?You are most fully alive when you are on an adventure with God.? These words by Erwin McManus have come alive in my life. Long ago I committed to not just exist in this world but to live all out; to live to the extreme for Jesus. I use to think I knew what that meant, but as I grow in Christ my understanding of that grows as well. This last week has definitely been what I would call an adventure. As I wrote in my last entry, I headed to southern Nepal for a week of training pastors and doing medical work. From day one the adventures began and they didn?t stop until we got home.

Me, Josh, and two of my Nepali friends got up at 3:30 am and hit the road by 5. We headed out of town and settled in for what we thought was a 12 hour drive. To my surprise, the trip turned into an 18 and a half hour drive. Now understand that roads here aren?t like the roads you have back home. Many times we had to dive less than 5 mph and have potholes the size of cars. Another problem came with the amount people all over the road. This month is a big Hindu festival called ?dashi? and everyone goes back to their village to celebrate. As we traveled we saw hundreds of public buses speeding down the highway. The crazy thing was there were at least 2 people in each, people standing in the aisles, and over 50 people sitting on the luggage rack on top of the bus. Most of the buses we saw had over 100 people in them. And then it happened, as we were traveling, we came upon a small bus that had gone off the cliff. By the time we got there all of the injured people had been taken to the hospital and only the dead remained. I wish I could say that was the only one we saw, buy in total we came upon 7 buses that had either flipped, gone of the road and crashed, or ran into the back of another vehicle. The hardest accident to deal with happen just a few miles from returning home. A young guy who was learning to drive a motorcycle starting talking on his cell phone and then hit a man who was walking next to the road. We arrived just 30 seconds after the accident happened. My friend Sujan, who is a doctor, went to help but a crowd formed very quickly and he had to fight off the crowd just to get to the injured man. As Sujan help the man, the crowd began to surround the guy who was driving the motorcycle. They started beating him up a bit, but Sujan was able to calm the crowd down and get the injured man in a taxi, headed to the hospital. Crazy stuff.

Apart from the insanity we saw on the road, our trip was a complete success. We were able to train 12 church leaders in: Expository Preaching, Sharing the Gospel effectively, and 2 Timothy. We did training in the morning and in the afternoon we held a free medical clinic for the community. I had no idea just how effective medical ministry was. We had close to three hundred people show up for medical attention in a village of 500. And praise the Lord; we were able to give the whole gospel to everyone! Sujan did all the medical work while Hari ran the organization of the clinic, and Josh and I handout the medicines that Sujan prescribed. We ran across several very sick people, but we also ran into some funny diseases. A man came to the clinic and told us that he was very sick. When Sujan asked him what was wrong, he told Sujan that when he rode his motorcycle and turned his head to the left, air went up his right nostril. He went on to say that when he turned his head to the right air went up is left nostril. We all tried not to laugh and assured the man that his problem was completely normal. This was just one of several funny stories, but over all we where able to assists many sick people.

As we headed home, we stopped in Hari?s village and shared the Gospel with His family and many others in the village. This was the same village I went to several months ago but when I went back this time, they were much more willing to hear the Gospel. I saw Him begin to open the hearts of the hardened.

I wish I could share all my exciting stories, but I?ll save some of them for the future. Be encouraged as I am that God is still in the business of doing big things through small people. I would love to hear from some of you. Post a comment on this page or email me at reachingnepal@hotmail.com