An Honest Word...

What was God teaching me in Pakistan? Why did He have me go? These are the questions that have plagued me over and over and over and over....

It's funny how often we think that life is supposed to be filled with book after book after book of experiences that we live, learn and understand. It's as though we are to look at what life offers us as a set of scenes that we live (or watch based on your ability to really live) as nice, neat, tidy little things that we will understand soon after they are over. Like when you read a book, you know? You read cover to cover and understand--there was conflict; there were characters; there was love; there was hatred; there was a moral. You learn the lesson of the book, close the cover, and put the book back on the shelf--likely to never look at it again. Why would you right? You already read that one!

Nice--Neat--Tidy.

These are words that do not describe my life nor my faith journey. Why, then, am I expecting this experience to process in a nice--neat--tidy way? It simply is not!

Here are a couple of ways God is meeting me, though--

He is illuminating the wilderness--the course sand under my feet and the hot sun on my face. He is reassuring me that life isn't necessarily only about the "Promised Land" but that he is using the sand and the sun to build my faith.

He is awakening me to the fact that life and the experiences that lie within it are not supposed to be book cover-to-book cover experiences. I will be processing what happened in Pakistan for a very long time. Perhaps the last two-plus months for me have been that cover page that introduces a new chapter into my life instead of a different book altogether. Thus, God holds the future and what I will discover within the pages to follow.

How does this help?

I don't have to figure everything out. I can be broken and confused. I can wonder and hurt. I can grow callouses on my feet from the hot sand beneath. I can pray and trust. I can believe that God is building my faith. I can believe that He is working all things out for the good.

There is a really great picture of this in Exodus 15. The Israelites are walking (miserably) in the wilderness. They are confused, hurting, broken, not knowing how to live, etc. Just when they think they can't go one more step, God brings them into an oasis with 70 palm trees and 12 fresh water springs.

Awaken to the God of the oases!

Now I can keep telling the story---

Pakistan Journal: My First Helicopter Ride...Ever!

I had a dream last night that Jeff, Ben, and I caught a chopper to the top of a mountain. I couldn't have imagined that dream coming true until we were sitting at the helipad watching a UN helicopter appear in a valley between two massive mountains. We heard the sounds before we saw the machine--my heart was pounding louder than the props!

We packed our bags and followed a Pakistani officer to his Jeep out in the street. He instructed us to throw our bags in the back and get in (not before a couple of pictures of course!) We were off--a five minute ride to the helipad which happened to be a clearing between a whole bunch of rocks on somewhat level ground. When we arrived, there was game of Cricket going on--Cricket is huge in Pakistan. There were also piles of supplies--bent pipe, rolls of foam, tin, bars--everything that we would need to make several shelters.

If only we knew where we were going (Not that it mattered I guess).

After an hour of waiting and hoping that a chopper would come we heard the soft rhythm of blades echoing through the valley. It was actually coming to get us! According to our director, it wasn't always the case. Sometimes he could count on the UN, other times he couldn't. He was on a day-to-day, flight-by-flight regiment with them. This particular day, we just happend to get lucky!

Instead of us jumping on the first chopper that landed, we waited and watched as several locals began to fill the cargo bay with supplies. Being that the wind was usually high up in the mountains, there were only a certain number of pipes, foams, tin sheets, and bars that were allowed on each flight. After they had it full, they would it up and sent it back up the mountain. This happened twice--by the time the second load was in the air, it was already 2:00pm. Were we going to make it up the mountain that day? Questionable at best.

While we were hoping and praying that another chopper would come, Jeff realized that he hadn't grabbed the stove that we had bartered hard for and gotten in Manserah. He asked us to watch his stuff as he was going to head back to the base to get it. If we bought it, we were going to use it! He caught a taxi and headed back while Ben and I continued to watch the horizon for the helicopter to come back.

Here's the thing. We had to get to the top of the mountain that day because the team of three that was currently up there needed to get back down to catch a flight back to America. The reason we were selected and sent was because we needed to get any information from them that would help us for our stay. We were talking about this very thing, wondering if we should go if Jeff wasn't back yet when we heard the chopper returning.

Decision time: Do we leave our leader here and go (providing a good transition with the team already on the mountain) or do we stay without certainty that there would be another one that day?

We went--easy decision. However--we did stall the pilots (much to their angst) for an additional five minutes.

The door closed--no Jeff. It was just Ben and I and our two other teammates that joined us at the helipad: Sean and Josh. The adventure was soon to officially begin.

We had no idea where we were going, what we would find when we got there, or how long we would be staying. None of that mattered--we were on our way--the helicopter had left the ground.

Pakistan Journal: Instant Deployment (Again!)

We awoke the next morning to find that we were in the foothills of the Himalayas. Being a mountain lover, I thought that I had seen some amazing mountains in my lifetime. Granted, the Rockies are incredible and Yosemite is almost undescribable. The Himalayas, however, are real mountains! They're old, they're huge, they're breathtaking--and those were only the foothills.

Jeff, Ben and I were still riding the excitement from the night before coupled with the first really good night's sleep that any of us had had. We were ready to get to work! I must admit that I was a little unsettled at this point. My hope was to spend time with locals, getting to know them and learning how to help them. I would be lying if I were to say that I didn't have a little of the "hero-mentality" floating around inside me at that point. The hard part for me is that when I woke up, I discovered that the eight additional Americans that were at the Bisham base all had really strong personalities with eight different ideas of how do pull off the job of bending 1000 pipes.

A quick word about the pipes. The shelters that we were building looked like mini-car ports made out of tin. The supplies needed were 8 rebar stakes, 4 bent pipe, 1 roll of foam insulation, 10 pieces of tin (secured together), and 8 metal straps. All of the pipe in Pakistan came straight--for obvious reasons--meaning that we needed to bend it; thus the pipe benders that we brought over with us. By the time we would run the pipe through the hand-cranked machine, it would come out in a perfect arc. The problem was, the pipe-bending machines weren't cooperating well and kept on breaking down. The men there had been trying several different solutions the day before but hadn't come up with a good one. 1000 pipes needed to be bent by 8 strong American personalities and a couple of men from Peshawar, Pakistan and all we had were four broken down pipe-bending machines.

Now does my angst make a little more sense?

I was there to serve though, and was prepared to do whatever it was that I needed to do.

Jeff, Ben and I spent some time that morning praying together and then had breakfast (naan and eggs--delicious!). While were were eating, the director approached us at the table and said, "We need at team of three to get to the top of the mountain sometime today to trade out with a team of three that have been up there for a day and a half."

At this, everyone in the room began to bubble with excitement. At last, what we had all dreamt about was becoming reality. Everyone in the room (except for Jeff, Ben and I it seemed) began to plead there case of why their team was ready to head up the mountain. I watched the entire interaction confuse and stress out the director so I mentioned that maybe it would be easier if he talked with the three team leaders that were in the room and make the decision that way.

Ten minutes later, Jeff came up to me and asked if I had warm gloves. I was a little confused by the question, but answered that I did.
"Good," he said. "Put 'em on because were heading up the mountain in a half hour!"
And again, we were the team that got the go-ahead to move on.

Here's what happened in the leader conversation. All three of the leaders determined that it would be best to send my team because we were the only three that hadn't been orientated into the pipe bending. Because so many pipes needed to be bent, it made sense to keep the men there that had already been working on them. Thus--our team got the green light.

Within one half hour, we had our bags packed and were sitting in the back of a Pakistani army jeep on our way to the helipad....

Pakistan Journal: Our Welcome to Bisham

Upon arriving in Bisham, our first order of business was locating the hospital where the rest of our team was. All we knew is that there were eight other Americans in Bisham at a Christian hospital that had been shut down. Ready--set--go!

Our first stop was the Cuban Military camp. I'm not sure what the Cuban military was up to in Pakistan--most likely the same thing we were. Obviously this wasn't the correct place so we were on the road again. The Cubans must have given our taxi driver directions to the hospital because the next door that we knocked opened to a large Pakistani man with a big smile and eyes that said, "You've made it to the correct place!"

We dumped off our gear, checked in with the director at that base camp and took off with Faizel to grab some dinner. He was so pleased that we had accepted his invitation for dinner. He thought he was pleased! I was so excited. I make it a point, everywhere that I go, to eat the food of that particular area (as you could no doubt tell from my chai encounter). The thought of eating more authentic Pakistani cuisine was certainly an enticing one, especially as we hadn't eaten now in some time. No doubt Jeff was hungry!

Faizel led us right to his favorite restaurant--a simple place with a pleasant smell and a welcoming host. I looked around to find nine other men seated around several small tables eating chicken and rice and drinking chai or water. Faizel took the liberty to order for all of us which I was fine with because none of us could read the menu anyway.

We were talking about food that we had eaten up until that point when IT began to happen.

I live in a place where earthquakes happen and happen frequently. San Francisco has had its fair share of intense earthquakes--nothing like the 7.6 that shook Pakistan. I will admit that in my two-plus years of living on the West Coast, I can't say with certainty that I have ever experienced one of these frequent little tremors.

I did experience one that night in a little restaurant in northern Pakistan and I wouldn't mind if I never had to ever again!

It started with the sound of thunder under my feet that slowly worked its way up my body into my very soul. My mind was trying to understand that sensation when all of a sudden I felt that thunder begin to shake my body. It all happened so suddenly that it seemed like it was going in slow motion. As soon as I realized that we were experiencing an earthquake--and a fairly significant one at that--I began to look to the other men in the restaurant to see what they would do. I figured that I would do exactly what I saw them do. Before I knew it, they were throwing their tables and chairs out of the way and sprinting out of the restaurant. I did likewise while Jeff (older and more experienced with earthquakes than I) decided to look for a support beam. Faizel told him not to trust it and to run instead.

I can honestly say that I have never seen terror in someone's eyes before. Fear--yes. Terror--no. I now know what terror looks like. When this 5.6 earthquake hit, it reminded these men of the quake exactly two months to the night prior that had destroyed northern Pakistan. They also knew that the reason 88,000 people died was because buildings crashed down on people inside. We were now those people inside and the building we were in wasn't necessarily earthquake-proof!

Let me try to explain what the earthquake felt like. The 7.6 and the 5.6 that we rode out that night were verticle earthquakes meaning that the earth rises up and crashes back down to normal serveral times in a row. The 7.6 forced the earth up six to seven feet in some places before it crashed back down and lasted one minute and two seconds. That must have felt like a lifetime! The best way that I can describe the feeling is by explaining something from my past.

When I was a little boy, I had a swingset in my backyard. This swingset was one of those metal pipe structures that sat on top of the sod. After years of use, the ends of the pipe would settle three to four inches below the surface. My favorite swinging experience was to pump as hard as I could until the entire structure would lift up out of their impressions and thump back down into them. As I swung, I would feel the rise and the thump of that swingset. Perhaps you had a similar experience as you were growing up. The 5.6 quake that we rode out that night felt like the rise and thump of my swingset years prior for five or six seconds (just enough to lose our appetites).

We thanked Faizel for dinner and made the walk back to our new headquarters. None of us really wanted to eat anything and we were all too freaked out to talk much more. Bisham was our team's headquarters for pipe-bending and we were told that we would need to have 1,000 pipes bent by the end of the next day. To bed we went!

Oh--did I mention that Bisham was also the headquarters for Pakistan's Al Queda training camps?

Pakistan Journal: Deployed

Three of us were leaving; Thirty-seven of us weren't. What do you think that felt like?

At first I didn't think anything of it. I was too busy packing my bag, getting rid of things that I wouldn't need and acquiring the supplies that I would. Then I heard the comments begin--"Why are they going and not us? We're a team of three too!" It wasn't that people were unhappy for us, they were unhappy for themselves. The truth was, 37 men wanted to be in our place and weren't.

We jumped into a taxi that took us to the bus station. Once there, our taxi driver helped to negotiate eight seats in a van for us and our luggage so that we wouldn't have to store our gear on top. This particular taxi was already quite full with ramdom men heading to Bisham. Once we were packed in and sitting in the back we waited for another twenty minutes before we left, meaning that we had lost feeling in our legs before our three hour journey began.

At last, one more person crammed into our van bringing the grand total to 14 people (the vehicle was designed for 10). It was on this taxi ride that we began to see the effects of the 7.6 quake. We began to notice tent villages stretched as far as the eye could see, as well as destroyed buildings and homes. We were commenting on what we were seeing and realized that no one else in the vehicle was talking at all. I thought this was strange, especially because we were all in such close proximity to everyone else. Obviously taxis are not social vehicles because we were the only ones to carry any converstation the entire trip.

We were an hour and a half into the journey to Bisham when all of a sudden our driver pulled us over and everyone filed out of the taxi. Jeff, Ben, and I were all pretty confused until we watched what was happening. One by one, the men crossed over the road, washed their hands, feet, and face and proceeded to line up for prayer time. While they were praying, we met a man from our taxi named Faizel who heard us asking questions of what was going on.

"Prayer," he said in perfect English, "It is time for them to pray."

My first reaction to hearing English coming out of this man was, "I really hope we hadn't said anything wrong or offensive while we were talking in the van!"

He introduced himself and told us that he had been listening to our conversation for the past hour and that he hoped that was okay. Of course it was and so we began to ask him questions about why some men were praying and he wasn't. He told us that he wasn't praying because he wasn't wearing the correct type of clothing and it would be disrespectful to pray dressed as he was. I'm not sure why this was. The only thing that made sense to me about it was that he was wearing Western-style clothing (jeans and a button down shirt) and everyone praying were wearing the traditional Pakistani-style clothing.

We jumped back into the taxi and were on our way again. This time it was the four of us talking. We learned several things about Faizel and about the city (Bisham) that we were heading to.

And then it got dark.

Keep in mind what I described about the way that they drive. Now, imagine that happening over earthquake disrupted roads with oncoming headlights weaving, bouncing, and veering this way and that. Luckily I was doing the "head-bobby because I'm really sleepy" thing again. As I was sitting on the far right side of the vehicle, my head bounced off of Jeff and the back of the seat in front of me. I would have been fine like this for hours, but Jeff decided that it was time to wake me up. He didn't wake me up because he was sick of my bouncing off his shoulder. Rather, he woke me up because he needed to get to the window as soon as possible. In other words--Jeff was about to blow!

My initial thought was, "Ain't no way he's leaning over me to puke out the window!" So I offered the following suggestion.
"Why don't we switch spots?"
This would work fine in a typical vehicle. This was no typical vehicle--this one happened to have no room for a switch of this magnitude to take place. Somehow, we (both measuring over 6-feet tall) managed to dance some weird dance so that we could switch spots. No sooner had Jeff gotten into my old seat then he threw open the window and got rid of everything inside of him.

The journey to Bisham was coming to a painful end when Faizel spoke back up.
"You are in my city--let me take you out for dinner."

"Fantastic!" was my response. We knew nothing about Bisham or what was in store for us within the hour.

Pakistan Journal: Four become Three

Before we arrived at that Bazaar, I noticed what would soon become the one familiar spot that I would look for in every big city we were in: The Chai Shop.

It is a well known fact that my favorite past time is spending time in a coffee shop sipping a cappuccino and talking with a friend. Just because I was in a different country didn't mean that I was going to stop that tradition--the only difference was that I was going to be drinking sweetened chai instead of my typical capp.

It was a little obscure at first. I wasn't quite sure what it was that I was looking at. There was a little open-air room off to my right with a huge steaming culdron of something and a flat plate that appeared to be used for cooking something. It wasn't the sight of these things that grabbed my attention though, it was the four Pakistani men sitting inside the shop sipping liquid out of little off-white tea-cups, seemingly having a pleasant conversation. Those were all of the signs that I needed to know that this was what I was looking for.

I called to Jeff, Justin, and Ben and asked if they were hungry or thirsty. We hadn't eaten anything since the naan several hours earlier, so all four of us decided that, since we needed to kill time, we would spend some time sipping chai.

Picture this:
You have never seen anyone in your life who looks differently than yourself. Your typical day is spent peddling goods in the downtown Bazaar of Manserah with intermittant tea breaks which you take in the exact same chai shop in the exact same chairs, with the exact same group of friends. You've done this for years and years without any change or disruption. Then, one day as you're sitting there having a typical, "How's your day going?" conversation, in walks four big foreigners smiling at you and taking a seat at a table next to you.

Let's just say that we were show stoppers! Business came to a standstill in this little shop to the point that I was wondering if we had done something wrong. Suddenly, realization set in for the host and he ran to our table to try and figure out what it was that we wanted from him. I communicated (using the international sign-language for, "Can we have four cups of Chai please?") that we were interested in a beverage.

Where I'm from, eating establishments are graded with a letter grade (A-F) for criteria such as cleanliness, service, food quality, etc. Almost everywhere you go, you'll see an "A" posted in the window. This might seem ridiculous, but it helps to keep the quality high. You don't want to be the establishment with a "B" posted in your window. You simply won't get any business.

Also--we were told to be very careful when eating to drink filtered water only and to drink from clean cups.

All of that went out the window within our first couple of hours in Pakistan. I'm not sure what letter grade this particular shop would have gotten--who cares really? First of all, they dipped our used tea cups in dirty dishwater and then, without drying them off, filled them with our chai and delivered them to our table. We all looked at each other and smiled, "Bottoms up fellas!"

Let me tell you about the chai in Pakistan. You may have experienced this drink in your local coffee shop. If not, sweetened chai tastes simliar to what a cinnamony pumpkin pie would taste like (without the crust of course) as a drink. I thought that I had experienced good chai in my life here in America. Was I ever wrong. Compared to the chai in Pakistan, chai in America is like lukewarm, dirty bathwater! This particular cinnamon flavored beverage was so tastey that we all ordered seconds along with what the four guys sitting next to us were eating. It looked good, we were hungry--so I ordered us a plate-full. A bit risky--sure--but I'm glad that we did because it was our last experience with meat for the next several days.

It was in this coffee shop that I realized something very important. People of different cultures like it when you attempt to do things their way. You might feel out of place trying, but it is certainly worth it. I had noticed that our new friends sitting next to us would tear their naan and use it as a dipping device to scoop up their stew. I followed suit and instantly new that it was a good move as I heard laughs of encouragement coming from next door.

Our next job was to locate a gas stove so that we could become self-sufficient and have the ability to rough it wherever we might end up. Upon paying and leaving our chai shop, I went across the street because I thought that I had seen propane tanks in a shop. As soon as I walked in, I was surrounded by nearly 50 men who wanted to see why I had stepped inside. Suprisingly, the shop keeper spoke a touch of English and I was able to explain to him exactly what it was that we were looking for. Once he understood and realized that he didn't have it, he shocked my be offering to walk us downtown to find exactly what we needed.

When was the last time that happened to you in America?

Before we knew it, we had a tour guide to the heart of the city who knew a little bit of our language and all of his, including his way around the Bazaar. Sure enough, he brought us directly to a store that carried the stoves and helped me to explain and barter for the correct one. Again, while we were standing there, we were surrounded by curious passerbys trying to get a look at the goings-on inside (much to the this shop-keeper's delight).

As soon as we had our stove secured and filled with propane we were on our way back to headquarters. Upon returning, Justin informed us that he thought it would be a good idea if he bounced off of our team because he was going to be staying in Pakistan a couple of days longer than us. He figured that he would find a team of guys that had the same timeline as him. We thought it sounded like a good idea, but were a little bummed to be a man down--suddenly we were a team of three.

Five minutes later, the director came out and announced that he needed a team of three to be packed and ready to go in fifteen minutes. Jeff looked up and said, "I'm the leader of a team of three--we could go."

Ben and I weren't around when this was happening. We had gone over to our packs and were beginning to get settled in, thinking that we were there for a couple of days. I noticed Jeff with a smile on his face walking toward us. "Pack your bags fellas." he said, "We leave in ten minutes."