August 16, 2007

• Who is really helping who?

  During the first few days in Kathmandu, I was infected with what is typically called “Traveler’s diarrhea” or simply TD for short. Though I was extra careful to not eat raw fruits, meat, and to drink only bottled or pre-treated water, I still contracted it. It could have happen from any outside restaurant food that I ate that wasn’t properly cooked or simply holding one of the orphans’ hands and then unconsciously touching any part of my face. Westerners just don’t have the immune defenses to prevent these germs from multiplying rapidly. Though I was one of the first ones to have the serious symptoms in the group, eventually TD made itself around to everyone in the team, only varying in severity and duration.

  Since I was sick, I had to stay home with the host family and asked Mike to take over my English class for that day. It was during that time, while everyone else in the team were away at the government school, that I had a chance to talk one of the family members, Prakash. He was also sick and was resting at home. It was a good initial conversation and though I was sick, it helped me start feeling more confident in talking with the family members. I think the fact that he and I were the only ones sick in the home at the time helped me relate to how he was feeling.

  One of the cool moments that happened during that conversation was when his older sister, Sarita, came into the room and asked if I would like to eat some of the rice congee that he was eating. Since I hadn’t really eaten much the night before and the TD basically had been draining me of energy, I said yes. A little later, Sarita comes back with a bowl of hot rice congee. It totally reminded me of how my mom made it whenever I got sick as a kid! Though Prakash admitted that he didn’t like eating it because it tasted so bland to his taste buds, I was hungry and that has always been the best seasoning.

  So that night and the next day, whenever we ate with the family, Prakash and I received our bowls of congee while everyone else ate the real food. I didn’t complain because I was really grateful to the family for how they went out of their way to take care of us. They weren’t annoyed, but were genuinely caring as other members began to show the same symptoms. Though we were aliens, strangers to their nation, they cared and loved us, and that was a blessing from God.

  It’s moments like this that remind me of a Scripture I encountered last year on another trip:

  “For the LORD your God is God of gods and Lord of lords, the great
  God, mighty and awesome, who shows no partiality and accepts no bribes. He defends the cause of the fatherless and the widow, and loves the alien, giving him food and clothing. And you are to love those who are aliens, for you yourselves were aliens in Egypt.“
  ~Deuteronomy 10:17-19~

  It’s an interesting thing about mission trips. When one goes, sometimes the ideas of being a catalyst, an agent of change, or being the hands of Christ, can lead His followers to develop bloated pride. It’s not to say that we shouldn’t go to the nations with a desire to be used by His Spirit, but we need to be grounded in our finiteness, and remember that we are indeed just instruments, HIS instruments. It’s Him who takes care of both His & our business. He provides us the food and clothing we need and He’s the agenda setter, not us.

  In our case, we were the aliens in Nepal. He took care of us through the hands and feet of our host family. Without them we couldn’t have done half of all that we did during our 2-4 weeks there. There would have been no interviews, no caring for orphans, no teaching school children, no contact with other aid relief workers. They cooked for us, welcomed us into their homes, and accomodated for our health needs. We would have been just plain tourists who did not know much of anything about Nepal besides whatever the tourist books told us.

  Being sick wasn’t fun, but it was God’s gift to me and our team on so many levels. At the very least, it reminded me that He is the One who is in control. Everything, including sickness, can always be used to reveal His Glory, it always will be about that. Whether I can accept that and seek out how can blessing and curse be turn into praise of Him is up to me.

  Nepal Project album 2

  
  Created with Admarket’s flickrSLiDR.
  All photos are ©2007 Michael Chu
  

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