If you are looking for the video post of traveling gear, I’ll put it up next week.  I think the timing is better for it then and this now.

I’ve had a couple of wake up calls in the last week.  Dennis Jeffares, during our training session, informed us of some particular sensitivities to which we are going to have to adjust.  We have to rearrange our vocabulary a bit, especially in the use of the M word.  It turns out that it is offensive to that culture for reasons I do not yet understand.  Nevertheless, because it is offensive, we must avoid it.

I’ve had to edit it out of emails and I’ve retroactively edited posts to eliminate it as well.  At this point, I am putting the word in my “moderation” filter so I can catch it if someone uses it inadvertently.

Moreover, we have to be prepared to have all of our belongings searched.  This is an affront to our pride in our culture.  All of that has to go away, and is not that big of a deal.  I wish I could say more about this, but I can’t.

The other thing that is a shock to my system is the Spiritual Warfare that we are beginning to face already.  A friend who was raised on the field warned me last week that the rooms in which we will stay have been blessed by Buddhist Monks, and that our team needed to be bathed in prayer.  That our judgment could be cloudy, that we could suffer nightmares, are all a part of the reality of Asia.   Couple that with the exhaustion of traveling around the world and we will be in desperate need of God’s strength.

I’ve been so excited about going that I’ve ignored the Spiriutal Realities that surround what we are doing.  Make no mistake:  I am confident in God’s sovereignty.  There is  no doubt From Whom and Through Whom and To Whom are all things (Rom 11:36).  That is why it so vital that we be dependent on Him, and not ourselves.

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