Seventh of Seven Prayer Requests

I leave for Kolkata tomorrow, so this will be the last post in my week long series on ways you can be praying for me. Thank you so much to everyone that is supporting me through prayer. Thank you for all of your words of encouragement and support. I will do my best to continue updating this while I am in Kolkata. I cannot make any promises about how often that will be. Please email me and/or leave comments while I’m in Kolkata. I definitely want to keep hearing from people.

Personal Growth. Above everything else, I want to grow closer to Jesus during this trip. Pray for my heart, that it will be soft and teachable. Pray for my ability to process what I am going through. Pray that God will begin revealing His purposes for my life. I don’t know if long term overseas missions is for me or not, but I’m keeping myself open to that and want God to help me start (perhaps finish) discerning that during this trip. Pray that God will show me who I really am, and who He made me to be.

A Dilly of a Pickle

I was over at my Grandparents tonight. While I was there, I helped my Grandma set up a new email account (She's on Gmail now!). Anyway, their internet was acting up in some weird ways, so I decided to implement my usual solution, installing Firefox. It was at this point that I noticed another problem. When I visited www.mozilla.org, the link to download Firefox wasn't there. Some spyware app was blocking their ability to download Firefox! I searched around for another link, and eventually found a link for an older version... In Swedish. Oh well, really that was enough since it allowed me to download the current English version of Firefox.

Six

Safety and Health. Please pray for these in every way you can think of. I've talked to multiple people that have come back from Kolkata with parasites. One women I talked to came back with five of them after only being there for five weeks! (Yes, that is a very extreme and unlikely case.) Even if not that extreme, sickness is still very likely to hit our team many times during the trip.

Number Five

Culture. Our team will be experiencing a lot of new and very challenging things just in cultural differences. Please pray that we will be slow to criticize their culture. Pray that we will instead appreciate and learn from the differences in their culture. I am certain that there are many, many things we can learn from them, particularly in the areas that will be the most foreign to us as Americans. Also pray that our team would learn to be culturally sensitive to those around us.

I'm Probably Reading Too Much Into This Sign...

This morning I went out for breakfast with my friend Aaron. I noticed a sign that said the following (at least, to the best of my memory):

It is illegal for normal people to work here.

That got me wondering about who they consider to be normal. It was a small place, and I could easily see into the kitchen. Based on the staff that I saw, the following definition of normal people would fit: White males.

And no, I do not consider that to be a definition of normal people.

4th Prayer Request

Team Dynamics. It is going to be a very intense four months for all of us. We're going into it not knowing each other, and we will need to be close in just about every way. Please pray for our ability to support each other, especially early on before we get to know each other particularly well. We will certainly experience times of conflict during the trip. Please pray that we will grow closer, understanding each other and ourselves better through our conflict and reconciliation.

Prayer Request #3

Language Barrier. Our team will be serving among people that primarily just speak Bengali. To my knowledge no one on our team has any prior experience with Bengali. We will be receiving language lessons while we are there, however the language issue is certain to be a struggle throughout the trip. Please pray that our team will be quick to pick up on the language. Also pray that we will be able to have meaningful interactions with people in spite of the language barrier.

Prayer Request #2

Changing expectations. I'm going to be dealing with this a lot, and it is something I tend to struggle with (Ask my LAUP team if you don't believe me). Right now, I don't feel like I really have a great feel for exactly how anything is going to work. I don't know when our team is going to Sri Lanka. I think we're taking a trip to Nepal too, but all I know of that was a brief reference in an email. There are many other things I wish I knew about the trip, but won't until sometime during the trip. Please pray that God will grow me in my ability to handle change and lack of clear expectations.

One Week

In one week I will be leaving America for four months. I have one significant change regarding the trip. Our team will only be in Kolkata for three of the four months. We will take a sub-trip to Sri Lanka for one month. While there, our team will be partnering with Habitat for Humanity helping to rebuild from the destruction of the Tsunami.

For the next week, I am going to try to post a prayer request every day. Not only do I desperately need the prayer, it will also help me gather my thoughts before writing my pre-trip update letter.

I’ll start things off now. Please pray that I will be emotionally and spiritually present while overseas. I will be in the midst of some of the worst pain and suffering anywhere in the world, and I don’t want to close myself off to it. I need God to help me feel and understand their suffering. Out of that, I want God to grow a genuine, undying love for the forgotten and rejected people of this world.

Home Again

I'm back up at home in Beaverton now. I've actually been here since Saturday evening. There are plenty of things about my week in LA or about my drive back up to Portland that I could share. I'll restrict myself to just a couple of stories.

On Thursday night I went to the 3CIV (Three College Intervarsity) meeting in Claremont. It was nice to see how they are doing. I really liked seeing a lot of new people coming into leadership roles. As part of the meeting they had Lydia pray for me to send me off for my trip to Kolkata. She prayed a lot of things for me, but the thing that people will remember is that she prayed for my bowels. After what I've heard about my likely experiences in Kolkata, this seems like a fairly good prayer to me. I can, however, understand why it produced so many laughs.

On my way back up north, I stopped to visit an aunt, uncle, and cousins in the Sacramento area. My cousin Peter is quite the young gamer (Much like I was when I was in fourth grade). Anyway, I still have a bunch of my old Game Boy games, which can still be played in the new Game Boy Advance systems (although not in the brand new Game Boy DS). I showed Peter my collection of over 20 games. He became very excited to see so many games. I let him choose three of them to keep, and I plan to do the same on future visits. I haven't played my Game Boy in years, so I'm glad that now he can get some enjoyment out of my old games.