Monkey Business

Over the past few weeks we have formed a love/hate relationship with the monkeys that frequent our patio every day.  There was an initial fascination with watching these strange creatures interact with each other and the environment in which they find themselves, but patience quickly grew thin as they began to steal our clothing and slip through the bars on the windows to wreak havoc on the kitchen.  Needless to say, my friend Dan and I have spent many hours scheming ways to exact revenge on our furry little friends.

It seems that we have drastically underestimated the craftiness of the monkeys and have yet to successfully outsmart them.  This has left us with no foreseeable alternative but to simply resort to taunting them with bananas.  Childish... I know.  Gotta admit that it makes for pretty funny pictures though!

*Disclaimer: For those of you who may be sensitive to the feelings and well being of the monkeys, I can assure you that all participating parties were well compensated with bananas and no monkeys were hurt in the process of picture taking.

Spiritual Disneyland

I am now in the Northern India town of McLeod Ganj and it is perhaps the most unique place I have ever visited. While the town is home to mainly Tibetans and and Indians, it is inundated with travelers and sojourners from every corner of earth that come in search of meaning and purpose.  The atmosphere here can aptly be described as a spiritual Disneyland as everyone is  searching for truth.  The people who travel here are slightly reminiscent of the hippie movements from the 60's and 70's. Any of these people would be completely out of place in the communities they are from, but every dread-locked, eclectically dressed truth-seeker that visits is right at home amidst their peers.

City of McLeod Ganj

The small town of McLeod Ganj will be my home for the next two months and is also where the Dalai Lama and the Tibetan government reside in exile. The town is mainly populated by the brave Tibetans who escaped Chinese persecution by navigating the harsh Himalaya mountain range in search of religious and cultural freedom. Almost every Tibetan I've met has a personal story of surviving the trek through the snowy mountains, walking at night and sleeping during the day to avoid being imprisoned or shot by the Chinese army. My heart breaks for these people who have endured so much oppression and suffering.

The streets of McLeod Ganj

I am here with a community of seven amazing people to the love and serve the Tibetan people. As we practice loving God and one another in the context of our small community, our hope is that the natural outpouring of that love will flow through our relationships with the local people. We will be serving the Tibetans by teaching advanced English classes to those who are interested in improving their English skills. Already we have a class of 30+ students that meet every weekday as well as a second class comprised of 12 monks that meets in the monastery attached to the Dalai Lama's temple. Almost everyone we have met has a desire to learn about the teachings of Jesus so we are in the process of crafting stories from the Bible in order to teach grammar, vocabulary and sentence structure. We look forward to establishing many friendships with the Tibetans over the coming weeks!

Tibetan Monk Spinning the Buddhist Prayer Wheels

India is... India

There are hardly words to describe this place.

I've had my mouth burned by the hottest food I've ever tried, my nostrils introduced to smells that can only be described as 'interesting', bitten by so many mosquitoes that my odds of contracting malaria are probable and I can't hear out of my left ear due to India's national pass time of honking.  Needless to say, it's something you just have to experience for yourself!

We arrived in New Delhi and were immediately welcomed by the sweltering heat that makes even the flies here delirious.  Between the insane tuk-tuk (taxi) drivers, the temperatures that often exceed 105°F and the smog that rests on the landscape like a blanket, we were glad for the chance to experience this crazy city but were ready to continue our journey onward to the northern city of Dharamsala.  

Had we known what awaited us on the bus trip to Dharamsala, we may have opted to stay in New Delhi!  As the sun was setting, we boarded a bus which looked like something from the 60's or 70's Hippi tours and engaged in 13 hours of what can only be described as the movie "Speed" meets "The Italian Job" meets "Seven Years in Tibet".  You had to be there to understand how unbelievably intensely someone can drive at night through small villages in the Himalaya Mountains!

Check out the video below of our brief stay in New Dehli, compliments of my good friend Liam.

The Beauty of Africa

This is Nana.

The beautiful Xhosa girl who has stolen my heart.

What do you do with a love like that?

What if the point of life was to discover how much God loves us? To discover that God not only likes you, but that he is madly in love with you. What do you do with a love like that?

Dan Baumann's Story

This reality is transforming my life. I promise you will not regret listening to this recording in it's entirety.

Life Stories

I’ve just finished reading A Million Miles in a Thousand Years by Donald Miller in which he uses the metaphor of a story to describe people’s lives. Through an introspective analysis his own life, he indirectly challenges us as the readers to turn the camera inward and evaluate our own lives. We are writing chapters in the story of our lives using the ink of the choices we make with every passing day.

This got me thinking about my own story, the life that I’ve lived for the past 24 years of my existence. If someone wrote a book or made a movie about my life, would anyone bother to watch it? Would I?

This begs the question of what truly makes a story meaningful. Great stories all have two things in common, they require the protagonist make difficult self-sacrifices and to take risks. Great stories also happen to have a side effect of being contagious. They make us feel alive. They give us hope.

Sadly, I feel a lot of people have chosen to write relatively bland stories. This isn’t because they have an inherent desire to write a boring story, but rather I feel it is human nature to seek the safety of comfort and stability. Simply put, a boring story requires very little of the person writing it. And let’s face it, nobody cries at the end of a movie about a guy who spent his life trying to buy a Volvo.

There is an undercurrent in American society that has gradually stolen our great stories and replaced them with narratives centered around pursuing an easy life. We have allowed ourselves to be distracted by influences that drive us to climb social and economic ladders, but to what end? Rarely do we even allow ourselves to stop and reflect on where we’ve been and where we are heading. We often find ourselves caught in these situations unless something provokes us to awaken from our slumber, an “inciting incident” if you will. This happened for me when I awoke to the reality that I didn’t really know what direction my life was moving. I have been driving on auto-pilot ever since I graduated from high school, moving from one life stage to the next without a conscious understanding of where exactly I was going. It took a series of events over the past year of my life to collectively form my inciting incident, but looking back I can honestly say that I am grateful that we always have the choice to turn the page and start a new chapter.

In the midst of writing my own story, I have also become aware of the existence of something bigger than me. Donald Miller says, "I believe there is a writer outside ourselves, plotting a better story for us, interacting with us, even, and whispering a better story into our consciousness.” I believe that writer is God who has been crafting a story since the beginning of time and he has extended an invitation for us to play part in it. Each of our individual stories has an important role to play in this larger story if we choose to walk in it. He hasn’t promised wealth and prosperity or comfort and safety, but he promised that he has a great story prepared for each and every one of us. He also promised that it will all be worth it in the end.


What kind of story are you busy writing?

A series of fortunate events

I realized that many of you may not be aware of the events leading up to my departure for Africa or what exactly I will be doing over here.  This is a brief overview that hopefully provides you with some context.

I was laid off from my job last year as a result of the poor economy, but it has turned out to be more of a blessing than I could have ever imagined. After watching world cup games 24/7 (still a little sore about the Oranje losing), I did some soul searching and began to explore both my passions and as well as my calling. Through a series of events (Awaken) and relationships with incredible people like Missy and Jeremiah Weismann and the Humphrey’s, I felt God leading me to a six month mission program in Cape Town, South Africa. I was accepted into the program in October of 2010 and spent the remaining months preparing for my trip.

The program is run by an organization called All Nations that is based in Cape Town and led by an incredible man named Floyd McClung. The heart behind the program is to establish missional communities among the poor and marginalized people of the world. The first three months will be focused on equipping and preparing the participants to plant small organic churches based on the model of the house churches seen throughout the New Testament and specifically the book of Acts. The second portion of the program is putting this into practice by relationally engaging people at their level through a variety of ministries. All Nations stresses the importance of a holistic approach to missions by not only addressing a person’s spiritual need for Jesus but also their physical and emotional needs as well. These ministries aim to provide for the needs of people with the end goal of personally entering in to a discipleship relationship with them. It is from the foundation of these relationships that the church and the kingdom of God is built upon. Honestly, as much as I hope and pray that God will use me to teach and bless others that I meet, I expect to be transformed just as much if not more from the very people I will be meeting. 

God has shown his faithfulness to me time and time again over the last few months and I am continually amazed at how he provides for me. I have had the privilege of meeting some amazing people over the past few months who have incredible ministries all across southern Africa. They have inspired me and encouraged me as I take my own step of faith and venture to South Africa. God has also been providing financial support to help me raise funds for my trip through generous donations from the most unexpected people. He has also been providing random odd jobs which have allowed me to cover a huge portion of my trip as well.

The following are a few websites if you want to learn more about the organization or the CPx program:

http://www.all-nations.co.za/ - All Nations website

http://all-nations.co.za/index.php/opportunities/full/cpx/ - The Church Planting Experience (CPx) program related information

Blessings,

Kyle

The beginning of a journey

After about 30 hours of traveling, I have finally made it to Cape Town, South Africa!  This was the first time I have ever flown standby so I wasn’t sure exactly when or how I was going to make it over here.  I almost missed my first flight out of mpls because it relatively full and there were 35 people ahead of me in the standby queue.  It came down to me and another guy named Chris who was visiting from Atlanta. He was in the Twin Cities visiting his 14 year old daughter in the hospital who was being treated for a brain tumor on her spinal cord for the third time in her young life.  Three brain tumors, three rounds of chemotherapy, all before she's old enough to drive. Who says there aren’t any heroes in the world anymore?

After changing their mind about five times, the Delta staff finally let us both on the plane at the last minute.  This was a huge blessing because it allowed me to catch my connecting flight in Atlanta instead of spending the night in the airport.  I sat next to an Afrikaner named Nadia on the 15 hour flight from Atlanta to Johannesburg during which time she indulged me in a cultural overview of South Africa.  She was born in Joburg but had spent a significant amount of time traveling in the states which allowed us to discuss the similarities and differences between the two countries and cultures.  Thanks to Hollywood University, I now also know everything there is to understand about apartheid from watching the movie Invictus during the flight.  So I got that going for me, which is nice...

When I got into Joburg, I made my way to the Kalula desk (the local discount airline) but the lady informed me that the plane was currently boarding and it was the last flight out for the rest of the night.  After issuing me a ticket, I ran to check my bag and then hurried through security, only to find the plane was delayed three hours.  It was during this delay that I was reminded of the importance of attitude and perspective.  As I was sitting at the gate reading my book, the hallways began to reverberate with the sounds of singing and laughter.  Apparently we were not the only flight to be delayed and the stranded passengers at the adjacent gate decided to turn an otherwise frustrating situation into a joyful one by forming an impromptu South African glee club in the middle of the terminal complete with harmonies and choreography.  The mood was immediately transformed and you couldn’t help but to be drawn in by their joy and energy.  It was contagious. 

When I finally boarded my plane three hours later, I greeted the flight attendants with a friendly welcome and they immediately informed me that I was the first person they had encountered on the entire flight that was smiling.  My apparent state of bliss was probably more of an induced delirium from traveling for 25+ hours, but I’m beginning to think that life really is 10% circumstance and 90% perspective.  After all, I was sitting in a chair 30,000 feet in the sky.  That's nuts.

We arrived in Cape Town after midnight due to the delay at the previous terminal.  It was too late to catch a bus into town and I was too cheap to pay for a taxi, so I opted to spend a night on a sketchy couch I happened across in a back room of the airport.  Can't beat free, right?  :)  I've found a cheap hostel in the city where I will be staying until I move into the All Nations housing this weekend.

A few cultural observations so far:
- A lot of the older men are rocking impressive mustaches.  They must be Dutch…
- Traffic drives on the left side of the road; this may lead to my untimely demise if I don’t learn to look both ways about 5 times.
- Despite the plethora of problems that plague the country, South Africans are extremely proud of their homeland and love to show it off.

I miss everyone back home but I'm STOKED to start a new chapter in my life and see where this journey leads me!

Blessings,

Kyle