualify as mountains.



As many of you know, before I came to Asia, I was learning Brazilian Portuguese and thought it strange that Asia was where I ended up. Come to find out, our guide in Kathmandu, is a man named Junio from Fortaleza, Brazil. I have been brushing up on my Portuguese and learning some new through Junio. There is also two more Brazilians at the main base that live here. Maybe this is a sign for me. How often do you learn some Portuguese and then go to Asia, only to run into Brazilians? I don't really understand God's sense of humor, but if this is a sign pointing me to South America, then I won't mind.



No more food updates really, just a lot of buffalo meat and noodles and rice. We have eaten some naan bread a couple times but we don't want to get burned out on it since it is so good. There are a lot of Tibetan food places that are pretty good. They have a food called Thendup that almost tastes like my grandmother's chicken and dumplings, though it just isn't the same.



Well, I'll look for a time to get to this stoneage cafe to update yu in a couple of days! Thanks for all the prayer and reading!

Nepal at last

After a short few hours of travel, I am finally in Kathmandu. This is the bread and butter for the whole past three months. This is what we have been preparing for. I love Nepal. We are in a not-so-very commercialized part of the city, translation, when I walk out of the guest house we are staying at while in the city, I am in a village where many shops are run by candlelight at night and they don't understand much of what you say, unless of course you speak Nepali.

We arrived in Nepal around midday and got through customs without one single problem, which was an answered prayer in itself. We were picked up and taken to our guest house by a really hospitable guy names Amos, who gave us a couple of hours to rest, which I took full advantage of, before he took us up the street to a restaurant to eat. When I say street, I mean alley with some pavement here and there and absolutely no streetlights, and when I say restaurant, I mean walk in closet with a couple of tables. Our meal was incredible. I had chowmein with buffalo meat in it and a cup of hot milk tea. I also ate several other things that other people ordered that I don't have time to describe right now, but we did have a couple of people so adventurous that they ordered cheese pizza.

I really don't have enough time to tell you much else, and honestly, don't have that much information about Nepal yet either. Today was nothing more than airplanes, naps, and food. I don't know how accesible this cafe will be since we wont be having much more free time, but I will keep you posted as often as possible. Don't lose any sleep mom! Thanks everyone else for reading!

Tomorrow's the big day!

This will be the last post you get from me from Malaysia. Tomorrow morning at 5:45 we are loading up the van and leaving for the airport to head to Kathmandu, Nepal. I can't tell you what we are doing there, not because it is restricted, because we don't know for sure. It is possible that we take a break to head about 3 hours north of Kathmandu to bungee jump off of a bridge in the gorge of the Bhote Kosi river in Nepal. It is a 500 ft. free fall making it one of the largest free fall bungee jumps in the world. If you are so curious, you can look up the place online and see the pictures of the beautiful place.

We have had an excellent lecture phase here in Malaysia and I have learned a lot. I have gained quite a bit of insight in the arena of missions and things of that matter, which are pretty important especially if this is what I am going to try to do as a career. We have gotten increasingly busy over the course of the past few weeks and I wasn't able to come through on blog posting as much as I should have and I apologize for that.

The last week was taught by a New Zealander named Kel Steiner. It was a course called Kairos, which ended up very informational. It is a course that is heavily devoted to unreached people groups thoughout the 10/40 and the 10/70 windows. Kel Steiner had some great stories that would make anyone envious. He actually told us a story about finding a tribe in the Phillipines in the 1970's after overhearing a radio transmission coming from the American Air Force about a tribe that lives on the side of a mountain in teepee-like houses, something unheard of in the Phillipines at the time. Kel took the opportunity to get permission from the American military presence to trek through their area to find this tribe and they granted him permission and actually gave him a 4x4 Jeep and all the medical supplies he could carry to find this tribe. After some translators that spoke mountain dialects were found, they went out and actually found this tribe. To make a long story short, in one day, a tribe of animistic Phillipine natives came to Christ. The translators that Kel and his partner found, who happened to be two 18 year old girls that were already pastors at their home church, stayed and lived with the tribe and became their pastors. Kel called this tribe the "Wo Tribe" because that seemed to be the only thing they could say in agreement or disagreement accompanied by a nod or a shake, then he said they ran one of the two witch doctors out of the village, the other of whom accepted Christ along with the rest of the tribe.

I am praying that God works in Nepal just like he did in the case of this Phillipine tribe in the mountains. It could be tomorrow that I can get to an internet cafe to post about how incredible the first day in Kathmandu is, or it could have to wait until I get back to Malaysia to write a blog post. I will be in communication with my parents, who will probably post information bits here and there on the blog for me, so you won't be completely in the dark. Pray for our trip! Pray that God works through us in incredible ways for the people of Nepal! Thanks for reading and hopefully I can update you soon.

Expecting a new sister soon AND a trip to Nepal

Well, as most of you may already know, I have yet another little sister in my future and the potential of another younger brother. I am pretty thrilled at the sound of this news, and of course I knew a bit before any of you and I was dying to get it on here. I am so happy that our family is expanding again but I am a little distraught at the fact that one of these children is apparently going to be the reason I am lovingly "kicked out" of my parents house.

As for me, pray for my direction. I pray and pray and pray about it and seem to find that I am not getting answers. There isn't a place in the world I couldn't fit in and fit in well. I am completely confident making that statement. One of our leaders today confirmed some "nomadic" feelings I had today and said, "I just see you as someone who will not stay in one place for very long." This is something that I have felt from the moment I was in Malaysia, as I have called the national role and felt called to every country in Asia since I have been here. I'm having a lot of trouble with this decision and sometimes I think starting a brand new ministry would be the easiest outlet.

Also pray for the fact that in one week we leave for Nepal. The situation is stable and we are praying that it remains that way. This week we are focusing heavily on the 10/40 and 40/70 windows in a course called Kairos, which is Greek. It is very informative and focused on unreached people groups. Some of those groups are in Nepal as well as Indonesia, our two countries of focus in this school. Pray our way through these countries with us! Thanks for reading.

More Bangkok pictures.

From top to bottom: Bangkok Skytrain tracks, Bangkok train station, Brittany and myself sitting over some traditional Thai food, the terminal at Suvarnabumhi airport, boys playing in the dirty canal at the floating market, another boy painting at the floating market, two pictures of the expressway bridge in Bangkok and finally the King's symbol on the bridge.

I have a few more but they are similar to these. You have seen the highlights of my short, short stay in Bangkok. Next time I go back hopefully I will be there a lot longer, it really was a beautiful city with a lot of beautiful people.

This week we have been learning about personal giftedness and I have really enjoyed our speaker, Rick Hurlbut, the base leader here. He actually went to a military academy in Lebanon years ago, maybe some of you remember that military academy. He has a really powerful story and I have felt a few times that I was being bragged on by him, but I'll type more about that later. As for now, we will be leaving in just a minute for our last time with our Nepali friends. Thanks for reading and enjoy the pictures!

Bangkok Pictures!

Moslty pictures of the floating market on Saturday with the exception of one picture of Victory monument thrown in the middle. The cones were quite fun, but more interesting to have lunxh on!

Back from BKK

Well, I am officially back home on a brand new 90 day visa that I will only need about 16 more days on before I take off to Nepal. Bangkok was great. It was a real big priviledge to go hang out with Brittany and Wit all weekend, and a major plus having people that could show me around Bangkok. They really are some great people and I suggest you get to know them when they come to Tennessee for a while.

The first thing I would like to comment on is the food. First and foremost, I love spicy food. This quality made me especially fond of Thailand and maybe even made some Thais fond of me. I got in on Friday night and we went immediately to eat and had some great food at a restaraunt I don't remember anything about. That was about it for Friday evening but Saturday was when the real fun began.

Wit and I woke up and got ready for our day and went and ate a really great rice breakfast before time to meet Brittany to head to the floating market. We went to the Baptist Student Center they go to in Bangkok and picked up a group of several people, all Thai, and then we were off to the market. The market was a great place to spend the first half of the day. It was really a cultural experience. We got into long wooden canoes and Wit and I paddled up and down a small canal and had a Tomyam lunch from ladies that were also sitting in a canoe at the side of the market. They warned me that it was spicy, which happened several times, but I knew I could handle it. We westerners apparently don't represent very high pain tolerance when it comes to eating spicy food because it always surprises the Asians when I choose to take my meals very spicy.

After the market we headed back to Brittany's apartment and watched a movie with most of the people that went with us to the market. Before we started the movie some of the ladies made food that was essentially lettuce wraps and watched as I ate the spicy stuff and then spoke in Thai to each other. Brittany told me that they really admired my ability to eat anything and that they usually complained about foreigners but they wanted me to apply for a job and come back. I don't know if that is a sign for God or not, but I did make my decision that my wife is probably in Thailand since there are no unattractive ladies there. I don't care at all if God wants me to go there!

After the movie we went to Khao San Road, which is like backpacker central. It was a really good experience with a lot of interesting people. Then on Sunday I basically just went to the airport. All in all it was a really fun trip.

I'm home now and we have officially started our second to last week of the lecture phase and are cracking down and getting busier and busier before we head to Nepal. Coincidentally, at our house the internet is also down so the pictures are going to have to wait a while since the connection in the office isn't great. I took lots of them though. Thanks for reading!

Bangkok Bound

Just a quick update...

I am leaving for the airport in just a few minutes to go on a visa run. This will be a double purpose trip, as I will be going to Bangkok to hang out all weekend with Brittany Greene and her fiance. Thank you guys for following me all this way and I would like to apologize for not being as informative the past couple of weeks as we have been quite a bit busier than before midterm outreach. After my visa run I will try to update often. Pictures of Bangkok coming soon! God bless and thanks for reading!

A lasting impression.

Let me explain a bit of a story from a day where we went out to "evangelise" in the streets. Jared and I were paired up, but we decided it was a better idea to meet up with a pair of the girls and visit the hospital. We originally intended to go to the hospital and make balloon animals for the children that were there but got there about thirty minutes late and the children's ward had closed, despite the fact that we tried to convince the security guard that they were open. We were a little bummed but shrugged it off to begin plotting our next move. We looked down the hall and there were a few families sitting with children outside of the ward. It worked itself out after all!

We left the security "officer" and made our way to the area of the families all waiting on benches. They were all accepting and the children seemed to really like Jared's magic tricks with card and coins. When I tried to make balloon animals, the balloon always popped and the children always cried. I made a crucial decision to switch from playing with children to talking to the parents of the children. I made the right decision and seemed to have much more success. My opinion is based on the logic that none of the adults cried when I talked to them and I didn't feel the need to alter my voice to talk to them. John was also at the hospital. John and myself began talking to an Indian man who had stomach cancer. He told us about a group of westerners who had prayed for him a week earlier and asked if I would do the same. I gladly prayed for him and he gave John his contact information so we could contact him later.

Fast forward a few weeks. We had another evanglism time over the course of the weekend. This particular occasion we were to stay out and let God lead us where He willed. Jared and I kind of walked around with stupid looks on our faces and just let people talk to us. We stayed at the top of Penang hill for $10 and it was an even more awesome sight at night. Then yesterday, we mostly walked and walked and walked.

The real story actually doesn't even involve us. It is about John and his team. Peter and John both speak fluent Tamil and they decided to go to a Tamil church on the mainland. Joy was on their team and speaks no Tamil, but with two fluent speakers he was in good shape. They met up with a pastor that Peter knows and he took them shopping after a nice dinner that he provided for them. He received a call at some point over the course of the night about a man that wanted someone to pray over him and Peter, John, and Joy decided they would ride along. They got to the house and walked in and immediately John recognized the man that wanted prayer. It was the same man that we prayed for at the hospital! The man's response was so welcoming. He actually said in a very excited voice, "PASTOR! I am so glad you are here! Where is your American friend?...I cannot believe that you are here, now I know that God truly loves me!" This guy told John that he and his family were going to begin going to church immediately and he thanked them so much. It is amazing that all that was needed was for someone to just show up. John, Peter, and Joy didn't know that there was going to be anything significant happen, they just felt that God wanted them there so they showed up. God used them "showing up" to speak into a Hindu man's life, a decision they made that will not only effect his, but also his family's life. Pray for this man as today he was supposed to have an operation. Thank you for allowing me to tell you incredible stories like this one!

Biblical Worldview, Champions, and Apes.

This week we have been examining a Biblical worldview. It has been pretty interesting to see different viewpoints and the like. It has been more exciting to discuss with my dad the future plans that might take place in my life. Those conversations usually leave me a lot more confused since I want to do so many different things. I never know exactly how my future will look because of this. Hopefully it will just work itself out.

We did take the Myers-Briggs typology test to determine the, at the risk of sounding a bit eHarmony, "compatibility" of our teams going to our different locations. I ended up on a team where every single member save one of the leaders is an extrovert. I am an ENFP type, and there are many interesting things that are described by this category. It is funny that my interests and described personality line up almost perfectly. It is mainly a lot about my interest in social causes and the "retreat of evil in the world." I was pretty pleased with my results.

There was a description of the results made by a man named David Keirsey who came up with a "temperament sorter." There are four different categories of temperaments: Guardians, Idealists, Artisans, and Rationals. I happen to fall under the ctegory of an idealist. The sorter actually goes a bit further and seperates each category into four parts which I will save time and space by just including the idealists. The four categories of idealists are: Counselors, Healers, Teachers, and Champions. Could you guess which one I ended up with? If your guess was "Champion," then your right on target. Jared and I actually ended up with the exact same personality type and we have not been at all reserved about letting people know that we are the champions of the group.

We did find out that, in KL, there is a monkey on the loose. It apparently is a rhesus monkey that has decided to make its home in a tree at Jared's neighbor's house and has escaped out of someone's ownership. He has a chain on his neck and frequently runs around on Jared's roof and tries to get into the windows. We found this story incredibly amusing.

Other than that, tomorrow morning we leave for an overnight trip somewhere on the island to do some evangelism, and next weekend I will be briefly leaving Malaysia to go to Thailand for a visa renewal since I will just barely miss the deadline. That's all for now, thanks for reading!

Some pictures and talk of a skit

As promised: Pictures. From top to bottom: View from the rooftop (mosque and smoke on the mountain), that centipede was about 8 inches long and about as big aroun as a tire iron, the clocktower of the customs bulding at about 6:45 AM, the jetty right before nightfall (3 block walk from where we stayed, and finally looking down an arched sidewalk in the city.

So I am not really a sucker for anything performing arts, no offense if this is something you are into, it just isn't my bag. This was a factor as I was looking for a DTS to actually apply for. I don't mind acting in plays and I love to see musicals, but I just think the whole interpretive dance or pop-song skit is just a bit hokie if you ask me. As we approached about the third day of our midterm outreach, what do I find out? The abhorring news of our team's performing art activity we will be doing for three different groups of young to middle age Nepali men, set to the song "Everything" by Lifehouse, which, keep in mind, is in a language most of them cannot even understand. If you think I was thrilled at hearing this news you are so sadly and terribly mistaken. For some reason, my teammates decided it was most appropriate for the only white guy on our team to play Satan, so I used the excuse, "I'm just trying to get into character," anytime I felt it necessary to be a jerk due to my immature unhappiness.

When it all breaks down, over the course of the weekend we performed our "skit" at three different services, a service on Good Friday followed by two Easter services. Over the course of my weekend of pouting because of the "embarrassment" I was going to have to entertain, I began to soften up to the idea. My whole mood change after the second time we "performed" and noticed that in a room full of Nepali men, and one Myanmarese guy that we found out about later, there were people crying. The normal pastor preached after we were finished and we left a bit early to go eat some dinner before the next service that was 45 minutes away. We went through the same routine and sat through a Nepali man preach, in Nepali of course, and figured out things to do. I sat quietly in the back of the room and read a book in English, since this IS my first language and enjoyed myself. At the end we were all excited about the 4 men that decided to accept Christ at this service and watched in anticipation as they declared before all of their brothers their new found faith and acceptqance of Christ. We listened as Ramayah explained what was going on and she suddenly said, "Oh yeah, 17 men accepted Christ at the last service." Over the course of the weekend a total of 27 Nepali men accepted Christ, also along with the stealthy Myanmarese guy that snuck into the Nepali service. We were so thankful and so proud that night and still are.

My lesson was this: Despite my frustration with the way that we presented ourselves at these services in front of these men, God worked through as and the speaker and 28 people are now a part of his kingdom! Thanks for reading!

A few pictures...more to come!

Some lovely Chickens

...and those are tentacles sticking out of my mouth (disgusting I know).
Nepali outreach, a rather large ugly concrete man, from the top of Penang hill overlooking one half of the island, and a monkey on top of Penang hill (which I apparently got too close to considering he hissed at me and almost "attacked" me).

"I feel so violated"...

I don't have much time, but I would like to tell you the story of why those words came out of Jared's mouth. If you know anything about Asian culture, in many countries it is perfectly acceptable for two men to pubicly display affection for each other if they are friends. It is quite normal to see men holding hands or sitting in each other's laps and such. This is not a tradition that is very common in Malaysia; however, on our Thursday night outreach with the Nepali migrant workers, it is becoming a more common sight. Last night, as a matter of fact a was sitting next to two friends of mine as they held hands talking and laughing in their language. I looked across the room and Jared was sitting on the bed next to the Nepali missionary Devendra. Devendra was rubbing his knee with one hand and playing with Jared's leg hair with the other. This is not something that I have gone without experiencing since I have sat next to Devendra before and he knows us better than the migrant workers do, thus he shows a friendly affection for us. It doesn't really make me uncomfortable because I recognize the difference in culture but I don't think that Jared had ever experienced this or even seen it on one of our outreaches before. I assured him that he had better prepare himself for the actual country because it would be much more prominent in Nepal rather than hanging out with a few people from the country. All in all, it was a very quiet ride home for Jared, though I enjoyed poking at the wound that was created.

Today is our last day in Georgetown. It has been fun but I will be glad to get back to our normal living arrangements. According to my speculation, on Sunday I will be online much more and updating the blog a lot more frequently over the course of the next month, before time to leave for Nepal. Tomorrow I have the obligatory duty of moving all of our stuff back and making sure nothing gets left behind so I probably will not be doing much online tomorrow except for talking to my parents, since I haven't in a few days. Thanks for reading and in a couple of days I will have you better posted!

Tony Danza is truly Nepali

For the past couple of weeks, we have attended a Nepali church service on the mainland of Penang. This service has been interesting to say the least. All of the attendees are men due to the fact that the women in Nepal don't come here to make the money for their families back home, which is pretty legitimate if you ask me. Many Nepalis have come to know Christ through this ministry and it is constantly growing. All of the men are so accepting of us and love to have a time of fellowship after the service to ask questions about where we are from. I wrote down in my journal last night that it is a really incredible thing when you realize you are in a room full of people who are the epitome of a cultural antithesis and you cannot understand a single word being said, but you can feel the presence of God. These men worship with their own drums that get passed around when arms get tired and they worship without boundaries. If I came home and tried to do similar dance motions with my arms I would have a pretty steady string of insults hurled at me most likely regarding a preference of mine, but it is beautiful when these men dance and sing with a reckless abandon to God.

The title of this has a little to do with "the boss." Last night, we not only attended the aforementioned service, but added a completely separate service to our list of things to do on Sunday afternoons. A service that begins an hour and a half after the first is finished. As Jared was sharing his testimony, via a translator of course, there was a very disruptive Nepali man who felt it necessary to correct the translator and "help her out." The translator, Kai Lee's face seemed to blush red with embarrassment, she is after all trying her best as a Chinese lady who heads up the ministry that is in 100% Nepali. I began to feel bad for her and glanced at the man and realized that he was a dead-on carbon copy of Mr. Danza himself. Kai Lee's potential embarrassment was tossed out the window as I was enthralled with this man's appearance. I began to question myself.

"How did I miss this guy in the introductions?"

"Was Tony Danza a fraud?"

"Is Tony Danza really Nepali?"

The second two questions are a bit ad libbed, but this occurrence did spur several quiet impressions of Tony Danza from my floor spot in the back of the room. We do, after all, find ways of entertaining ourselves during 45 minutes of a foreign tongue. It ended up being a brilliant night capped off with some tandoori chicken, which I am totally convinced that God himself invented in India somewhere.

Other than the Nepali service we have spent a lot of time as a team worshiping. As a matter of fact, in a 24 hour period, 8 hours were spent in a room worshiping in two separate 4 hour sessions. In all honesty it became somewhat of a burden after a while. I am glad we had the experience, but if you ever find yourself with a songbook that people are considering flipping back to the first page to continue, let me say good luck.

A quick update

I have time for a quick update because coincidentally, I realized that we are about 3 blocks away from an internet cafe that is only $1 an hour. Any time I have free time I should be able to come down here and update. The excitement is a little dulled by the realization of the fact that in my head I tried to make it seem like it was going to be a tough two weeks. Far from it, as a matter of fact. We went to the movies yesterday and sat at the mall, due to our "day off," and today had three hours of worship. It sounds like a long time, but it went by pretty fast and nobody seemed to object, despite several repeated songs.

I have officially sworn off roti bom. It was a difficult thing to commit to, but I got here and lost weight then slowly began to put weight back on. I blame the reascension on the roti bom, thus I have to swear it off. I have made a commitment, and I am about 3 quarters of the way through day 1. We'll see how it goes since the best roti bom I have had is now directly across the street from my living arrangement.

A quick list of things that I have eaten since I have been here, categorized by animal. Fish: fillets, whole, and stomachs; cow: normal meat, stomach; whole squid; chicken: intestines, liver (i eat this back home though), skin, butt, and feet; pig: fat, intestines, and normal meat; and the best for last: stingwray.

I will let you know more about how God has been working as it happens, if possible.

Georgetown bound

This will be my last post for two weeks. Tomorrow we head to downtown Georgetown where we will be staying on the busiest street in the city. I don't even know what we are going to be doing in the city, but it is a short version of our longer term outreach to give us a taste of what it will be like to endure each other almost all day everyday. I think it will be good preparation for our trip. We have been waking up and meeting to pray or worship at 6:30 every weekday morning. I think this is a great idea because it really shows our flexibility and how willing we are to be uncomfortable for Christ. I didn't feel that way at first, and even most days I still hate it, but I know that it is for an end goal so much greater than my wants and needs. I'll just continue to grit my teeth, put on the Darfur benefit album of John Lennon cover songs, and head to the meeting every morning until time to leave.

Yesterday we had our first sobfest, and two months in at that! It was worthy of a churh camp, holy high! I am surprised it didn't happen sooner, but we had a time of coming forward to co-students we have had differences or maybe misunderstandings with. The only person I felt I really needed to apologize to was the only other American here. She is a really great girl, but our personalities clash and there have been a few tense moments in the past. In its own funny way, I look at the fact that the only person here I feel tense around is the only other American. Maybe God is trying to tell me something, after all I have been told that I am more Chinese than any previously met westerner by a couple of people. We did have a time of washing each other's feet after we apologized and reconciled with each other. Puspa went around the circle and washed every person's feet in the circle and then kissed them (something I couldn't have done by force). It was honestly the most prime example of the servant heart of Christ that I have seen in anyone here.

Our cat will have been gotten rid of by tomorrow. Something I am completely okay with. It is a nice little kitten, but need I remind you that everyone here that wants to adopt this kitten is going their seperate ways in June. I don't think anybody is interested in taking her home (it is a girl we realized).

I have been drinking coffee like water these past few days. I have occasionally gotten to a Starbucks around here and ordered my usual cafe americano with no room for cream, but it is incredible to have quality coffee at my disposal. I have cleaned my new french press more times than I can count on both hands and I have only had it for about 48 hours. And for some strange reason, I have felt compelled to share coffee with a handful of interested students around me. I know this has to be the Holy Spirit, because I assure you that it is not my own.

This week has been really good overall. I took a lot out of the lectures on the basic timeline of the Bible. I thought I wasn't going to at first, but I was proved wrong. Now that I move into preparation for these next two weeks, I am counting myself happy to have reviewed the key events in the Word. I have two weeks of outreach here in Penang and then 4 more weeks of lectures. Time is flying at an uncomfortable rate. In six weeks I will be heading to Nepal! I am so excited. For the time being, pray for the next couple of weeks for me. Pray that I can effectively communicate the gospel in any opportunity presented, as well as for everyone else here with me. Well, I think that is about all I have for now. I am sure that I will run across an internet cafe from time to time. Hopefully I will have enough time to get online and write a quick post. If not, then I'll write to you again in about two weeks! Thanks for reading.

Cats, Coffee and Prophets

We have adopted a mascot here in Malaysia. On the walk home last night from the night market, Niklos and Hailey picked up a stray cat. This cat has a tail, which believe it or not is rare for cats here. Most of the cats around here look like their tails have been cut off at some point. A couple of our roommates don't like the cat, but my Dutch friends in charge of the house like him so he stays! The girls named him Shadow, which if you ask me is quite a cliche name for a black animal, but no one liked my suggestion of Frank. He looks like a Frank.

I finally got my package from my aunts and uncles today. It was much needed, with the coffee and all. I have given away a couple of the Slim Jims in the package and so far Peter and Adrian love them, which prompts me to watch them closely. I have already had some coffee and I am soon to have another cup. It is so good to be off of the dissolving rock "coffee" that is Nescafe. Getting the package, however, wasn't the easiest thing I have done since I have been here. Peter, a Malaysian-Indian co-DTS student, accompanied me, which was really beneficial in the long run. We had to take cab to the jetty to catch the ferry to the mainland, which is where the customs post office is. It took us about 2.5 hours to get there. At the post office, I had to open my package in front of the customs agent, let him rummage through, and then wait in another line for the people to decide if they wanted to tax me for "importing." Of course, since Peter was with me, some other languages were being spoken and I got out of that line tax-free. After that, I had to wait in another line to sign for the package, where they needed my initials and my passport number. I reached in my pocket and realized my passport was on my shelf back at the house. I froze. Instantly my mind began racing, "Deportation...detention...etc." Then Peter wrote his ID number on the slip and they thanked us and sent us on our way. Needless to say, I was relieved. All in all, it was about a 4.5 hour trip, but the taste of good coffee makes it worth every second.

The past couple of days, we have stayed on the Bible overview from a historical standpoint. It has been great. I really enjoy learning about hitorical perspective of biblical times. We are a considerable way through the OT, that's "Old Testament" for you new christians, spending just a little time on the prophets. It has been a pretty enjoyable week so far, but nothing soul shaking has happened yet. If it does, I promise you'll be the first informed. Thanks for reading!

Finally listening to portable tunes again.

Today was a beautiful day. I got a new iPod, most likely refurbished actually. Unfortunately, I lost all of the 3700 songs that was on my original iPod, but I can get them back when I get home so I'm not sweating it.

I have been dreading this week for some reason coming into lectures with the title "Bible overview." I guess I just told myself that I know what the Bible is about and I didn't need a summary, but of course my speculations were incorrect, as always, and it is actually the Bible in a historical context and a study of the era. I really enjoyed class today as we moved through the first three books, Genesis through Leviticus in case you didn't know. We have five days of lectures in one week and the first day of this week is already gone with time spent on only 3 books. If you do the math, that is 63 books in 4 days, so we'll see how it goes.

Time is moving so fast that it is blowing my mind. I can't believe that I have been in Malaysia for 2 months. I feel like yesterday I was homesick, but I can't actually tell you the last time I felt homesick. My friendships are constantly growing here and we are all becoming so much closer. It is getting worse and worse to think about when I come home. I'll be so excited to see my family and friends again, but at the same time, I'm leaving a whole other set of family and friends all over again. I'm looking so forward to June and dreading it at the same time.

There is something that I would also like for you to pray for. Kai Lee, one of the YWAM staff, heads up the ministry with the Nepali migrant workers here. A while back Kai Lee had cancer and went through chemotherapy and radiation and the treatment was successful. She has just found out that her cancer has come back and it is impossible to remove so she will have to go through treatment a second time. I don't even need to tell you how devastating this disease is, and of course I am assuming you are somewhat intelligient, giving some of you the benefit of the doubt of course. Personally, it has taken two family members away from me. Pray for Kai Lee, and also pray for the people we all know with this disease. That is about all I have for right now. Thanks for reading.

Fighting lions.

I have been having a ridiculous time lately thinking of things to write and finding time to write them. I have had a pretty busy week trying to get things taken care of before our midterm outreach that is the week after next, a period of two weeks when I will not have a computer and if I can post it will be information I have given my mom over the phone and she has put on here for me. Once we are home, after the two weeks in Georgetown, we will have exactly four weeks of lectures before we leave for our outreach locations.



After a couple of Apple shop stops pertaining to my iPod, I was referred to the tech support center here in town when the other shops couldn't tell me what the problem was. After looking at the iPod for a few minutes the girl told me everything that I already knew. According to the shop, the iPod classics have been having the problem pretty frequently and she said if they couldn't fix it they would give me a new one in five to seven business days. I can't argue with that.

In my quiet time a couple of days ago, I was reading in 1 Samuel 17, and I came across the part where David is telling Saul how he can fight Goliath just as he fought the lions in the wilderness when he was shepherding his flock. God prepared David for his big fight by giving him lions to build his courage and strength. At the time, I wonder what David thought about having to deal with a lion, because I know that I would have soiled myself. David fought them like any good shepherd would have, and little did he know that every lion he fought readied him more and more for a fight against a giant to save the nation of Israel from the Philistines. After that fight, I think that David was really thankful to God for sending him the lions. I have been wondering to myself how I have handled the lions in my past and how I will handle the lions in the future, and also the giants that I will kill after being prepared by the smaller fights.. I am beginning to look forward to them instead of opposing them.

I experienced another funny thing with John. When we went to the Apple store we brought a taxi home and the driver was a Tamil fellow and John immediately began talking to this fellow in his native language. After the cab ride John and the cab driver exchanged information. Come to find out, the cab driver was a believer and listened to John and decided that it was mandatory for John to come and speak at his church. As I type this, a police car pulled up with John in the back. The police officers decided that they should check John's passport information. Everyone is in a pretty quick struggle to find John's passport, so that is all I have to say right now. Thanks for reading.

Do you understand what am I talking about?!...

...That isn't a typo either. That is the most repeated phrase that peppered our lectures today by our Singaporean speaker this week. Samuel Phun is his name, and I can already tell this is going to be the most refreshing week for myself that we have had so far. It is perfect timing coming the very first week of the second half of lectures.

Sam Phun is a large 42 year old Singaporean guy that spoke to us today in camo shorts and a baggy t-shirt. Due to his highlighted, spiked hair, that fit his fashion well, fixed (not combed at all) into mullet form, I felt connected immediately of course. His topic is evangelism, and he presents it very differently than many people I have heard speak about the topic before. He is the pastor of a church in Singapore and the biggest ministry he heads up is a prison ministry. One of the fellow leaders in his church is a convicted murderer that spent 14 years in prison! Talk about someone who accepts everybody and their love of God for what it is, not who they are!

Sam talked to the class today about evangelism and how the techniques will always change but the message will not. He was very heavy on the fact that how we share Jesus is going to be so different from generation to generation, but the fact that Jesus is the one we are sharing always makes the central message essentially the same, no matter the presentation. I felt a little awkward and exuberant at the same time as he pointed out to our class that I had a better chance to connect with people of our generation than anyone else in the class. He asked our class why he thought that, and after several guesses such as, "He's white," "He speaks English" and "He knows how to talk to people," he came out and revealed that it was my style. He said college students around here would open up to me a lot easier than they would many of the other people in our class because of my appearance. This is what I have been screaming from the start.

I am in no way advocating that anyone or their children to go and get visible tattoos or wear any certain style of clothing (thus washing my hands from the responsibility of other's choices!), but I agree that there are certain people out there that I would be able to present the gospel to in a public, non-religious setting much better than my dad would be able to. I'm not saying that he couldn't either, I'm just saying it might be easier for someone my age to open up to me than some other people out there. My biggest question now is: How will that help me in Nepal? I don't know the answer, but I do know that I will be buying several Nepali outfits so I can fit in a little better than just being a blatant white American. Pray for me and a connection! Thanks for reading!

A boring weekend

Hello everyone, and sorry I haven't updated in a couple of days. It has been a pretty eventless few days and as a matter of fact I have had more than enough time to post but unfortunately, I am that lazy. There hasn't been much to write about anyway, and that is how I am justifying my lack of blogging regularity.

Something near and dear to my heart is currently having some problems: my iPod. I bought it right before I left too. It is actually acting so weird on me that I took it to an Apple retailer to see if the good Mac doctor could make a diagnosis. The end result was a confusing conversation between some Asians and myself. In the end, I gathered that my iPod reads as a blank cd for some reason when it is plugged in and they couldn't do anything for me. I was, however, given a card for the Apple support center here on the island. I was told that if they could fix it they would and that if they couldn't I would get a new iPod because it is still under warranty, and either one of those options is okay with me.

After walking the girls home last night, we ran across a snake slithering across the road. Jared kept suggesting that I catch it but I wasn't interested because it was just a baby python. I told him that he was more than welcome to grab it himself and began coaching him through grabbing him. The snake didn't get picked up. We stood in the road for a little bit and looked at it and some guys on motorbikes stopped and told us that it was a python. I felt snake savvy having known previously that it was a python. This was the most riveting event that happened this weekend, save the one hour of kayaking in the ocean which led to very sunburned knees and salt-burned eyes.

Also, I have discovered that God wants me to become fat. I already told you about the roti bom that I eat on a regular basis. At first, I would have thought it a terrible thing to be on a first name basis with the Tamil fellows that run this place. It would, after all, just be a testimony of how it is easy to remember the customer that always comes and gives you money for your most fattening menu items. What I didn't think about, was the fact that all of these fellows are Muslims, and though I haven't openly sat down and asked Dahir or Ali about Jesus they have seen me with my Bible and that we have had small group Bible study there at their shop. It takes some tactics to just share with a Muslim fellow but hopefully my attitude and actions are speaking to their lives. I have two a month and a half more of eating their greasy fatty foods. I ask that you pray for my friends. Pray for my stomach too, I am getting fat in the name of Jesus anyway. Thanks for reading!