Sleeping Bear, Sault Saint Marie

Hibernation and honeymoons, like all good things that include massive amounts of sleeping and the appropriate gruntings, must come to an end. And thus, I break my three week silence.

Shocked to see an update? I’m rather shocked to be typing it, personally. I’ll give you a moment to still the beating of your hearts, waiting for the color to return to your cheeks while you curse me for the burning hot mocha you just spilled on your blouse (Dad, you wear blouses?). More than likely, many of you have been eagerly awaiting some sort of eulogy by Jason commemorating my life and times, a video montage of my greatest moments with the proper Boyz II Men accompaniment. Alas, I've disappointed you. My return marks the release of the Playstation 3, heralds peace with Maoists, and boasts of an end to the massive amounts of Nepali illnesses I've been battling throughout the last three weeks.

In all truth, it’s been a struggle to coerce myself into sitting at my laptop long enough to write anything worth reading; November has been a constant battle with my physical health, my heart, and my pride. Don't worry, all will hopefully be explained by the end of this post, but it may take some time. Fortunately, that's a luxury that I have in plenty.

Let me preface this update with a pretty obvious, but recent and penetrating truth that has been revealed to me: I am a prideful, arrogant, cocky, willful lover of self. I've always had, as Chris Thile sings, "an appetite for my own myth." This "mythos of Jordan," if you will, was something I worked hard to establish as a college student, and even harder to perpetuate as I entered the adult world. My exploits, from being pulled over by four cop cars for allegedly robbing Casa Taco, to a near-death experience giving plasma, were offered up to my tiny immediate world in such a way that it became my hope that I would become important enough to enter the realm of urban legend. I allowed this, and of course preferred it, because it gave me the opportunity to be known by my stories rather than my character. It is, after all, much easier to cultivate a story than a relationship (and a lot less stressful). So, I circulated my life as opposed to sharing it with people, and in the process, I fell in love with myself.

Pride is the wellspring of all sorts of other forms of personal desolation, and as I'm finding out, it’s the source of a vast amount of various forms of sin in my life. In my flawed thinking, I'm too strong, too smart, too witty, too cultured, too pious, too good to succumb to the pettiness of sin. I’m above lust, deception, idolatry, bigotism, prejudice, and condemnation. I know better than my parents, better than my friends, better than you who read these words of mine, better than God himself, in matters of decisions to be made about the direction of my life, how to spend my money, how to live, how to love, matters of politics, popular culture, and classical Russian architecture.... You name it, and in my mind and my heart, I secretly believe that I'm better than you at it. And even if I'm not better than you, there's something about me that makes me conveniently more interesting or exciting than you. And the truth of it is? I'm nothing, aside from what God chooses to make of me, other than skilled at the careful elaboration of clever adjectives, and lucky enough to get attacked with bricks in a mini-bus.

Part of the reason I came to Nepal was that I wanted desperately to distance myself from the sickness in my heart; I was tired of trying to be liked by everyone and known by no one. I can count my good friends on one hand, and I've hated myself for being unsatisfied with that. I was tired of finding my identity in the contents of my iPod and my wall of DVDs, tired of living through stories about me rather than living in fellowship with the people they were told to, and tired of feeling that I had to invoke the guise of somebody I only happened to be in random situations in order to feel like I mattered to anybody. Sound familiar? That's because it’s the basic premise of Saved by the Bell: ordinary kids who only matter because of the fantastical events taking place around them. Seriously, who ever went to a high school where oil well sprung up on the football field? I graduated with Amy Lee from Evanescence, but she at least had the talent and presence of mind not to write something as awful as “Friends Forever (Friends Until the End).” Zak Attack, may you rest in peace.

So here I am in Nepal, my net worth held within the fabric of a massive backpack that doesn't even belong to me (thanks again Twood!), hoping and believing that I will no longer suffer under the weight of the sin of pride. And wouldn't you know it, the forces set against me know exactly how to spring that trap again. When I stepped off the plane in Kathmandu, I found my strength in the wellspring of support and love given to me by my family, friends, my church, former co-workers, and even complete strangers. I relied on this blog to give me a creative outlet, a source of sharing and a "little" (ahem) venting, and a means of staying at least somewhat American for nine months. I was in desperate need of the grace of children, and so I also relied on the orphans of CWC to help my heart heal and my mind mature. And in my reliance on these things, instead of God, pride didn't just keep its foothold; it gained strength and momentum.

I started receiving emails from both friends and strangers that, while meaning to be encouraging in nature, mainly communicated a solitary message: "I heard about what you're doing, and I just wanted you to know that that's awesome, and you are so good for doing it." Sounds ridiculous...just emails, right? Well, what if you start getting 30 of them a week? What if 50 orphans lavish you with compliments about how attractive you are in your sunglasses and Puma jacket ("Ohhhhh Jordan brother, you are soooooo handsome today!") for 24 hours a day? What if the rather large local newspaper in your home state publishes an editorial about orphanages and quotes a portion of an article you'd written in the same paragraph as some info about Madonna? What if you notice that your blog gets 400 hits in a week, with multiple compliments about how great of a writer you are (by the way, you don't have to stop telling me that)? What if you start believing all these messages about yourself? I did.

If anything else, it becomes easier to orchestrate popular belief about yourself if the only way anybody can keep up with you is by reading your Internet rantings; you simply share the good parts and omit the bad. I tried to avoid this by sharing both successes and failures, but in doing so, I mainly just found myself repeating a refrain of, "I'm so honest about my mistakes, I'm so good at being transparent with you, please just love me anyway" So I become either so prideful that I omit my failures, or so prideful that I practice false humility. Hence my struggle in being an unbiased journalist: the topic of me is the one in which I am the most biased! How can I not have an opinion about myself? Everything I write, everything I offer to you, is then both truth and a desired and fostered belief that I wish for you to hold about me. And if I don't like part of it...well, I control what falls under the backspace guillotine.

My struggle is then twofold: the yearning to tell you what’s happening with us here in Nepal so that you’ll pray for me (and admire me), versus keeping goings on to myself and depriving you of information, and in the process both starving my insatiable thirst for recognition and stifling my need for spiritual support from across the Pacific. So pray for my heart right now; I’m healing, but it’s a lengthy process. I stare at Microsoft Word and yearn to spew out multiple articles because I love to write and I love you, but I can’t will myself to do it when the subject of Jordan keeps supplanting the subject of God and His glory. I’m tired of inserting myself as the main character in a meta-narrative that isn’t about me, and I’m tired of dumping all my problems onto Blogger and letting you sort through them for me whilst assorted Nepali orphans yank on my bhoka dhari (goatee).

I'm not the first missionary to struggle with the aspect of loving myself for and because of the work I'm doing, and I most assuredly won't be the last; but missions is not an occupation for the prideful, and it is not the glamorous trench fight that we envision it to be. This life is hard, the stakes are heavy, and the environment is hostile. If you watch war movies even semi-regularly, you’ll notice that soldiers rarely stop in the middle of an intense battle to admire their medals or count out on their fingers how many of the opposition they’ve gunned down; most of them are too busy crawling on their bellies, praying against shrapnel wounds, gunfire, and the occasional leech bite. I’ve lived with two Marines, and I think both of them would agree that if you have time to stop and admire the battlefield, you’re either a megalomaniac or eager to get shot in the head.

I'm learning one of those lessons that you assume to know, but don't understand until you're in the field, getting your teeth kicked in: ministry, like an orchard, takes more than effort to produce fruit. Apple trees need years to mature until they reach a fruit-producing stage, and likewise, nine months, much less two, on foreign soil is barely grazing the top layer. This doesn't mean that there's no work to be done during those early seasons leading up to the initial harvest, but I, in the futility of my thinking, honestly believed in the depths of my heart that I would step off the plane in Kathmandu and be horded by a throng of wailing, garment-rending Nepalis desperate for a young American to tell them "'bout that Jesus!" With my mouth, I profess wanting to be a forgotten but God-fearing laborer, but in my heart, I yearn to be a John Elliot or a Hudson Taylor; nobody publishes the journals or writings of a forgotten soul in a forgotten orphanage in an unknown country. So shame on me...

So, you’re thinking, “Great, I appreciate all of what you’ve shared Mr. Bear, but in spite of that, where the heck have you been for the last three weeks? Why haven’t you at least posted a quick update letting us know what’s going on in the orphanage? Why can’t you communicate more succinctly?” Well, I really can’t inform you as to what’s been going on in the orphanage because I’ve barely been involved in it for the majority of November. I’ve been either bedridden or temporarily crippled for nearly all of the last three weeks. So much for “no news is good news,” right?

The first weekend of the month (Nov. 3-5), I was sidelined with a stomach flu that kept me in bed with a fever and minor delusions, due in part to the fact that I fell asleep watching A Scanner Darkly. I took some meds, got some rest, and by mid-week was feeling good enough to resume normal life. No worries, right? Flu is seasonal, and I usually get it bad enough once a year to stick me in bed for a day or two. So while I was terribly frustrated that I couldn’t spend any time with the kids in their first weekend back from holiday, I made do with the situation.

The following Saturday morning (Nov. 11), I got really nauseated while eating breakfast, enough that I trashed my peanut butter toast and wandered around on the roof for a half-hour to get some fresh air in my lungs. I went back downstairs to read in my room for a couple minutes, but the nausea came back even worse, and I was overwhelmed with the urge to poop. To spare you the details, I literally spent the entire day in the bathroom; I counted 17 trips to the beloved squattie potty. I fought diarrhea up until about five in the evening, when my temperature shot up to 102 and I passed out in my sleeping bag. I woke up a few times to throw up, and I recall watching the Scooby Doo movie on my laptop; in my weakest moment, I cried at the scene where Shaggy gives Scoob the “you’re my best friend in the whole wide world and I’m sorry I didn’t trust you, so let’s run away before the gigantic Scrappy Doo monster devours our souls” speech. I get emotional when I’m sick.

I stayed in bed all of Sunday, hiding from the sun and from food; for some reason, whenever I get sick, I adhere to a “starve a fever, and while you’re at it, starve everything else just to make certain” philosophy. When Rina found out that I hadn’t eaten in 48 hours the following morning, I discovered exactly what a furious and irrational pregnant woman looks and sounds like. She tossed me in the car and made me go to the international hospital in Thammel. For those who know me well, this is a drastic measure: I HATE going to the doctor, partially out of a fear of being naked in front of a stranger, and partially because I always expect to find out that I’ve somehow contracted HIV or bubonic plague via impossible means. At this point, I was too weak and too tired to argue, though Rina did enjoy scaring me with AIDS stories on the way into the city. (“No Jordan, seriously, my friend, I know this guy, and he got a note on an airplane that said ‘Welcome to the World of AIDS.’ And he died. Of AIDS.”)

The hospital visit turned out to be fine; in fact, the only difficulty I had to endure was providing a stool sample for the hospital lab with no food in my stomach. My doctor, an endearing Israeli pilgrim, told me I had a bacterial infection in my small intestine that had probably come from eating undercooked food (gasp! Here? In Nepal?). Her prescription: take Ciprofloxacin, which I had already stocked up before leaving Arkinsaw, to counteract the infection. The only unnerving news she had for me was that my weight had dropped to 156 lbs—meaning that I’ve lost 20 lbs since I boarded a flight out of Fayetteville, 12 lbs of which had been shed over the course of two days. I don’t mind a shrinking waistline, but hearing of rapid weight loss like that scared the crap out of me.

Thus far, pretty standard stuff right? Go to East Asia, eat the private parts of a goat, get a stomach illness; seems pretty straightforward to me. So one would assume that pooping out a dozen pounds is punishment enough for one week, and anything above and beyond that would fall into the range of cruel and unusual (but humorous) punishment. And I am such a glutton for the cruel and unusual…

The morning after my hospital visit, I woke up with little bites all over my butt, and two big ones on the inside of my right thigh and my right ankle. They were a little itchy, and the bigger ones had a little red “eye” in their respective centers, leading me to believe that they were spider bites. Believe it or not, I was actually excited to think that I had been ravaged in my sleeping bag by a crab spider in my sleep, as it gave me the opportunity to write about the continuation of our battle with the wretched beasts. By Friday morning, my ankle had swollen up to the size of a golf ball and was oozing like…like…like something gross and oozy. I bought some medicine from a pharmacy in Kathmandu for spider bites, skeptical of its plausibility as a cure given that the pharmacy was run by a 13-year-old boy—no changes by Sunday night, and the swelling was even bigger, now nearly the size of a tennis ball. It is at this point that I am beginning to think that I may not have run afoul of some sinister arachnid after all, but by no means am I willing to make a second hospital trip in one week.

I asked around to all the kids in the orphanage, and sure enough, they knew what I had: pilo, popularly referred to in the U.S. as an abscess. For those who don’t what an abscess is, it happens to be yet another bacterial infection, this type being of the skin—circulated by unclean drinking water, utterly preventable and utterly painful. I popped the pilo on my thigh and doused it in antibiotic cream, but my ankle refused to respond to medicines and hurt so badly that I couldn’t walk come Monday morning (Nov. 20). I took some pictures, but most of them are too gross to post on here, plus I’d prefer to keep the few readers I still have. See, I do have a heart!

So here I am, physically weakened from one bacteria in my stomach, and crippled by another in my ankle. Leave it to Nepali orphans to save my foot. Birendra told me he’d had a pilo in each of his knees right before Jason and I arrived in Nepal, and he offered to make me a special local medicine that he swore would heal it overnight. I wasn’t in much of a position to refuse treatment, so I told Birendra to bring it on. And his solution? A poultice made out of a black mountain spice that is commonly ground up and mixed with fermented rice to make Nepali whiskey. We fixed up a little bandage out of our whiskey cream and some toilet paper, and behold! Within hours, my foot was rapidly shrinking, and my pilo turned into the Mt. Vesuvius of skin wounds. The little bacterial eye is still in my ankle, but it’s on the verge of popping out, and more importantly, I can run and jump and kick and dance and skydive again. Praise Jesus! Praise Nepali whiskey!

Thus is the end of my battle with mysterious Nepali diseases. I ask you to pray for my health and my immune system fervently, as it seems to be the main nature of the spiritual attack against my person here. Jason has routinely struggled with financial concerns (email him at jboxhayes@gmail.com and ask him what he thinks of Nepali bicycles for a good laugh), and I’ve been stuck in bed for three of the last four weeks. I find myself frustrated with God a lot, questioning why I’ve been brought here if it’s just to lie in bed, watching bits of DVDs on my computer in-between trips to the bathroom. I have honestly considered caving in and rebooking my plane tickets to come back home, but the fear of failure and the expectation that God has greater plans in store if I remain faithful have kept me in line.

It is difficult to justify calling myself a missionary when I can’t even get of my sleeping bag to visit with the children I was called to this country to minister to, but in my darkest of times, I remember my discipler and spiritual father, “Pedro.” Pedro and his family moved to another East Asian country several years ago to faithfully follow a calling that had been tugging on their hearts for nearly 10 years, and it did not go smoothly. Life was dark, painful, and lonely for Pedro and his family for their first two years abroad, filled to excess with struggles against the forces set against them. In the spring of 2005, Pedro was stricken with a mystery disease that went undiagnosed by multiple doctors in multiple hospitals in multiple cities.

Pedro and his wife were terrified that his life was in danger, and no specialist they visited could give them any answers as to the sickness that thrived within his body. Their prayer letters were heartfelt and moving, crying out for prayer support from friends and family, but they were lacking in fear: Pedro and his wife had supreme confidence that God was their savior, their comfort, and their sovereign protector, and they would never be forsaken by Him. I was both shocked and overjoyed then on the day that I received an email update proclaiming that Pedro had been healed completely, almost as quickly as he had taken sick. God has since honored Pedro’s faithfulness, as he continued to minister even in the midst of his search for treatment, and today, his ministry in East Asia has begun to thrive—I receive weekly updates of multiple brothers and sisters being born into faith in Christ through the ministry team he now leads.

So I end all the crap in this post with joy and peace. I am imperfect, I am impatient, and I am incapable, but God has brought me to Nepal in spite of, and perhaps because of these things. My heart is mending, my body is healing, and I am maturing in my faith despite my struggles and my complaints. With Thanksgiving behind us (and I hope all of you had a wonderful holiday!), we have begun preparations for Christmas: putting up decorations and lights in the orphanage, teaching carols during devotional time each evening, writing letters to Santa, and so forth. Jason helped set up an Angel Tree collection with his family back in Arkansas, and through the help of his church and family, we’ve managed to raise nearly $3000 to spend on winter coats and Christmas gifts for the children! Praise be to God, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual (and financial) blessing in Christ! The kids have asked me to help them organize a nativity drama for them to perform at their church on Christmas morning, so I’ve got my hands full finding a way to fit 50 kids into a manger, though the movie Love Actually did give me some ideas—apparently both Spiderman and an octopus were present at the birth of Christ.

I apologize if the nature of this article seemed to be a downer, but please don’t take it as such; I’ve had a hard month, but God has remained merciful to me in the midst of my weakness. As my strength is returning, so too is a larger measure of faith, and I will not cease to proclaim the goodness and glory of God the Father, even with pilo peeking out of my ankle. I’ll give a more cheerful and in-depth update of goings-on within the next few days, as well as a response to those of you who emailed me to celebrate the Nepali government signing a peace treaty with the Maoists last week. Thanks for reading, for sticking with me, and for not emailing me trivial Razorback updates. I leave you with your final Nepali language lesson for the week: Jai Masih, which means “Praise the Lord.” Impress your friends…