pictures… at least i’m gonna try

Howdy guys. I hope that this blog finds you all doing well. I had a fabulous day. The Lord and I started the day off with an awesome time of him speaking to me and really showing me some things in my heart. But before I get into that.. let me explain the pictures. The one on the right is me and Sita, who has become my nepalee best friend. She has been trained by our m team to lead the kids clubs on friday at chuch, which is what the picture of on the bottom. I was very ministered to as I watched about 35 street kids come and learn bible verses, stories and sing. The picture on the left is of me and some street kids that always play outside my gate. They also come to the kids club. They are obviously very poor, but soo cute. They were so excited to have their picture taken, and even more excited when I gave them oreos.. That was like gold to them!

I just finished attempting to bake a chocholate cake from scratch with very sketchy ingriedients. The cake tastes wonderful.. however, the hard part is it was a bundt cake trying to cook in a toaster oven if you can imagine so the outside is really really done.. the inside not so done. Oh well.. we’ll see what happens. I am having my friend sita’s birthday party at my house tommorow after church.

Today I took at two and half hour language lesson from the cute nepalee old man who teaches me. He is just precious and a WONDERFUL teacher.. however.. as he told me.. my southern accent prononcing nepalee is horrible. It’s quite humbling trying to learn not only to speak, but to read and write. wow.. My teacher is hindu and he was teaching me the word for river is ghanga and teaching me how to write that when he told me that if he bathed in the ghanges river he would be holy. SO God used that as an open door for me to talk about how christians believe that accepting christ makes them holy because of his sacrifice.. and about baptism. GLORY!

ok.. so as for what God is showing me. He showed me today that I was not going through culture shock but miss. shock. I realized that I had this idea that because I was leaving everything I love and cherish so dearly to come to a land far far away, that God would reward that. He would give me days packed with ministry, where I always see what impact I am making. When you go on a miss. trip short term, often your time if very packed with things to do all the time that seem very obviously meaningful for the kingdom of God. In opposition to that, when you come as a career “m” I am finding that there are many days when your days are filled with just the tasks of living and such. I was carrying around these mission. expectations, and expecting God to expect the same thing of me. So I was constantly feeling this inner tension. Today the Lord spoke clearly to me and told me that service that you do for him to find an identify or pride in saying, look at these results is empty worship. True worship is practicing the presence of God daily, minute by minute! So I felt the Lord take that heavy weight of expectation of my heart today and remind me that we are just on a journey, an ADVENTURE together.

ok.. sorry that was really long and really serious. Just consider this today– are you serving God like it will get you further in the grip of HIS love– because if so that makes us no different then the hindu’s here.. or are WE serving God as an outpouring of worship? hmmm…