Bag That... - To The Rising Sun With The Risen Son (Part 4)

OK, I'm not going to continue the third person narrative. It was becoming tedious. At least it was for me. I'm thinking it probably was for you too. So I shall spare you further grief along those lines. Back to my normal voice. I thought the narrative voice worked on the first one, but not so much when I tried to continue it.

So here is the latest:

On Sunday I received an additional $550. Oops! I forgot that my friend's son contributed the final $3.60 needed to cover my plane ticket. I think that is totally awesome! I hope that when I have kids one day they will have a similar heart towards giving.

I have enough to be able to go now. I think there is enough to cover my travel, but I still have some expenses here that need to be covered. We are definitely close now to having absolutely all of the expenses covered for this trip.

Today I did some running around. I got in some walking when I went and cashed some checks and paid some bills. Then I went to a bookstore and picked up an English-Japanese dictionary and basic book on Japanese. I was tempted to buy a couple books that I saw there about Japan. One on the Samauri looked very interesting - and it was on sale! But I resisted this temptation. I also went looking for a replacement quick release clip to repair one that got broken on my rucksack. I ended up driving to Pineville to the REI that is there. Then I drove back to Salisbury to let my dad borrow the camera.

In the past couple of days there have been some interesting points of resistance that have come up. I am still praying and thinking about how to respond to one of them. And not unexpectedly it looks like the enemy has tried to put some sickness on me. In the name of Jesus I will not receive it. I think a lot of this is merely a test to see if I will back down or believe and fight. I choose to fight.

One thing that the resistance has made me very aware of is that I am not as well-prepared as I would like to be for this trip. I have wasted some time on frivolous things like minesweeper, solitaire, pyramid and Facebook. Some of this has come from the enemy and some of it is just my stupid old flesh.

I have in some ways treated this trip like it is one of the lightweight mission trips that I have been on in the past that requires more of me physically than spiritually, and the Lord has shown me more of the nature of the foe we will be facing. It was a very sobering revelation. It made me think about the mission trips of Paul, Barnabas, Timothy, and Silas. These were men of God who walked in anointing and power. They weren't casual at all about their mission. And even though these men were spiritual giants, they still faced very grave peril at the hands of men motivated by the spirits that they were resisting and preaching against.

I know now that this will not be a "business as usual" type of trip. It will take faith, courage, and sobriety to complete our mission. And right now our orders are still sealed. We will have to go in faith and trust the Holy Spirit to get us to where we need to be physically and spiritually. It is very exciting to be stepping out into the wild blue and yet at the same time I expect there to be a cost. I am not afraid of this cost; I just want to be as prepared as I can be to face it and bring glory to God in the process. Perhaps I am being overly dramatic and making more of this than I need to, but I'd rather be prepared for the worst and be pleasantly surprised instead of being prepared for an easy ride and end up getting a buckboard ride over the side of the Grand Canyon.

Tomorrow I need to finish cashing checks, get travelers' checks, go to the grocery store, go to Wal-mart (shudder), and take my rucksack to get it repaired. I also need to do some more reading and get my packing list together. It will all be here too soon. I can't believe it is almost Wednesday already. I am also trying to figure out how to get my computer to recognize my Treo so that I can sync to it. I already have a profile on this computer, but I have never sync'ed my current device to this computer. The last time I had to do this it took forever before I finally figured out what to do. I plan to strip a lot of programs and files off of it so that I can download the Japanese practice exercises and some music and/or scripture to it. It will also make it possible for me to take pictures with it again.

So that is about it for right now. There is still a ton of things to do before I leave and I need to get my rest. That being said, I bid you goodnight!