This past week we got to experience the Thai New Year, or Songkran. Thais celebrate this holiday with a huge nation wide water fight. The festival officially lasts about three days, but unofficially it goes on all week. In the country, kids hide behind bushes and cars hoping to catch a motorist by surprise with a bucket full of water. However, the city is an all out brawl. One wouldn’t even be able to walk down the street without being completely drenched. Christian “Skid” Roderick caught some of our Shenanigans on film. Enjoy
Sorry for delay on the blogs, but I figured there might be a few people out there who would get a kick out of what God is doing around the world. My team spent most of our time in a small village about 70 km out side of Ongole called Darsi. We slept on the floor of a church with bars for windows and used our tents for mosquito nets. At about 3pm everyday we would climb into a small “Tuc Tuc” and head out to an even smaller village for ministry. We would literally show up, rest and have some Indian beverage, visit between 20 to 75 houses, and then put on a program at the village church. We usually wouldn’t get back to Darsi until midnight to 2am.
Healings are something that I grew up hearing/reading about (in the Bible) but never really heard about in my time. Sure we always pray for sick and injured people to be healed but did I really buy into it before the race. Not really. To me it was something that was there but I didn’t actually believe in it with all my heart. I guess it took a week of training camp stories and hearing stories from “the field” to somewhat believe in it.
Over the course of the first three months of my race, I had more of hunger and passion to see, experience, and know God more than I have ever had in my life. Reading past racers blogs about casting out Demons and healing the sick was nopt only fueling a passion inside me to experience theses things.
Anyone that has ever picked up a Bible and read the Gospel know that Jesus asks a few thinks of us: love your neighbor, love God, honor your mom and dad, go make disciples of all nations. The list goes on and on. He also gives us the authority to heal every disease and sickness and cast out every demon through Him. Read Luke 10 if you don’t believe me. I had heard all of these things before but never really thought that I would see them happen. The Lord gave me a heart for this kind of ministry before the Race in training camp when one of the AIM staff gave a talk on what we can expect to see. I remember her just repeating””
I never would have imagined that I would be in some village in bumble India watching Jesus heal people first hand. After we had our rest period we would go house to house praying over the sick, the blind, the demon possessed, and the lame. God healed almost all of them in front of us.
Since i have left India i have seen the Holy Spirit move in many different ways than it did in that country. Even though it hasen't looked the same, it all works for the better of the Kingdom. I will never forget the look on a blind woman's face after her sight was restored, the look of an astonished village after a man with crippled legs dances in the dirt, or the feeling of freedom that a village chief felt after he received Jesus as his Savior.
O herrooooo Thailand! We have been in the country for about a week now and may I say that I am absolutely pumped to be here. We were able to explore Bankok for a few days before all of the guys on the squad headed out on a bus to kick off our manistry month. Our ministry this month is in an orphanage called Remember Nhu. The focus of this organization is to prevent young girls and boys from being sold into the sex industry. The kids here range from about a year and a half to about fifteen.
Our living situation has been a bit different than in most months but I wouldn’t want anything else for our man month. For the first month on the race we are actually using our tents and camping out on a mango orchard. Remember Nhu has recently purchased a piece of land not far from the original home where they will be building more homes for at risk children in the northern part of the country. They call it the new land. I can’t imagine why.
Our contacts this month go by the names of Brian and Beth. They are ex racers from N-Squad and have been living in a small two-room house on the new land for the past nine months. They plan on moving to Cambodia to become the first international staff for the Remember Nhu branch in Phnom Penh. Brian and Beth, along with the other staff here, have an unbelievably big heart for the kids here. The security and comfort they have given up for the Kingdom is nothing less than humbling. From this small house in the country side, they show the love of Christ to hundreds and make up a bigger part of the body than we will every know. We are blessed to be here with them this month.
If you are interested in what God is doing through Beth and Brian you can check out their blog here.
http://www.granolagospel.com/
Please keep Remember Nhu in your thoughts and prayers as they are looking to expand to Brazil and all over the world. Here is a video that a past racer made about our ministry this month.
Hey hey people. We have been in Uganda for almost two weeks. We are with a ministry called Ambassadors of Life Ministries International in a district outside Kampala called Nalukolongo. It was started in 2009 by our contact, Pastor Joseph Nasaga. But, for short we just call him Pastor. We have a pretty amazing ministry this month. I guess it’s more like ministries. Our contact was open to ways that we could help his ministry besides door-to-door evangelism. As much as I enjoy the door to door, it was nice to get a change of pace after three months of the same ministry. Since we have been here our ministry has been: Pastoral Bible studies, health classes, budgeting classes, some orphan care, hospital visits, working with street kids, working with some child soldiers (invisible children) and of course some door-to-door/ street evangelism.
Jack, who studied Biblical Languages in college, has been leading an awesome Bible study for all the church staff on Monday afternoons. His wife Loren has been teaching health classes that stress the importance of simple things like washing your hands, drinking clean water, how to care for a sick child, and many other things that almost come second nature to us. Loren worked for living water and taught classes in South America for two years. Kelsey has been teaching a class on the importance of and how to budget your money. Some of the things she is teaching are completely new to some of the church members.
We are staying at an Inn that’s about four km away from Pastor’s house and the church. It is by fart he nicest place that we have stayed since we have been in Romania. The lady who runs the place, who we call Mama, got a huge kick out of how excited we were to find out that we all had actual beds. I don’t want to brag but we have five bedrooms and each has a bathroom with running water. (You know you have been gone from America for a while when you brag about running water.)
Kampala is an amazing city but it’s almost impossible to put into words how badly God is needed here. Rebel groups from the Congo and Sudan as well as people like Kony and his invisible children have done quite a bit of damage to families in Uganda. This recent warfare along with the HIV/AIDS epidemic have left over 2.7 million children orphaned throughout the country. Some of these kids you can find in crowded orphanages and others you can find roaming the streets in small groups. This week we were able to hang out with some street kids for a bit and bring them some food. When one of our translators offered one of the kids some money for food he replied, “I don’t want your money I just want to go to school.”
Here are a few ways that you can pray for us incase you were wondering. Some of the orphanages that our contact has started are in desperate need of funding. Out of the three that he is involved with, one had been closed down and the kids are now living with various church members. Recently Kampala has had a lot of inflation, leaving many church members in financial need, so be praying for them as they try to make it. A gallon of gas here is about $6. This have led to riots in the city and we already been on lockdown once this month. Over 99% of mosquitoes here carry malaria so please pray for the health of our squad. Luckily everyone on our team has been healthy.
We were able to take a few days off of ministry for Christmas. We had a Christmas party on the night of the 22nd at our church/ house and then we took the two-hour bus ride from Darsi back to Ongole. I’m not gonna lie, Indians defiantly know how to party. Despite this being the first Christmas away from my family, I felt right at home at ICM. They threw Christmas parties two nights in a row for us, and some of the other volunteers, at Sarah’s home.
It was pretty awesome to play Santa Clause or, as the Indian people said, Christmas Grandfather.
On Christmas day we headed back to the orphanage to hang out with kids more. The orphanage took in special needs kids from all over the country.
We had four teams under one contact in India. His name is James and he runs ICM (India Christian Ministries), in Ongole, which is the capital of anapoura. Anapoura is a state on the southeast coast of the country. ICM plays a big part in church plating in Anapoura and it also has an orphanage for the mentally handicapped. Two teams went our to the country to work with local churches and the other two stayed in Ongole to work at the orphanage. My team (Limitless) was lucky enough to be out in the rice fields for a month.
Our living situation was a bit different than most months. We lived in a one-room church. The bathroom was squatty-potty down the street, or anywhere outside if it was after dark. All our dirking water was filtered from a well down the road. The pastor of the church spoke about three words of English, which is about how much telgu we spoke. We had two translators in India. Melik, who is a twenty nine year old ecology professor, and Agape, who is barely fourteen.
James informed us that our team would be evangelizing in small villages in the area for the month, about twenty in all. So at about three o’clock every afternoon, the ten of us packed into a small “Tuck Tuck” and headed to ministry. After traveling in one of these for a month I will never complain again about not getting shotgun or sitting middle. Seriously
I never dreamed that I would have the opportunity to trek in the Himalayas. I also thought that I would never be sharing the Gospel in the Himalayas. Well I guess that just how God works. Month three in Nepal was one of the wildest/ most beautiful months that I ever could have hoped for. The past two years of my life I have spent at the University of Colorado at Boulder. Among other things, it is notorious for the outdoor life that students and residence get to experience. Since living there I have developed a passion for hiking, climbing, and skiing. Just as the holiday season was approaching, God gave me my fill by putting my team and I in the Himalayas for ten days. Although there weren’t any ski resorts, there is no way I am going to complain about being n the most famous mountain range in the world over missing a bad ski season in Colorado.
Our ministry for those ten days was to show Christian based films to remote mountain villagers. The two World Race teams loaded our tents and gear in our packs that we need for the next ten days. Our Nepali pastors gave us their changes of clothes while they carried the generator and all the necessary equipment to put a movie.
Believe it or not, but in Himalayan villages with less than 100 homes there’s not a ton that goes on after dark. So that meant that our film ministry was pretty much the only thing going on. These villagers were mostly Buddhist. One of the villages we visited only had one believer.
We arrived in most villages in the late after noon and most of the time we would rest for a few hours before getting everything set up for the showings. We would set up camp at one of the believers’ houses and then stay there for a night or two. Every village that we went to had a great turn out come sun down.
Our part of the ministry was to show the movie and then leave. We left it up to the local believers to preach and answer any questions. We were just there to plant seads.
Figured it was about time that I let you in on what’s been happening in my life. I know it’s been two months, but fear no more the wait is finally over.
We arrived in Nepal in early November and spent the first week and a half in Kathmandu at our contact’s home there.
Our first ministry was to teach a computer class to the local church leaders. Most of them had never used a computer before but were very eager to learn. We taught skills such as blogging, editing pictures, Facebook, and Twitter. This was my student, Santa. I don’t wanna brag but he was top of his class. Just look at these photo-editing skills. You can also check out Santa’s blog, as well as other pastors on staff here at…
Reuben Rai was our Contact In Nepal. It’s nothing against other World Race contacts but Rueben is a pretty awesome dude. He has been evolved in church planting in the Kathmandu area and is even currently starting an orphanage outside the city. If you have a minute it is defiantly worth the time to check out his site and pray for this man.
I may have had one of the coolest thanksgivings I have very had. When home in Chicago this day could consist of a Thanksgiving hockey tourney, some friendly family ping pong in the garage, maybe even a game of football in the park. However, this day is always identified with an unreal meal cooked by the best mom in the world. We did none of these things.
Our thanksgiving took place on the Nepal Tibet boarder during the heart of operation Kathamndu-it. The day started off with a trek down the mountain across a sweet Indiana Jones bridge.
When then took a trip up the road about an hour and a half to one of the pastor’s home villages where we would be staying for the next three nights. The best part of the bus trip was that the bus was full so we got to ride on top with all of our packs. I have never been to Peru, but I am pretty sure that I have seen scenarios, that look a lot like this one, go very go very wrong on the history channel before. That being said, it was pretty sweet.
After we got settled in, we got to go to the hot springs and relax before a thanksgiving dinner. Now, I have to remind you that the last time I showered was in Romania. Fifty one days of no shower came to a screeching halt at those glorious hot springs, and the past record of a twenty eight day record from a former squad leader shattered.
Thanks giving dinner consisted of chicken momos, which are basically the Nepalese version of pot stickers, and some sort of chicken fried rice with a hard boiled egg chopped up on top. Pretty delicious.
Operation Kathmandu-it is a top-secret mission in the Himalayas. We are on a mission from God. (Blues Brothers voice) I don’t have much time but we just finished breakfast. I had eggs with a mug of water and some bread with peanut butter on it. It would have been toast but the power was out. Nonetheless it was delicious. We leave in one hour for the mountains. We will be going from village to village showing the Jesus Film. Most of the villagers that we will be coming in contact with have never heard of Jesus before or seen white people. Please pray for safety for our teams and for open hearts to God’s word. Please pray for strength because we will be caring heavy equipment at high elevations. Happy Thanksgiving to all and eat some turkey for me. We will be back in Kathmandu on the first of December. L8er sk8ers
