The Post Where I Catch Up on a Lost Week and Mention Jesus a Lot

I'm quickly finding that if I don't visit town often, my inbox fills up (especially after making a massive request for coats and magice markers) and people begin to believe that I either a) hate them, b) ignore them, c) am using my support money to purchase drugs and Johnny Cash bootlegs, or d) have been kidnapped and devoured by Maoist insurgents. I am more than pleased to assure you that none of these elements are entirely true (I purchased sleeping pills to counteract the lip-smacking and sleep mumbles of one Jason Hayes), though I did have my first run-in with the Maoists last week. But more on that later...

So I received my first e-buke this week from a dear friend who expressed his frustration that Jason and I didn't take advantage of the goat sacrifice as an opportunity to share the gospel. Old Jordan would've gotten defensive and angry, and launched an offensive about "how much I talk about Jesus, and jeez, I mean, I'm freaking here in Nepal, aren't I?" However, it appears Old Jordan is dead, officially. Instead, I felt the warm pangs of conviction that are quickly becoming daily occurences as commonplace as, oh, say, emitting carbon dioxide. Funny how quickly spiritual arrogance breaks down under the weight of isolation and the discipline of washing your boxers in a stream inbetween grazing cattle.

So Broken Jordan examined his heart and his ministry and found both to be lacking. Not non-existent, just not intentional; like, I should be cleaning up the kitchen and putting out that grease fire I started, but Greys Anatomy is just sooooo good this week unintentional. Jason and I talked it up a bit, having both received the same email, and came to the conclusion that while the work of our hands and the speech of our lips are full of grace and compassion, they're lacking the desperation of the need for the healing touch of the Holy Spirit in a dying land. Not that much different from being in America of course: for comfort's sake, I'd rather talk about politics or baseball or breast feeding, anything other than confronting somebody with frank talk about Jesus. Blegghh... I suck as a missionary.

So we're changing things up a little bit, getting more intensive with biblical disciplines and sharing the gospel instead of ancient Jordanic wisdom (which for the record, has proved to be pretty rife with errors anyway). Most of the kids from CWC are still away visiting what family they have for the remainder of the Desai holiday, so its been a blessing to have that much more time both to ourselves (boring though) and to spend with some of the older boys we're honing in on. These specifically being the ones you can pray for:

Nabin: My little Nepali playboy... Nabin is 17, and acts it to a point. He is highly intelligent and speaks English pretty fluently, to the extent that he's actually been tutoring me at night as I study Nepali. He's athletic, a purty swell dancer, and much like Augustine, he likes the ladies. His father is dead, and his mother is very sick, leaving him with little family save for extended relatives, and no male mentor in his life.

During the course of our studying together, we've gotten to engage in a lot of good personal conversation; Nabin has a lot of questions about women and dating, two subjects in which I am an utter failure, but he enjoys hearing about all of my mistakes (and Jason's near marriage). Regardless, I sprinkle our conversations with a heavy dosage of Paul and Peter. Nabin is very open to hearing about Christ, and agrees with a lot of what the bible has to say, but he's very hesitant to respond because his grandfather, who is just about the only blood relative he has left, has threatened to exile him from the family if he becomes a Christian. Exile is bad in Nepal, to the "You're dead to me!" extent. So pray for Nabin and his family, that God would will Nabin to himself and work through him to change the hearts of his grandfather and their village; that Nabin's fears would be abolished in the peace of the blood of Christ, and that the longings of his heart for purpose and family would be met in the word of truth, the gospel of our salvation.

Rajesh: Rajesh is 19, a pre-med student at one of the local colleges, and one of the pillars of leadership in the Welfare Centre. According to Rina, he'd been shy and reclusive during the time that he's lived at the Centre (11 years) until Jason and I arrived. Rajesh's parents abandoned him and his brother and sister when they were all very young, and the three were placed in separate orphanages in the Kathmandu valley shortly thereafter.

Rajesh was the first guy to open up to Jason and I, stopping by our room to talk and ask for guitar lessons, cracking jokes while cooking dinner with us upstairs, and mispronouncing the word "fish" (fissssss). Rajesh has some obvious wounds, but he quickly latched on us as men of peace and a source of friendship. He translates for us when we lead devotionals for the younger children, even though he has serious doubts about the validity of the Christian bible. In talking with Rajesh, I've learned that his biology and physics classes have led to him having some distorted and wary views on the interaction between science and the bible, and that a lot of things he's been taught have been biased and uneducated opinions passed off as fact (flies did not come from snakes). However, Rajesh hasa confidence in him that leads me to believe and hope that he will be my brother in Christ before I leave this country: he's so anxious to hear about God, and he actively seeks out and challenges my knowledge of the bible and its historical and scientific accuracy. I love a skeptic, as I used to be one myself, so pray that the resources and wisdom that God has granted me would lead to the joy of salvation in Rajesh's life. Pray also that as Rajesh considers medical schools, that God would provide a sponsor and a visa so that he can receive an education in America or England; Jason and I long to bring him home with us. And that he would learn to say fish correctly, as its driving me insane.

Birendra: I love this guy; looooooooooove him. Like the Mouth of Sauron, Birendra is often the physical embodiment of the words of Rupa and Rina at CWC: they speak, and Birendra gathers up the orphans and directs traffic to ensure that things happen. He's quiet, trustworthy, dependable (both his parents abandoned him, so he took up a job to support his incapacitated grandparents, often giving up his meals so they could eat), articulate, and compassionate. In other words, he's Eric Dacus, minus the Eric face and accompanying Eric noise which consonants and vowels fail to capture.

Nepali guys are very physically affectionate with each other, holding hands in public and occaissionally kissing each other on the cheek, and so it is a blessing to me that years of friendship with Ben Casey and interlocked toe love with Hirschy prepared me for Birendra. Birendra is always, always touching me somehow: falling asleep on me in a mini-bus, holding on to my thigh while we watch Mr. Bean, rubbing my shoulders while I eat dinner. This wouldn't be so odd if he wasn't 18, but I'm getting over my aversion to physical touch (I'm a hermit, remember?).

Birendra has a beautiful innocence to him, to the extent that I nearly convinced him that the book The Indian In the Cupboard was a true story the other night. He has a heart for children, and does more to look after the younger orphans than Jason and I are willing to do. He's a leader in CWC, a voice of comfort to the younger and lonely children, and a reminder of my need to embrace peace rather than wrath. Pray for CWC to find the money to send Birendra to college, possibly in America, for biblical perspective to aid Birendra's compassion, and for our conversations to be teeming with the presence of the Holy Spirit. I desperately want to enjoy heaven with this guy, and I want you to meet him there.

As for me? Spiritually, I'm doing well, as the free time has allowed me to invest a lot of myself into the Word. I've been working on memorizing the book of Ephesians and portions of Colossians, and Jason and I are about to embark on an inductive study of Romans. Which means this will probably be the last coherent blog you see for a while. I've been listening to a sermon series on church history by Tom Nelson and taking notes...fascinating to see where you and I that are brothers and sisters in Christ have come from, and I highly recommend you engage in such a study yourselves. And I started reading Dallas Willard's The Divine Conspiracy again, a book which I almost insist on every believer I know owning, which I believe Mike Harper would agree with me on since its the only thing he and I talked about for nearly a year.

Pray for my health: I've been sick nearly half the time I've spent here in Nepal thus far, and I'm really suffering under the strain of insomnia (I don't like hating Jason because he can sleep and I can't). For that matter, pray for the health of my parents. A good friend informed me of how he was attacked while in China last year through the physical health of his family, and I fear the same for myself; my mother has already been to the hospital once since I got here, and I have recurring nightmares about my father having another heart attack. I can't handle the strain of a sick parent, despite my levity with the subject of death in regards to my beloved iPod.

Pray for my heart: I've been really burdened with loneliness here in the last week, as well as grief over some dead relationships. I miss the Grove, I miss sandwiches, I miss Guster, and I miss Jake Newell. This is not an easy life here, and I don't mean the living in poverty and being covered in sniffling, giggling orphans 24 hours a day. I came to the realize this weekend that life at home is changing without me: people are getting married, moving away, buying waverunners, having twins, etc. And I'm here, isolated in a foreign country and reduced to words on your laptop monitor, the blatherings of a post-modern madman lost in the Nepali wilderness. I feel loved, immersed in prayer, and supported by every living being I know that's not in a coma, but I also feel so alone at the same time. Pray for me to get over myself and focus on having an eternal perspective, enjoy deep fellowship with God through the workings and the groanings of the Spirit who lives in me, and to stop listening to the Heartbreaker album so much (Call Me On Your Way Back Home is killing me right now).

I love you all, I miss my family, and I have a craving for salsa. They have this incredibly spicy condiment here made out of Nepali tomatoes, chillis, and gram marsala, and its close in texture, but really salty and so hot it chokes you. I can seriously only eat a teaspoon of it on my rotis (baked tortillas) at a time. Anyway, I've lovingly nicknamed this concoction "Nepalsa," just for future reference, but its a poor substitute for La Huercha. So take your community group or your wife or your roommates, or for that matter, an international UA student, out for chips, salsa, and a margarita (non-alcoholic for those of you who still have issues with my love for beer) on me. I'm good for it.

P.S. Jason still hasn't shaved. Gross...