The woman I wrote about a couple posts back just had her seventh child, who came about a month premature but seems to be doing alright.

Our college ministries have ended (as their schoolyear has ended) and went very well, as I was involved on the CUAAD campus and we saw growth in breadth and depth of relationships.

My school year has ended on a good note. I got a 3.75 gpa for this semester, but that may later change to a 4.0.

I have direction: I’m going to be in Texas next year on the SAGU campus getting my degree in Theological Studies with minors in Spanish and Missions. God has blessed me with vision to someday open up my own Engage location. I’m not sure how far off that is, but my goal is to be back on the mission field long-term by the time I’m 30. What comes in between, I do not know…and that’s okay.

Since the last writing, I have had three major firsts. My first time leading worship was Easter Sunday, my first time telling the bible story for our children’s ministry (in spanish, of course) was this past Saturday, and my first time preaching at a service was last night. All of those went better than I could have expected, although I learned things to improve on from each one (which is exactly what I wanted).

Finances are horrible. I’m about $6,000 behind where I should be for my year here, I have no idea how I’m going to pay for school next year (I’m already taking out full loans, but without a car in Texas I am very limited in what jobs I can apply for, so I’m hoping to find some work while I’m home for August, be it house-sitting, digging ditches, filing paperwork, whatever it takes to be able to buy a car so I can work my way through school at a good job), and I’m having great difficulty finding scholarships for someone like myself.

My spanish is tremendously improved. I can hold pretty solid conversations with most people and I feel capable of doing most spanish work…last week I translated a message successfully in front of over 600 people.

I fought bulls.

I went paintballing (sorry Adrian).

A while back, I posted about continuing to pray for the campus we took spanish classes at, and to have an impact there. We have. We just sent home a very good friend we made there through soccer and classes. He committed his life to Christ while he was here, and he basically lived with us for the last month. We’re seeing other impacts we’ve made as well. It’s exciting.

Stay tuned for more updates throughout the next few months. I expect to be able to post something substantial every couple weeks, and I’ll try to toss in a few photos and anecdotes. Thanks for reading, caring, praying, and giving. Be blessed.

I think the lack of writing stems from what’s been going on in my life lately (more poignantly: what hasn’t been going on). I went through about a month of spiritual dryness that left me without inspiration, without passion, and without direction. I had nothing flowing through me, and it mostly stemmed from the fact that God had been trying to tell me something for about a month before that, repeatedly, and I’d been calling His voice that of the enemy, blocking it out and actively praying against it (trust me, the irony is not lost on me). Eventually, I guess God decided that since I wasn’t listening (and therefore, I wasn’t obeying), He would cease speaking to and through me. My prayer life was dead. My Bible reading diminished. My relationships around the house were all stressed. My health suffered. Eventually, I got a ton of people to start praying over me and something amazing happened. The thing God had been telling me to do was the first thing I heard in my head. I broke down, sobbing, recognized it as the voice of God, and immediately repented and obeyed. That was the easy part.

That obedience brought about a huge change in my personal life and lead to an outpouring of all that I’d been missing spiritually, which lead to a completely different outlook on our ministries, my time in Mexico, and all the people in my life (two thirds of that is still going strong). That obedience further led to more commands and understanding of things I was doing wrong, which led to more obedience and more outpouring. Now that I’ve confused anyone reading this, I can honestly say that my heart hurts. The problem with obeying, learning, worshiping, etc. for me is that I want everyone else to experience what I’m experiencing, and I try to do the Holy Spirit’s work for Him instead of being faithful and trusting.

Now, I look back on the past few days of judging and being frustrated, and I wonder why I wonder why I feel alienated and alone. How could I not expect that to happen? Today, I spent most of the day fuming over relationships in the house and pitying myself, only to go off to worship practice at my Mexican church (by the way, I joined the worship team, only I’m currently not really doing anything except running the sound board for practice) and sit at the sound board in the back, not talking to anyone for three and a half hours except occasionally being yelled at to change something (which I mostly didn’t understand anyway). Occasionally, I heard people asking the worship leader what my name was so they could yell at me too. How could I expect to feel fellowship when i sit around complaining and grumbling, then go someplace where I’m further isolated by the language barrier and don’t attempt to talk to anyone?

I currently have no direction. I’ve been sticking to my guns about being called to be a college pastor and then a senior pastor, but I’m realizing more and more that those are just things I felt would fit very well. The only true callings I’ve ever genuinely heard or felt were to go do missions in Holland and that being second in command in a church is in my future. I have no idea what I’m doing right now, but I feel more and more like God has something in store for me that I’m not expecting. Normally, that excites me. Right now, it drives me crazy.

I’m also feeling useless right now. Most of my strengths lie in discipleship, counseling, speaking, and singing. Guess what four things I don’t get to do here? You’d expect some of that from the language barrier, but I feel it in the house more and more. For the most part, people don’t want to hear what I have to say. I see it in meetings, in daily life, in ministries, everywhere. When I pipe up, someone else either talks over me or people just roll their eyes. Usually, I have one person who consistently listens to me, but the ratio is just overwhelming. (Note: this is about students. I feel like most of the time our leaders do a very good job of listening to everyone).

I suppose that’s enough complaining for one night.

On the bright side, our ministries are flourishing, my prayer life is improved beyond belief, and my passion for the people of Mexico is greater than it has ever been. I want so badly to see people all across the world accept the hope and promise that comes with a relationship with Jesus Christ. I want to be a part of that, and that’s something I’ve never really had this same passion for. I guess I’m finally understanding the way God feels on this level.

If anyone reading this could pray for direction, wisdom, and peace in my life, I would greatly appreciate it. If you could pray for unity in our house and for Jesus to be shown through our actions, words, and our hearts, I think I’d appreciate that even more. Finances are also extremely low for me, but that’s normal at this point.

Yes, that sums it up nicely, I think. The last point to me is the most poignant, and the most frustrating. We’ve been on that campus for four months in a controlled environment with a captive audience of international students and professors and we simply don’t have the fruit to show for it that we should have. Perhaps that’s because we only started seriously considering it a mission field over the last month, not really praying for the campus or the students or the professors until recently. Perhaps it’s because we didn’t invest fully into the lives of other students there until the last month or so. Either way, we’re fixing both and we won’t be forgetting.

Loree (one of my housemates) has a beautiful vision for a revival to break out on the giant plaza on the campus, shown below. I’ve been playing soccer with international students twice a week and I get to continue doing that for quite some time, thankfully. Other students are joining the theater club, volleyball, and playing ultimate frisbee. We have several students coming over to our house for the Superbowl this weekend, as well. We’re building relationships, casting vision, and praying fervently and frequently for everything about this place.

Not a big update tonight, and not exactly prose, but I just wanted to mark the end of this time as a transition, rather than with a mark of finality.

Panorama shot of UAG

“Like a dog that returns to his vomit is a fool who repeats his folly”(Proverbs 26:11 ESV) is the first. The Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary comments: “11. returneth . folly-Though disgusting to others, the fool delights in his folly.”

“What the true proverb says has happened to them: ‘The dog returns to its own vomit, and the sow, after washing herself, returns to wallow in the mire.’”(2 Peter 2:22 ESV) is the second.

I couldn’t help but think of these references today as I returned from a visit to El Colli. Our favorite (I know, I know, we shouldn’t have favorites) family from the neighborhood is a mom (who babysits Seth during the week) and her six daughters, and she had just moved back into the neighborhood. You’d expect us to be excited to have her back, right? Wrong. She should have stayed three hours away in Aguascalientes with her parents, where we helped move her several months ago. This woman has run away from her drunk, abusive, deadbeat husband more times than she can actually remember, and she keeps crawling back. Why? Why does she do it?

“My daughters miss their dad” was the excuse she gave this time, as the two oldest girls rolled their eyes and shook their heads behind her back. The oldest is now 17, with a baby boy of her own and a deadbeat runaway boyfriend to match. The second oldest is 13 and has recently started to recognize and vocalize the ridiculous decisions her mother is making, but without any guidance is doing so destructively and disrespectfully. I glanced around the sparsely decorated one-room shack, smelling the dust mixed with the odor of an overfull outhouse, feeling the pocked and pitched, broken concrete beneath my feet, leaning upon the bunkbed which slept six girls and a baby boy, soaking in the chill of the open doorways and the symphony of torrential rain on the aluminum roof. My eyes wandered back to “Mom.” She was currently explaining how her husband was “actually changing this time.” How she “could hear it in his voice.” She rambled on about how “even though he’s said all of these things before,” she “knew he wouldn’t hit [her] anymore…certainly not in front of the girls.”

We had helped this sow remove herself from the mire (I don’t mean to call her a pig; I love this woman and think she has a heart of gold, but that’s the biblical example I’ve got to work with so I’ll use it.) and wash herself clean, giving her a new start in a new city free of her old problems. True to form, she then promptly returned to wallow, taking her litter with her. We feel so powerless to help her, because she won’t help herself. The true pain, though, lies with the girls. What are those girls learning about strength, about love, about role models, about respect? What will the impact be on their future relationships with guys?

There is so much work to be done here, and so much we are powerless to do. I am so thankful that we can rely on Christ Jesus to transform hearts, minds, and lives; to redeem the enslaved, to heal the broken, and to encourage and strengthen the weak. I’m praying for this family and this neighborhood, and I would be honored if you would join me in that prayer.

One in particular was a 600+ mile drive I did in one day. Not “I was in the car while we drove.” More like “I drove over 600 miles in about 14 hours while the girls kept me awake and entertained.” Not gonna lie, I really enjoyed it, even though I was too close to the pedals and my driving leg hurt for three days from being too cramped. The whole trip was filled with laughter, from start to finish, with some occasional ridiculousness and a fair dose of confusion. I learned a lot. Namely, that Mexican road sides are like a nagging back seat driver. Every quarter mile or so there was another sign telling me how bad my driving was. It was awful.

Click here to see my route in Mexico.

My favorite stretch of the trip was between one place and another. I can’t remember their names for sure, but I think we had just left Saltillo and headed to Zacatecas. As soon as we left Saltillo (and boy was that city a doozy, the bridge to the toll road was out so we had to take the libre, which is winding, mountainous, and chock-full of topes, which mean speed bumps that are neither advertised nor painted, so as to trick you into thinking you can go a regular speed, but then will mess you up something serious) we noticed that we had about a quarter tank of gas. I asked Angela how far that would take us, to which she replied “pretty far, I get like 42 mpg.” I decided to keep going forward, just expecting to run into a gas station soon and fill up. About two hours and 160 miles later (yes, I was driving that fast, lay off), we were approaching the red line with no cities in sight. We’d passed at least a half dozen pueblas, but you’re lucky to find electricity in those, much less a gas station. I asked everyone to pray. We prayed for about 5 minutes all together, then spent the next half hour in silence, the girls praying and me thinking of what the backup plan would be if we ran out of gas. We finally rounded a corner and all the stress melted away, as we saw a much-beloved PEMEX sign. We filled our tank, emptied our bladders, and hopped back into the car. Thirty seconds down the road, we all started laughing about how Angela was praying for multiplication, because we saw another gas station. Then another one two minutes down. Then another one five minutes down. “ANGELA! You had them multiplying in the wrong direction!”

Here are a few pictures from the trip:

Other highlight moments include quoting Demitri Martin, flying over a giant tope so fast that Katlyn (who was asleep) hit her head on the ceiling of the car, me finishing a sandwich before getting out of the store, Katlyn and I making up stories on the spot (hers was about a purple elephant, while mine was a tragic tale concerning cockroaches and bullies), driving back a half hour to Nuevo Laredo to go get our visas because they changed the system without telling anyone, listening to Christmas music, and cresting the final mountain pass that reveals all of the midnight sparkles of Guadalajara in a single moment, causing all three of us to squeal with delight (well, less of a squeal and more of a squeak). Eventually, after that incredibly long drive, we made it home around 1am, but realized that none of us had brought our keys. Brilliant, really. We called Jen and woke her up, shuffled in, and promptly crashed. It was a journey, for sure. I’m thankful to have gone on it and I can’t imagine having had a better time, unless there weren’t any topes.

My next seven months will be spent in Guadalajara before I return to Yakima. There will be Spanish classes, SAGU classes via the internet, weekly ministries with children, youth, and college students, countless outreach teams, hilarious adventures with Mexicans and Americans alike, delicious culinary exploits, and so much laughter I’ll lose weight from it. Souls will be won. Lives will be transformed. Dreams and visions will be realized. I will change. I will grow. I will become the leader and the man that God created me to be.

I have several goals for myself while I’m in Mexico. Some are defined; others are more general. I also have some that don’t belong on the internet, but need to be shared between myself and my accountability partners and my leaders. For the time being, I’ll post what goals I can here.

• Grow into discipline in my prayer life and devotional life
• Eat healthy and exercise regularly, bringing about healthy and lasting weight loss
• Earn a 4.0 in my college classes
• Learn to balance the many aspects of life
• Discover what it takes to be the man I want to be: Christ-follower, Pastor, Husband, Father
• Learn how to make some awesome Mexican food.
• Learn to play piano
• Figure out what to do after Engage

There’s a lot to get done. Shoot, I’m still way behind on my fund-raising, too. I need to raise about $8000 in the next seven months or else I’ll either be sent home or have to spend time paying it off when I come back. For now, I’m off to pray, read, and prepare for this week of free time. After that, it’s back to work with gusto. Hup Hup!

• My first Sunday back in town, I spoke at Solid Rock Family Worship Center, where I have friends and a new section of my church family. They listened intently as I spoke for about ten minutes about our established ministries, our Hell House event, and what we hope to accomplish in the coming years in Guadalajara. God truly is moving in Guadalajara and it was evident that this church now has a heart for the “heart of darkness.” They gave a very generous offering, covering an entire month of my budget. Additionally, several people declared their intention to give regularly over the coming months, which is how most of my funding works anyway. One woman even offered to send Christmas presents to all of our El Colli kids. I was very blessed to spend time at Solid Rock and I am looking forward to giving them regular updates

• Also in that first week, I set up a new email system on the website so people can auto-subscribe to the monthly newsletter I’ll be sending out. If you’d like monthly updates, please enter your name and email on the right side of the page.

• On December 9th, I finished my first semester back in college. I cannot fully describe how good it feels to be done with semester number one. About a week later, I got my grades: a 3.25 gpa. While that isn’t as good as I’d prefer, I suppose I’ll keep in mind just how much I was adjusting to. I expect higher grades in the future, but I’ll be content for now.

• I have a girlfriend for the first time in over four years!  The young woman I am now dating is named Anna. She’s a beautiful and compassionate daughter of God who is a teacher at a local Christian school. I am absolutely beside myself with joy at having found her. Obviously I could go on forever about her, but I’m keeping all of these updates brief, so I suppose I should stay consistent. I’ll post a picture of us at the bottom of this entry.

• I went swing-dancing last night. I never expected to enjoy it as much as I did, but I think I want to pick it up when I come back to Yakima permanently.

• I’ve had dinner at the houses of two prospective Engage students. Both were wonderful dinners filled with poignant questions, great laughs, and gregarious stories. I think both would be excellent candidates for Engage and recommended strongly that they both seriously pursue the program. Honestly, I would recommend this experience for just about every Christian high school graduate. So many aspects of it are beneficial for the age group and it’s a phenomenal learning environment.

• I had my first Reuben. It was delicious. I did not expect to like it, since I’ve never liked rye and never tried sauerkraut, but I was blown away. That’s a delicious sandwich.

• I’m buying a Mac. It just makes too much sense when I’m moving into graphics work, starting musical composition, and potentially doing video editing. I know, I know. I never thought I’d make the switch, but I’m in.

• I discovered that I lost inches while I was in Mexico. I’m actually noticeably thinner. I guess that’s a good start, but I’m still not where I’d like to be.

• I learned how to do drywall. I know, this isn’t exactly something you’d normally write about, but it was actually pretty exciting. Over the last week I’ve been working with a friend who is a general contractor and I’ve learned a lot of things that will come in handy when I have my own house someday, since repairing things is one of my favorite things to do and doing it myself is way cheaper than hiring someone else.

• I miss speaking Spanish. I never thought I’d say that. I’m very much looking forward to picking it back up.

• I received some very exciting news regarding my future as a pastor. It’s confidential for now and in the very very infantile stages, but I’ll be praying on it constantly and looking forward to whatever develops.

• Tomorrow Anna and I are driving over the pass after church to be with the Diehls for a few days. I’m not sure if I’m speaking at church at all, since nobody ever got back to me on that, but I would love the opportunity if it presents itself, since my funding is terribly low and nobody really knows what we’re doing or how to help. I’ll be praying about that tonight as well.

I think that’s it for now. As promised, the picture of Anna and I:

After spending a year abroad there are literally countless stories and experiences I could relate to anyone interested enough to hear them, however few were as poignant as those I had while traveling in Nepal. I may or may not have had a chance to share much with you about my recent trip through the Himalayas aside from photos, but of all the experiences and stories the trip sent home with me there is one in particular I feel compelled to express.

On the 16th day of the hike we were making our way from a village called Tatopani to another named Ghorepani, a distance of 9.9 miles and elevation gain of 3,756 feet. Traversing along the trail, through river valleys that would make Paul Bunyan proud and beside mountains that invoke a small dizzy spell when your eye attempts to find their peaks, we passed numerous smaller villages. The inhabitants of these villages were ever busy using handheld scythes and hoes to harvest their small patches of terraced farmland, spreading grain to dry on flat areas they were able to claim from the slopes, herding mules which carried regional fruits and resources to neighboring districts, and catering to the occasional tourist who would stroll through awe-stricken at the natural beauty and simplistic lifestyle surrounding him or her.

Though much of the low mountain population have spent the length of their years living in villages just like these, there is a hint that the same may not always be true. Along the trail bounce bright eyed and energetic youngsters dressed in skirts and blouses for the girls, and shirts and ties for the boys. Happily they are making their way to school, playing and laughing. For these students school is no less than one hour’s walk up the same steep slopes foreigners pay thousands of dollars to prove their cardiovascular prowess on. I would occasionally walk to school when I was a child, yet only while watching these children did I appreciate not having to dodge trains of mules trotting down my path, as well as the odiferous presents they so indifferently leave behind. The oil spots and sidewalk cracks I used to hop over seemed to pale in comparison.

About half way up a particularly steep portion of the trail, devoured by winding rock steps, we stopped to take a water break and enjoy the visual fruits of the effort we had just put in. As we sat for a minute to gaze across the valley and note the technique of the nearby woman rhythmically cutting her grain stalks from their roots, two groups of children came to my attention. The first was made up of about 20 or 30 boys and girls rushing up nature’s Stairmaster with plastic chairs hooked through their arms like an additional backpack. Curious why they had chairs, I inquired, at which point our guide explained that today was exam day, and that they took their own chairs in order to make sure everyone had a place to sit. Just so we’re clear, these kids were hiking, not walking, an hour to school, dodging mules and mule feces, and carrying their own chairs so that they could take a test. You can believe my children will someday hear this story on test day.

I almost didn’t notice the second group, this one made up of three girls standing off the trail just to the side of a small teahouse where the mountain had allowed another small flat space to rest. These girls stood and watched the other children passing by them; they were not on their way to school. Instead of neatly folded uniforms they had weather worn clothes, the reds and browns stained by dirt. Their backpacks were replaced by baskets, half as tall as they were and filled with fruit and firewood, which they carried with a sole strap hiding their hairlines. Their demeanor was not one of excitement like the other kids. It was one of fatigue. They were a short distance from their destination, home was just up the hill, but they remained immobile and looked on as the other children elevated toward their scholastic endeavors. Looking in their eyes it was plain to see that they desperately wanted to follow and to attend school that day. Again curious, I asked why they were not included in the procession of students. Our guide politely informed us that there were still those who did not allow their daughters to go to school because they were just that, daughters and not sons. Instead the parents keep them at home to labor in the fields. As I turned my attention back to these three girls a remarkable thing happened. Though he phrased it more delicately than I, our guide’s words hit me with a force I didn’t expect, and although we spoke different languages no words needed to be exchanged in order for me to now understand every ounce of what these girls felt. Their longing gazes brought a sadness over me, and as we strapped on our backpacks to follow the last of the chair toting school kids up the hill my steps turned to autopilot and I became lost to the world.

One of the things I love about hiking is the opportunity for reflection it provides. I find nothing more relaxing or enlightening than walking silently through nature, and as we walked the remaining miles to Ghorepani, I thought. The sadness transformed to anger, (How arbitrary! Can’t they see their daughter’s faces?!) which over a length of time I can’t estimate evolved again into concerned inquisitiveness (Why do these parents think that’s okay? Why do I not? Who or what could do the work in their place?).

Ironically enough, the majority of us learned in school about children who don’t have the opportunity for education. Witnessing it in person, however, brought a different poignancy. It makes me feel profoundly fortunate to live in a place like America where opportunity abounds by comparison, however it also drives me to believe that simply ‘feeling’ fortunate is not enough. As my tread repeatedly left its print on the earth behind me my thoughts gradually clarified. I certainly would not argue that a life farming and laboring cannot find happiness, far from it, but imagine the tremendous obstacles these girls will have to overcome to pursue something different in life if they so choose. If they do want something different, how limited are their choices because of something as uncontrollable as gender? How many like them have little choice but to resign and accept the constraints of a reality they feel they cannot alter?

Have you ever met someone who has an amazing talent or opportunity and throws it down the drain? It makes you a little bit angry, doesn’t it? If you had that talent, or that opportunity, well you would certainly be making the most of it. Wouldn’t you?

Are you?

Opportunities for growth and betterment are literally everywhere, for ourselves, but perhaps even more importantly for others. Consider for a second what you’ve been given. The opportunities you started out with the day you were borne. They may be few or they may be many, but I’d be willing to bet they are more numerous than someone who is not given the right to an education because of their gender, and is thereby forced into a life of labor looking forward to an arranged marriage, which is still very common in Nepal. Regardless of your circumstances, you are more fortunate than someone. Regardless of your circumstances, you have more opportunities than someone. And regardless of your circumstances, you have the ability to prove your worth to everyone. It is the role of the powerful to protect the weak, not control them. It is the role of the fortunate to help the underprivileged, not pity them.

I will never forget the looks on the faces of those three girls. It was pain, it was jealousy, and it was desire. It is all too often moments like these, which pass in only a minute or two, that can strike a chord deep within you or can be forgotten in the buzz of the world around them.

A life spent in contemplation does little benefit without action to support it. Likewise, action without forethought can do more damage than good. I would challenge you who may read this to reflect on your own role; the role of the fortunate, the role of the powerful; and to summon the courage to act on your conclusions. May we all be blessed and strive toward the better we know is out there.