Next Stop Asia!!

Well here I am in Kathmandu hanging out at a very nice little coffee shop contemplating one heck of a summer. Tomorrow begins the voyage home. On one hand I am very much looking forward to getting back home, on the other I am not so ready for it. Sorry for the lack of general updates internet in Mozambique was a little hard to come by...I have been in Nepal now for just under a month and I am loving every minute of it!!


Our team arrived here at the beginning of August after finishing up in Pemba. I must admit it was a little hard to say goodbye to people after literally living on top of them for two months and walking with them through the great and the tough. I love traveling and realizing that the people that now you cant imagine never having known, were those whose existance you knew nothing about a month ago. Incredible. Without writing a novel it is impossible to say what spending that time in Mozambique was like. Incredible, stretching, inspiring, ridiculous, so tough, so rewarding, amazing, and life changing. There's really no way to say in words what God did in and through me. The summer was nothing of what I expected but everything amazing. I feel honestly like the most blessed individual on the planet. 


But I digress, Nepal. Nepal has been incredible. We are working with the Iris base here in Kathmandu and the team is absolutely stellar. We arrived here and immediately game planned our time here with both them and God. We ended up heading to a place called janakpur, thats probably the wrong spelling, which is a town almost on the border of India about a 12 hour bus ride from here (insert sarcastic excitement here). But it was glorious! Three of the people on the team felt God calling us there and when we arrived we found out why. People were so hungry for the gospel, ready for healing and ready for blessing. We spent three days there praying for sick people and watching them get healed, watching whole families come to Jesus, and loving the least of these. It was incredible. I have plenty of stories if you want to hear them when I get back. Ask me, it was insane. We also went out into some villages in the surrounding area in the evenings and spent time there. We showed the Jesus film and watched a ton of people get healed. After a few days there we headed about two hours away to another village where we stayed for another three days basically doing the same thing. We lived in what looked like a treehouse and hung out with the villagers in what looked like some scene on a postcard. So so beautiful! Very very hot and lots of bugs, but amazing. After those two excursions we headed back to Kathmandu for the last few days that the team was here. We did some stuff on the streets, threw a huge party in the slums, visited and prayed for a bunch if lepers in a leper colony near here (a bunch of them were healed), and helped out at the banquet house which us a sort of homeless ministry they run here that is amazing. The team left last week and I stayed on with a friend I meet in Harvest School.


Through a series of very fortunate events, some very helpful long term missionaries here, and a little help from the big man upstairs we made out to Bhutan for a few days!! That trip was absolutely amazing, what an incredibly beautiful country, incredibly beautiful people and incredibly delicious good!! Bhutan isn't one of those countries you can just walk around in, but we had an amazing tour guide that took us all over the place showing us the incredible temples that are crazy old, the beautiful markets and the ridiculous scenery. My favorite thing we did there was hike up to Tigers Nest which is this temple built into the side if a mountain. If you google Bhutan, it's the picture that usually shows up. It is spectacular. But not easy to get to! It was a very very challenging five hour hike to the top complete with 865 stairs at the end. Buuuut the view was totally worth it! My sea level acclimated lungs had a little trouble with the 10000ft elevation, but does make for a ridiculous view though!! It was a great trip, once in a lifetime, so glad we had the chance to do it! And to top it all off on the flight back we had an absolutely incredible, clear view of Mt Everest. It was as impressive as I had imagined it to be, maybe even more. Icing on the cake.


So now as the summer draws to a close and I think about going back to work and heading back into all of the things that we usually call "normal life" (whatever that means), I can't help but feel super blessed. All of the things I have done and seen this summer are things many people only dream about. That's not counting the incredible people I have had the privilege of crossing paths with, some if whom I think will be good friends long into the future. Like I said before, the summer hasn't totally been what I thought it would be. Its been better. Its been more full and more life altering. And as much as I can't wait to get back to normal, I hope I'm never normal again. I hope this experience had changed me forever in a most excellent way. I think it has. So I guess I'll see you all on the flip side, in the motherland...until next time!!.

Welcome to Africa

Alright here we go, first update from Mozambique! I’ll be honest I’m not entirely sure what to write, so much has happened in the last month. Internet has been entirely sketchy here so I probably won’t get to update more than maybe once or twice more, I’ll just have loads of stories to tell when I get back. And loads of pictures.

Life here in Pemba is good!! I’m living in a house with 12 other girls so it is a bit cramped but we manage, I think we actually manage extraordinarily well considering the incredibly tight living quarters—there is a lot of opportunity to exercise grace. I absolutely love love love the girls in my house, they are simply fantastic! They are from China, Russia, Poland, South Africa, England, Norway, and assorted parts of the United States with quite an age range. One cool thing is that most of my housemates are in the medical profession in some way shape or form, incidentally making our house very popular for all questions of a semi medical nature.  We make a lot of new friends that way. 

Classes are going well, I am writing this trying to think of how to explain what I do with most of my time. On paper it doesn’t look like we do much of anything but our days are so full.  Monday through Thursday we have classes in the mornings. Some days are cross-cultural with the Mozambican Bible School students that are here with us. Those days are always fun and involve a lot of gesturing and hand signals as there are often 3 or 4 languages from Mozambique that we are trying communicate across, plus Portuguese. It’s good fun. Other days we have guest speakers come and speak about anything from doing missions long term, to how to learn a new language, to more of a Bible study format. The afternoons are filled with trips in to town, village visits, beach trips, house dinners, and language lessons.  Time is going so fast, we’re halfway through our time here this week and I know the next few weeks are going to fly.

A few highlights so far…two weekends ago I went with my group to the bush to do outreach.  I got to go with the team that went with Heidi, which was amazing. Basically we showed the Jesus Film and prayed for a ton of people. People were healed, people were saved, it was fantastic. This one little girl was deaf and mute, we all prayed for her and by the end she could hear and repeat small words. What. The. Heck. I was standing there and I couldn’t believe it. The next day I was sitting there in the dirt playing with her as she repeated words I was saying. Absolutely aaaaaaamazing. We spent the entire weekend in the village just being with the mama’s, learning the local language Makua, playing with kids, and doing a lot of praying for people. The experience was definitely a highlight of the summer. Another highlight was this weekend I had the opportunity to go to a local church in the village right next to the base. It was tiny, probably about 20 people total but it was one of the best churches I have ever been to. What was awesome as well was that we are getting to know people. So in this tiny church in the middle of the village we see not just random people but friends who know our names and who we know. And that’s really neat.

This summer hasn’t at all been what I thought it would be at all. It’s been so much better in so many ways and so much harder in so many others. So uplifting, so stretching, so much learning about myself and God and other people. What an incredible opportunity to be here, what a blessing.

I think this is getting to be a bit of a novel…in summation I love it here! So hard and so good! I think I will go take a shower now, since the water is on, and that doesn’t happen very frequently bahaha and it’s been a few days.

its a dangerous business stepping out your front door...

Tomorrow morning I'm off to Mozambique!! 

Thank you ALL for the support, for the prayers, for the encouragement, for the affirmation, for talking me down, and then for talking me up, for being there, and for helping me walk out something I feel called to do. Thank you. I couldn't have done this without you. I'm standing on a lot of shoulders right now, and I can see the future off in the distance and it looks goooood!!

Next post will be from Mozambique!!

the God of small things

"Above all, trust in the slow work of God. We are quite naturally impatient in everything to reach the end without delay. We should like to skip the intermediate stages. We are impatient of being on the way to something unknown, something new. And yet it is the law of all progress that it is made by passing through some stages of instability-and that may take a very long time. And so I think it is with you. Your ideas mature gradually--let them grow, let them shape themselves, without undue haste. Don't try to force them on, as though you could be today what time (that is to say, grace and circumstances acting on your own good will) will make of you tomorrow. Only God could say what this new spirit gradually forming within you will be. Give our Lord the benefit of believing that his hand is leading you and accept the anxiety of feeling yourself in suspense and incomplete" Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

I've been overwhelmed by the support and the ways that God has already provided for me. But for me his work has been the slow work. There's been so many stories among those going to Mozambique with me of God's miraculous provision for them. Stories of people unwrapping brown bags that were left on their doorstep or mailbox to find several hundred or even thousand dollars contained inside. Whoa! That's awesome! And while that's fantastic God's been taking me down a different path.  He's been demonstrating provision in the small things and in his slow (but powerful) work. In a few extra shifts from work, in a bonus I wasn't planning on, in tax returns, in unexpected refunds, and in the generosity of friends. And I've been challenged to stop and slow down and look at those small things. Snowballs start with just a few snowflakes, and I do think God has a thing for using the little seemingly insignificant things to begin his amazingness with. And all those little things have added up!

I'm about halfway to my goal of $6000! 

So awesome! Still have a ways to go in a very short time, but man thats amazing! 

Speaking of small things here's a few more small ways you can help (other than still donating!!):
We've been asked to try to bring some things to help out the kids living in the orphanage where we are going to be. Any of this stuff would be much appreciated! 

• Boys/girls underwear (size 1-6)
• Diapers (size 1-3)
• Crib sheets
• Toddler clothing (girls dresses/skirts need to be to the knee)
• Gifts for childrens birthday (celebrated June 1-the day I get there!)
• coloring supplies
• jump ropes, outdoor toys
• t-shirts
• journals/pens
• beads, bandanas, hair accessories
• watches, flashlights
• stickers, balloons

Here's to the God of small things. To the little ways we are taken care of that we never realize unless we look for them. I'm feeling slightly in suspense and incomplete, but I'm going to give him the benefit of the doubt that his hand is leading.  Think about your small things today and give thanks. They're there! 

I cannot believe this is actually happening!! In the last few weeks, as I've started to get started on getting flights, visa's, and everything else, I think it's finally sinking in what an amazing opportunity this is going to be. And I can't help but get more and more and more excited!! And I can't help but continually realize how ridiculously over the top blessed I am.

The extended outreach I have been accepted for is...drumroll...to Nepal!! Whoaaaaaa. So excited for that too!! Nepal. Asia. So after my time in Mozambique I'll be heading to Nepal for about 2 weeks to spend time at an Iris base there. My small team will work with several of the long term missionaries and nationals that have made there home there and work in Kathmandu. The focus of this base in Nepal is on caring for orphans and widows, the crippled, and the homeless. Iris also runs a children's home there where the majority of our time will be spent caring for and loving on the kids living there. I know I say this a lot but sooooooo excited for this too!!

To those of your who have already donated financially and with words of encouragement, thank you SO SO much!!! I can't tell you how much I appreciate it. I am beyond thankful to be surrounded by the community and the friends that I am. It's one thing to feel the doors have been opened for something like this opportunity (which I totally do), it's another to have the faith to start walking through those doors. You all give me the confidence to do what I know I want and have been called to!

Aaaaaannnnd not to beat a dead horse but if you are still thinking/just haven't donated yet may I again make a plea for your assistance!! I still have a long way to go, only until the end of April to get there, this is coming up so fast!! I hate asking for money, really I do. It's quite humbling really, when what you are called to do is impossible without the help of the rest of the body. Quite humbling. There we are again with that thing called "community! Seems to be a theme...

Thanks/blessings all

Here's a website for the Nepal crew I'll be working with

http://www.irisglobal.org/nepal/about

because love is a verb

Hello all you fine people! More updates to follow but I wanted to get this blog started and get the word out! This summer I'll be heading to Pemba, Mozambique in southern Africa for about 3 months. I'll be working with an organization called Iris Ministries run by Heidi and Rolland Baker and I'll be attending the Harvest School of Missions there with about 200 other students. We'll be learning about missions, doing outreaches in the local community, working in the orphanage on the base, doing practical stuff in the community, and showing God's love to the people of Mozambique.

I cannot overstate how ABSOLUTELY OVER THE MOON EXCITED I am to have this opportunity!! No really. Really. Really. I'm so excited. This is something that has been on my heart to do for about 2 years and I'm so beyond pumped that the timing, the planning, and the waiting has worked out for this summer! God has opened quite a few doors and it's going to be awesome so see what is through them.

So, here's why I wanted to put this blog together...

1. I do hope to be able to update this both now and at least sporadically in Mozambique. There have been so many of you that have supported me already in the decision and I really hope to keep you all at least somewhat informed of the awesomeness I know is going to occur over there!

2. I hate to talk about money but do need to raise support to be able to make this possible! More details will follow on this but I'm looking to raise about $6000. The majority of these funds need to be in by April 25th. This includes the cost of the school,  flights, travel insurance that I will need to purchase, visas, and money for water and the (very essential toilet paper) that will need to be purchased during my stay. This also includes money that would cover one of several extended outreach options that were offered after the time at the school has ended. I haven't found out about these options yet so again, more info as soon as I know!

If you've got it on your heart to financially support me that would be amazing. Absolutely amazing. And so very appreciated. If you've got prayer, I'll definitely take that too, can't have enough of that. If you've got $1, I would love that. If you've got more I would love that too! To make it easy I've set up an account with Paypal (see the "Donate" button on the right side) for online donations. If you would prefer to send a check please write it directly to me (if you need my address please email me alisonrjordan86@gmail.com and I'll send my address to you).

You all are fantastic. Thanks for so much prayer and support already. At the risk of repeating myself let me once again say how so so excited I am to be given this opportunity this summer! So excited to be stretched, so excited to see a new place, so excited to meet people from all over the world, so excited to see how big/fantastic God is, so excited to be love in action, so excited to walk into what's been prepared for me. It's going to be AWESOME!!