We’re now back in the Greenwich Village hotel, Kathmandu after 2 full on days that have been quite awesome!
I just hope I don’t forget anything that I wanted to share with you all!! Thursday morning worship was led by the group from Sri Lanka – it was awesome! It was a very charismatic. They didn’t try and be flashy or clever with what they did, it was just a pure expression of love for God! One of the prayers was a cry out to God to Bless us with his Holy Spirit, led by one of the Sri Lankans, but soon people all around the room were joining in with ‘Amens’ and ‘Hallelujahs’. It was beautiful.
Thursdays morning talks were both about sharing faith – first speaker had a wierd view of faith sharing – thinks its all about the words, nothing to do with actions!!? A direct quote from him: “Feeding the hungry, educating the illeterate is not the Gospel. Jesus did not send his disciples out to do these things. I struggle with this view – I can’t see any way to seperate the words we speak and the way we act when sharing our faith. The second speaker had a much more balanced view – she advocated words and actions. She said a lot of great stuff – but I’d like to keep that for its own blog post.
The workshop I went to today was one on faith, development and environment – looking at the relationship between the 3 things and how the Bible approaches them, again I want to give that workshop its own blog post – save for this. During the workshop, the rain got crazy heavy! Suddenly, the rain stopped and the clouds started to clear, slowly unveiling the beauty of the Annapurna range of the Himalayas. I was awestruck. It’s one of the few times I’ve been genuinly moved by a panoramic view. Once I’m back into a decent bandwidth, I’ll share some photos with you all!
The Pakistani group led the worship on Thursday night – was in their native tongue, so I don’t really know what was said, but it sounded beautiful! The shared a video with us about some attacks that Christians there suffered last year. I’ll share that video too once the bandwidth is better! After the Pakistani part of the worship, Vinod invited 2 or 3 of the whole gathering to share a little of how the conference had touched them. I went up first – sharing how this conference, especially the people, have taught me to live more joyously, more passionately, in the moment! I’m not the most…expressive person, I find it really hard to share emotions with others and really hard to dance , unless it’s a ceilidh!
As yesterday was our last day, some of my gupsup group shared our last lunch together – getting to know one another even better and eventually singing our national anthems to each toher – I went with ‘O flower of Scotland’ as I’ve never sung ‘God save the Queen’ have many issues with it, and generally just hate it!
Last night was the most awesome night! Everyone (apart from the UK group) was getting on a bus between 4 and 6am, so many of them decided just to stay up all night. So, the UK team decided to lead them in some community dancing! We did Ceilidh, Punjab, cheesy pop, Metal, Rave – all sorts. It was so incredible, everyone just let go of their inhibitions and got right into enjoying the moment! Even I was getting into it! Getting taught more Pakistani dance moves, leading the Ceilidh dancing, demonstrating cheesy pop songs for folks to take part in! The dancing lasted fomr about 10am until about 3pmish that we stopped. By this point, we were down to the last fathful few, but it was still amazing!
Joanna and I then decided it would be the best idea to stay up to see folks off on their journey at 4am and then to take in the sunrise.
Saying goodbye to everyone was hard. This week has been so amazing, I’ve met so many aweosme people and cultures that my mind is close to blowing! I wish we had longer out here with the people we have met. I’ve barely begun to really get to know people, and all of a sudden we’re going on our own seperate ways again! Thank the Lord for facebook and email! I’m looking forward to keeping in touch with them all, sharing more stories about life in our respective cutlures. I’ve had such an awesome time this week, I’ve loved meeting all these people and finding out about their cultures and how they live out their faith there. Once everyone had left, the hotel had that strange empty feeling that they get when an awesome conference finishes. Once the first few buses left we went to enjoy the sunrise, it was awesome, even better than after the storm yesterday! The skies were so clear that we got a beautiful view of the Annapruna range – it.was.awesome! To see how the mountains towered about the rest of the country, despite being30/40 miles away! Again, once I have the bandwidth I’ll upload some photos.
I have so much more to write, but i’m absolutely exhausted – I haven’t really slept since Thursday morning! So if any of this seems a bit out of place or not making sense – it’s because I’m falling asleep as I wrote this.
Peace out
The SACYN Conference sounds like it has been an amazing event with lots of fantastic encounters. I’ve been at the General Assembly quite a lot over the past few days … I don’t think you will envy me!
Have a good journey back to KTM and folks have perked up after feeling a bit under par.