shanghai

I'm writing this from a completely different world than my last post. I'm curled up on a couch, drinking peach tea, about to eat banana chocolate chip pancakes with Lyssa and her older sister, Emmy, who's teaching English here with her husband Steve. We've been relaxing at their apartment for the last few days, talking about Nepal, sharing stories, debriefing, and eating delicious Chinese food. And watching Seinfeld. It's a nice in-between place, not Nepal and not America, where we've been able to reflect but also just have fun (and maybe gain back some of the weight we lost in Nepal...).

When we first landed, I was shocked at the wide paved roads here, with traffic that flows fairly normally (I used to think China's driving was crazy until Kathmandu) and stoplights to control it and no cows wandering the sides of the roads. It was weird to look left instead of right (Nepalis drive on the "wrong" side of the road), to see less motorbikes, no saris, no tikka marks, no packed Nepali buses, no roadside markets - just skyscrapers and sidewalks and Western stores. I already miss Nepal. I miss the kids, the community of amazing people we met -- and the butter naan and shahi korma at Universal. I even miss dahl bat.

But I keep thinking of the phrase we used so much in Nepal, usually after seeing some crazy thing God is doing: "from glory to glory." This doesn't mean "from comfort to comfort" or "from easy experience to easy experience" -- but that we'll see more and more of him, better and better glimpses of his power and love. God promises to take us from glory to glory, from strength to strength, and from joy to joy if we ask him, if we press into his presence and into his heart. And that's not going to end just because Kathmandu is far away. The night we left, our friends prayed that we'd look back on Nepal someday and say, Yeah, Nepal was amazing, but it was just a stepping-stone to so many greater experiences with God. I have no idea what that will look like, but I'm excited to find out.