A phone call

For those of you that really know me know that I am not the best person to talk on the phone with. I actually detest speaking on the phone. Tonight, I spent about two hours on the phone with two people that I don't know if I've ever spoken on the phone with one of them. The other I had never spoken on the phone with.

These two conversations were two of the best conversations I've had in awhile. The first was with my cousin whom we conversed about my family and then we talked about something that I had been struggling to deal with. It's hard to share with certain people in your family and you just have to find that common ground between you two. I've been focusing on so many other things, that I didn't think about the things that we have in common. That was something that I've needed to hear for awhile. We can't hang out on the things I just want to do.

Second conversation was very emotional for me. Last summer in 2010 there was a friend that I shared my faith in Christ with. So did a few other members of my team. Well, a lady had a been trying to get a hold of me who met with that person. I was a little wary with the country we went to being closed. Well the good news was that my friend had accepted the Father into her life. It's the best piece of news you can hear and another door may have been opened for me to go back. I just keep praying, because when you receive bad news it's always going to be outweighed by good news. You always have one thing that separates you from everyone else. The love of our Savior. I'm excited that I'm going to see my friend after I die and I hope to see more, including those I'm currently afraid to talk about Jesus with.

Until next time...

Part 2/In the midst of it all

7/8 - Wow, the movement from one city to another is never uneventful. I know I had hoped to sleep on the bus as I had been burning the candle at both ends. Something I hadn't done since my pre-following days. Most of you who know me know that I really don't like going out at night and really don't like doing it when I have to get up early the next morning. However, different times call for different circumstances. As we were riding on the bus I tried to sleep on the bus, it didn't happen. The bus driver laid down on the horn a few times and I was generally awestruck by the beauty of this drive. EGP is a beautiful country. The vastness of it allows you to see that it has a similarity to America in which there are parts of it that are untouched by the masses and there are people who truly live off of the land. We did get there and got to our hotel in these little motorcycle carts (which were legit). One thing that was exciting was that we had a shower divider in our bathroom. We ate dinner/lunch at a place that served the worst tofu ever. It was like soup and I adhered to my, "I'll try anything" motto. I feel this might have been my downfall.

7/9 I woke up feeling pretty bad today. My stomach hurt, my head hurt, and some other stuff was going on. I was left to do one thing. Pray to God for strength and have Him get me through the day. As I've talked about before it's hot in EGP, but it's so beautiful and I love the people. Our leader Stephanie had also decided to give us a fruit of the spirit to practice for the day and it corresponded well with my reading of Galatians 5:16-26 http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=galatians%205:16-26&version=NIV. When I received my fruit for the day it was joy. My thoughts were not that good. How can I be joyful when I feel like garbage I thought? How can I be joyful when there's a gnat of a problem affecting my happiness? Here's how, God. Mike and I were first presenting our lesson that day and we needed to give some energy, happiness, and joy. Flat out I had to leave my physical nature up to God and I'll be honest. Other than the time I was teaching I had little to no strength (I don't want sympathy by the way, I want you to realize the power that the Holy Spirit truly holds). A few days later Nicole told me that I should've sat down when I was up there and let Mike do everything. Funny thing is that after the first five minutes I felt fine. Yeah, I messed up in some of the introductions, but Mike covered for me and we got through it. Unfortunately though the room felt a little flat. Daniel, myself, and Chad had a group together as we had under 20 students, but it all worked out. That night we had people come visit us at the hotel so we could spend time with them. At lunchtime I had to shower and lay down while blocking out some of the frustrations that accompanied me in the room for the trip. There were a few interesting conversations that happened for me that night. Although I was still feeling a little down (eating crackers helped) I wanted to speak with our new friends.
One person, Stacy, had a vast knowledge of he Bible as she related Aaron's rod (Moses's brother) to Aaron. Interesting right? She even related Nicodemus to Nick. I doubt there are many Christians in America who could replicate that knowledge. Mike was able to share his testimony with her and was able to ask a lot of leading questions while Aaron gave his input too. Aaron utilized a passage from Ephesians 4 (http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=ephesians%204&version=NIV) talking about how him and Rose do not go to bed angry. It was absolutely amazing, but as I excused myself to utilize the restroom I ran into a security guard. Steve was a very nice man and introduced himself to me. He was so eager to practice his English with me and I wish I had his heart language to speak to him. It was very frustrating to me though as we spoke over the next few days that I was only able to have a simple conversation with him. Maybe it was my lack of faith that God would allow him to understand more difficult words? I truly yearned to know his language so that I could share with him. He knew maybe 150 English words. As I exited the restroom I excused myself to go to bed as everything was a little uneasy so to speak.

7/10 Halfway there/Going down the mountain
As I was going through this trip I was reading Forgotten God by Francis Chan and Christian Beliefs by Wayne Grudem. They were two books that I had wanted to tackle for a long time. There were things I was going through and one of them was divine election. The idea that God has selected people to be with Him in His kingdom. Then I realized that God has decided to use us to find the next person He's elected. I wanted to be really intentional as today was our last day with the teachers. We wanted to make sure that we could have conversations that would help guide them. My fruit today was love and what better demonstration of love then to share our faith?
And with that we went into our last day. Unimportant things happened like we chose who the top students were, but some cool things happened too. The girls scheduled that night to spend time with the females from our class as they went to "The Square". I still have no clue what happened there. However, the guys played basketball with them. I wish I could tell you that we dazzled them with our American skills, but we didn't. We lost, although we had some good plays. We were supposed to hang out with our friends after the game, but something got lost in the translation. It wouldn't be our last game with them, but we were able to do one thing. Show our patience and fruit as we had numerous calls go against us with fouls and turnovers.
One last thing, I saw my friend the security guard that night. I didn't know what to do to show him love, so I bought him a drink. Sometimes gifts go a long way.

Until next time,
NG

Are you glad to be back?

The ultimate question anytime you come back from a long trip is, "Are you glad to be back?" After two plus weeks in el grande pollo (I can't say the actual country for security reasons) I don't know how to answer that after being back for a few days. Am I glad to see my friends and family? Sure. Maybe once the school year starts we'll be on another level, but this year is much different than last year. How so? Well, this year I'm going to blog about my experiences in EGP. Names and locations will be changed in order to protect those in a closed country. There will be some other coded language that if you have a question about I suggest you e-mail me at nicholas.gaspar@gmail.com. If you know the country I went to I would ask that you don't talk about it in the comments section or on Facebook. And you may experience a little (or a lot) of immaturity. I mean c'mon, you had another version of me on this trip. Without a doubt though this will have to come into chunks though. Today I'll cover the first few days including travel.

7/2-7/4 Traveling - We started off at the Globe at CBU and then left for LAX. Leaving at the Globe last year was very special for me as a lot of friends and family came to see me off, but this year was more intimate. It's amazing to have numerous people talking to the Father about your trip and laying their hands on you. If you want a feeling of the Spirit on you then that's it right there for me.
On the way to the airport we talked about how each of us had changed over the past year and what we expected to see on the trip in addition to watching Nyan Cat in a toaster and me singing the national anthem.
At the airport, Aaron licked his gummy bears and offered them to Sarah. The plane took off on time and we got to the airport in the capital of EGP after 13 hours or so. It was an uneventful flight of semi-sleeping, reading, talking to the Father (well that's never uneventful) and hanging out. We all were getting ready and preparation seemed to be going well. We got to the airport, went through customs and went to our second plane of the day to increase our travel time to 16 hours total. Again, not too bad. However, our spirits jumped when we got off the plane as the city we arrived in was not hot like it was last year and we saw our Friends from last year, Sam and Stacy. The elation from seeing those two was immense for all of us. We then took a 90 minute bus ride to the same place we went last year and went for a walk on the town. It wasn't as hot as it was last year, which was glo-ri-ous. I was goofy and wore my shower shoes and we played on some of the gym equipment that was randomly in front of a bridge. It's pretty sweet. You'll notice we lose a day there. Apparently, we dislike July 3rd. I think we only experienced 1 hour of it. Oh well right?

7/5 Preparation - It's always a blast to enjoy fellowship with the team. This was something that allowed us to get focused. We got a presentation from other Friends that talked to us about the people we were meeting and some things that we could say or be specific with. I loved singing songs to the Father with our team and Friends. It was beautiful and a bonding experience. We were able to prepare for the next day as it was the start of our 3 day training. Mike and I were slated to lead us off, which is something I was pretty excited about. After getting dinner we talked about how we wanted to be more intentional with our conversations and have the opportunity to spend time with the trainees. You never know what you have in store.

7/6 The First 1st Day - Let me tell you, there couldn't have been a better start or a better first day. We started off strong by separating our students into groups. Daniel and I were a team while Chad and Sarah, Nicole and Stephanie, Aaron and Rose, and Mike and Kim were the other teams. I'm going to reveal something that I haven't yet revealed to the team. I placed my team near the air conditioning unit. I apologize, hahaha. Okay, in all honesty it was wonderful to get to know the people in my group immediately as I felt an immediate connection with them. We were all able to deliver some significant teaching strategies to our trainees and were also able to make personal connections with them. As we discussed spending the time with the trainees we invited them to go for dessert by meeting us at our hotel lobby that night. We didn't know what we were in store for.
We had about ten students show up to go out to dessert with us that night. While being intentional and asking leading questions I was asked a question that seemed to follow me on this trip. "Nick, are you single?" No, not questions about my faith or how old I was, but if I was single. Well, this was interesting because I had made a promise to the Father that I would remain single and focus only on Him while we were prepping for the trip. Last year I didn't do that and I feel it took my focus away. I explained this to the trainees and was able to share A LOT about my back story and my relationship with my Father. What was interesting was that it seemed like we all got to do that in one way or another. It's exhilarating sharing about something I'm so passionate about so I wish I could express that to you in blog form. As the night drew to a close we took pictures and generally enjoyed each other's company. When you instantly connect with people you don't want to leave them, but we knew it was time. I only wish we could've stayed a little longer.
7/7 Pardon the Interruption - Indeed after coming off a high and knowing that we were going to get to spend the next two days with our trainees. Thus able to have more conversations with our students. Well after lunch during the last session of the day it seemed that the Father had different plans for us. We were informed through midway through the final session that the second day was going to be our last day. It was like being punched in the gut. It was also interesting because we had signed all of the certificates for our students that lunch, discussed who our top students would be, and discussed what we were doing that night. It was perfect actually. It was just sad that we only had one night left with them as some of the connections were so big. We informed the trainees that it would be the last day and the energy left, but we also gave our awards, gifts, and certificates. I gave my trainees a CD of some of my favorite songs which were by Switchfoot, MercyMe, Jars of Clay, The Almost, Hawk Nelson, and Sanctus Real. That night we knew we had to be purposeful and again planned to meet in our lobby.
Unfortunately it was raining outside pretty hard. We were sitting around the lobby just hanging out when we started to sing some songs. Chad brought out his iPad and had an interesting conversation with a few trainees that I'll let him share on his own blog. I felt prompted to put on a song to our Father called Divine Romance by Phil Wickham. All of the Americans started singing the song and we sang other songs to the Father after that. It was beautiful and magical and was a metaphor for our trip as those songs seemed to calm us down from tense situations. We went out again and had many great conversations with our trainees. I was able to have a very encouraging conversation with Daniel (our leader Stephanie's husband) that really motivated me for the rest of the trip. We hung out at our hotel and some received a Gift (capitalized for a reason) while some of trainees gave their American teachers their own gifts. It was a special and beautiful night that could only be captured by being there. It was very sad to see them go and as we went up to our rooms I realized that I wasn't going to be able to go to bed immediately. Mike, my roommate, had gone our Friend's house for an interview he had the next morning and I immediately fell into praise. It's amazing to be alone and giving all thanks to the One who created you. I was filled with emotion while talking with Him and He immediately calmed me down by letting me know it was time for us to move.

Until next time...