The Forest

the forest... I have wandered in the forest, I strayed from the path, into the leafy undergrowth chasing what I thought I saw there. As I chased that thing, that elusive thing, the creature of wonder and promise, I found it always eluded me. Too late did I understand that it was a lie, just a trick of the forest, there only to trap me. I had run after it because I had thought it to be all that is good but I found that it was nothing but a lie. Then the forest surrounded me and on all sides there was nothing but trees the green of their branches hiding any signs of the path or the rest of the world. The branches that seemed to part before me now catch me and seem to grip me to hold me in that forest that seemed so wonderful, now keeping me from the very things that I need to survive. There is nothing to help me, to give me strength to survive and to grow. I don't know where to go, how to make it out of the forest. Then I hear it, not so much with my ears as with my heart, the voice of Truth it calls me in this direction. I know because it is much different than anything I have heard in this forest, it isn't a lie. The forest is full of lies and traps but the truth pulls me onward and guides me, the forest gives way, it's lies powerless. Finally, I am back on the path. This is a path that starts in the middle of the forest, there is only one way to go. It is an easy path to follow and I know that it leads to where I truly desire. *sigh* As I follow that path I come to a fork. I ask Truth for guidance and I wait. It seems as I wait the forest is reaching out it's leafy fingers for me, trying again to trap me. I know that to walk without knowing the true path will only lead me into a trap again, so I trust Truth and know He will answer, He will lead me to what is truly wonderful. So in the knowledge that I am on the path I wait and the forest cannot reach try as it might.

Romans 8:35-39 (NLT)
Can anything ever separate us from Christ’s love? Does it mean he no longer loves us if we have trouble or calamity, or are persecuted, or hungry, or destitute, or in danger, or threatened with death? (As the Scriptures say, “For your sake we are killed every day; we are being slaughtered like sheep.”) No, despite all these things, overwhelming victory is ours through Christ, who loved us. And I am convinced that nothing can ever separate us from God’s love. Neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither our fears for today nor our worries about tomorrow—not even the powers of hell can separate us from God’s love. No power in the sky above or in the earth below—indeed, nothing in all creation will ever be able to separate us from the love of God that is revealed in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Quick Update

So right now I'm in Leadville CO, tomorrow morning I'll be going snowboarding. The last 2 years my family has gone skiing here in Leadville. I have enjoyed skiing and I consider myself to be pretty good as I can ski black diamonds pretty easily and blues are just fun. So my brother and I are going to try snowboarding.

Also I want to say that taking photos has been going pretty well you can see them here: A Year in Pictures

God has been giving me a desire to fellowship with Him more which is good. :)

So tomorrow I'll be hitting the slopes on a snowboard tomorrow morning, wish me luck and pray I don't hurt myself.

My Goals for a new year

So I have decided to actually set some resolutions for this year.

1. I'm going to try to take at least one picture every day this year and upload them to an album on picasa also I'm going to pick my favorite for each week and post it to my blog.

2. As God gives me insights I shall try to post them to my blog as well, hopefully this will be every couple weeks.

3. I want to basically keep all my goals I also set for my birthday

so the goals I set for my birthday are:

1. Read my Bible more
2. Get in better shape by exercising
3. Continually surrender my life to Jesus
4. _________ (I'm not telling because I want to do this without people knowing it)
5. Talk to my family more
6. Break my struggle with sin...
7. Give my heart completely to God and let Him control my love and my desires
8. Let God shape me and the around me not let myself be shaped by he world
9. Go backpacking with Nathan
10. Write down the thoughts and insights God gives me
11. Read some of C.S. Lewis' non-fiction works
12. Acknowledge my gifts and give all the glory to God.

I'm going to insert my picture for the day :)

From A Year in Pictures...

Heaven (a few thoughts)

Originally written down 11-15-2009

I want to start this with an odd thought.

Heaven does not exist.

What I mean by that is heaven is not a place like Oklahoma is a place. It is not a specific point on either the physical or spiritual plane. Heaven is not on the spiritual plane. The spiritual plane is where both angels and demons dwell. What I believe heaven is, is prefect fellowship with God. Since God is everywhere and in everything heaven is not one place. When we fellowship with God we glimpse heaven. The more we fellowship with God the closer we are to heaven. Heaven is not something that we have to physically die to experience. Because of the sin in the world and our lives it is not possible to truly experience heaven here on earth We only get to see a little heaven while we are on earth.

This is on a little different though but I think we will not get to ‘heaven’ until after the end of time and after satan and his forces of evil are defeated. Then there will only be the bliss of God’s fellowship.

I'm Home!

I have been home for a little over a week now, I just have been lazy about blogging. I got home on Tuesday, the 8th and went home with my family to Tulsa. I spent a couple days at home and then on Friday I went back to Oklahoma Christian University with my brother Nathan to visit with my friends who I hadn't seen during my three months of traveling. I not only got to hang out with friends which was just awesome I also played DnD which I hadn't played in 6 months or so. Taylor my friend in Alpha wasn't going to be in his room that night and was kind enough to let Nathan and I crash there so it was really good.

There is one other thing that is going on with my life that I would like prayer for, I need more of God's grace, strength and wisdom. I also need to continue to live Galatians 2:20 "I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me." It is the verse that God gave me when I was 18 as my verse to live in my life. I still have not got it down after 3 years, but God is still working so that is good.

Also I will hopefully finish uploading my pictures on my Picasa, then I'll start putting them on facebook.

If you want to see some of what God has done in my life while I was on PACrim look at my previous post.

How my faith changed during my travels

First a little background.

I was born and raised in a Christian household; I grew up with Christian parents and went to church on Sunday morning. When I was four years old, I asked Christ to come into my heart and be my Savior. I was not baptized until I was ten years old.. In my life, God has always been working and looking back, I can see His hand in my life. I also saw Him do a major work in my life when I was about eighteen years old; it was like a complete renewing of my life.

At the beginning of the trip, I was struggling in my relationship with Christ. I was having a hard time hearing God’s voice. It was a spiritual low. It was hard because of how powerfully I have seen God work in my life in the past and I know what He is capable of doing. Despite my knowledge, I was as the man described by Paul in Romans chapter seven verse fifteen to twenty-four. In that passage, Paul says, “I want to do what is right, but I don’t do it. Instead I do what I hate.” (Romans 7:16b NLT) I was trapped in the same sin and I knew that Christ had the power to release me from my sin.

In that time of darkness, I had brief glimpses of God’s power. I still saw Him working in me and through me. I honestly marveled at the fact that God could and would still use me. I was wallowing in my sin. It was like getting clean water out of a muddy stream. It was a miracle; there was no reason that I should have had God working through me at all. For example, when we were on the train from Beijing to Xi’an, the Lord gave me a verse. That verse was Jeremiah 29:11. It says in the NIV, “I know the plans I have for you declares the Lord, plans to prosper you, and not to harm you, plans to give you a hope and a future.” I wrote the verse down in the back of my journal because I felt like God wanted to teach me something about it. Before I had written anything else on the page, Kamery came into my compartment. She was very upset about something and I felt like the Spirit told me to share Jeremiah 29:11 with her. God was able to use that to encourage her. After that, everyone in my compartment had a time of worship and God really refreshed and encouraged me personally; I believe it was the same for the other people as well. I know at that time my life was far from where I should be but God was still at work.

Right after our time of worship, God gave me an allegory about how Christians and I, in general, are like a pen. He is the writer; we are the pens. I will not go into the details of the allegory but it gave me a deeper insight into how God uses me. I was surprised at how God reached out and was talking to me even though I had not been spending enough time with Him. I had barely read my Bible and I had even been forgetting to fellowship with God in prayer. God has His plans and I am glad that little things like us humans do not get in His way.

With all that I had seen and all that God had done, one might think that I would jump to spend more time with Him. Still after China, I could tell I was not in line with God’s will for my life. One of the biggest hindrances was in the area of my personal thoughts; they were not as they should have been. Philippians 4:8 says, “Fix your thoughts on what is true, and honorable, and right, and pure, and lovely, and admirable. Think about things that are excellent and worth of praise.” My thoughts were of sinful things. I was like the Pharisees of Jesus’ time; I was a whitewashed grave. Outside I looked fine but inside I was dirty.

It was easy to be just like everyone else. I am with a Christian group and it is easy to ride on the Christianity of those around me. God really started to get through to me while we were in Ibaraki. I was living with a host family and was not with the group as much as while we were in China. At first with my “freedom,” I started to go the wrong way. Not being around the group made it was easier not to keep God a priority. However, the other thing that happened with the host family was that I got computer and internet access, so I could talk to my friends back home. Talking to my friends back home actually was actually a huge blessing and God was able to use them to help me get back on the right path again. That has been a huge challenge of this trip. I have not found many people that I consider really close friends. I like the people on this trip and I consider everyone a friend but I do not feel comfortable sharing about what is going on spiritually with anyone. So having my close friends to talk to again and to share with again was a very beneficial for me.

I remember this one evening during our time in Ibaraki. I walked home almost every day. It was a half an hour walk so I had some good times of prayer and meditation while walking home. On this evening, God gave me another allegory about the current situation in my life. He showed me a picture of a tunnel going into a mountain. The tunnel was like my relationship with God; the deeper into the mountain I tunneled, the closer I got to God. A problem about tunnels is sometimes one has cave-ins and the same area needs to be cleared out again. This happens when the tunnel has not been reinforced properly. I realized that in my own life, God had taught me and worked on me but I had not properly strengthened the tunnel that was dug. The tunnel had collapsed and I was reclearing the same area. The tunnel needs to be properly reinforced with God’s strength and power.

The other thing I had been wanting was for God to step in and just do something big. As part of my allegory, He showed me another thing about tunneling. One needs to make sure that the tunnel is stable before one uses dynamite to blow away the big chunks. I wanted God to use dynamite but I had not strengthened myself so that I would be ready for God to do a big work. He also showed me that while I am working, He is there beside me and for every rock, I chip away; He has chipped away at least twice as many. I felt a renewing of purpose and a clearer tunnel and some of the rocks chipped away-between Christ and me. I thank the Lord that “He is at work in me, both to will and to work for His good pleasure” (Philippians 2:13)

Everything that happened in Asia (well most of it)

Finally…
I am horrible at keeping my blog up to date. I am very sorry about that, but in my defense my trip has been very busy, I have barely enough time to do and see everything.
First I want to say that I have pictures up on http://picasaweb.google.com/sheppard.tim.c (there are several hundred pictures up.)
So this update will be much more of an overview of what I have done rather than a day by day record.
So last time I wrote an actual update was in Beijing China. A LOT has happened since then.
In Xi’an China we danced in the fountains in front of the Wild Goose pagoda. That earned us the title of crazy Americans. We also saw the remains of the Bampo village, which is the oldest remains of a village that has been discovered in China. It is believed to date to 4500BC. In Xi’an we saw one of the wonders of the world (I don’t remember if it is ancient or modern, I’m guessing ancient, if you care look it up on Wikipedia). We saw the Terra Cotta army. It is impressive, but none of the soldiers were found whole, they had to be reconstructed, like jigsaw puzzles. We also rode bikes on the city wall. It is taller and thicker than the Great Wall, although a lot shorter in length. The ride was about 8 miles, verses the 4000 or so miles of the Great Wall. We also met with students from XPU (Xi’an Polytechnic University) they send some of their students to OC to study in the USA.
From Xi’an we took an overnight train to Shanghai. Shanghai was quite a change from Xi’an. Shanghai is a modern city, with the currently second highest building in the world. We saw a lot of cool sites and some worthless ones. (If you ever visit Shanghai do NOT bother visiting the Bund sightseeing tunnel. It would not be worth it even if it was free. It’s like an Acid trip, I think; it is just worthless and strange.)
Shanghai did have a lot of other amazing things to do and see though. Jill, Jordan and I went up the Shanghai World Financial Center (SWFC). It is the second tallest building in the world and has the highest observation deck in the world at 474 meters (1555 ft) high. It was quite a view and worth the money to go up. We waited up there until dark and got to see the city at night with all the nights. It was a beautiful sight. (I’m pretty sure I have a picture or two of it.) We also went to the Shanghai museum; I spent over 3 hours in there and still did not see it all. At the end of my time in Shanghai I met with our family friends the Lazos, and had supper with them. I rode the subway back to my hotel and as I walked back from my hotel I bought an ice cream bar, not an unusual event, but I only spoke Chinese to the lady I bought the ice cream from. I was happy as that was my last day in China.
From China we flew to Japan. I’m going to sum up a month in Japan in a couple paragraphs so things will be missed.
We flew into Osaka, and then took a train to Kyoto. We spent a couple days in Kyoto. At Kyoto our group saw a palace, a kimono fashion show, and the Golden pavilion. Also on our last night in Kyoto we went to the Ninja restaurant. It was epic!
One of the days we were staying in Kyoto we took a train to Hiroshima. In case any of you do not know your WWII history that is the site the first a-bomb was dropped on. We visited the memorial and museum. It is hard to describe the feelings I had as I walked through the museum and saw the destruction done by the bomb dropped by the country I live in. It is something I will not soon forget. We are all brought up to think that our country is “good” but that is a hard idea to fit with what I saw in the pictures. Now the city has been rebuilt and other than memorial dome, park and museum one would never know that most of the city was destroyed in a matter of minutes.
Next we took a train to Tokyo. We had a few days to explore the city. I visited the Edo museum, which tells the history of Tokyo since before it was called Tokyo up to the present. A few of us went up Tokyo Tower on our first night to see the lights of the city. Jordan and I did the Alpha arms outside the imperial palace. We walked the electric district. I really enjoyed it there, shops full of computers and other electronics.
Finally, we headed to Ibaraki to meet our host families. For most of the month of October we would be living with a host family. My host family was the Akiyamas. The mother and father lived at home and their two children are away at college, the older one is an ME grad student.
While I was there I enjoyed my time other than some of the classes at Ibaraki Christian College (IC). We had several weekend trips which were a lot of fun. One of the weekends we went to a place near the beach and enjoyed Japanese style BBQ. Another weekend we visited Nikko. It was one of my favorite places in Japan. I really enjoyed the natural beauty. While we were there our whole group went to an onsen, a Japanese public bathhouse. I think we are the first PAC rim group to have all gone. At the bathhouse men and women are divided and clothes are not worn. It was a new experience, but relaxing to soak in the hot pools. Also at Nikko we saw the lake there and a beautiful waterfall. I have pictures of both of picasa, no pictures of the onsen ;)
I did return to Tokyo for a weekend and met an old family friend, Bin. He showed me around the city. We visited Tokyo University, one of the oldest and best schools in Japan. We visited Meiji shrine, one of the most important shrines in Japan, as they used to worship the emperor there. We also went up the Tokyo municipal building, the highest point in Tokyo. That evening he took me out to a nice restaurant, it was rated in the top ten in the world back in the 90s. On the way back to Ibaraki I was not paying attention and missed my stop and got off one late. It was ok though because I was able to take a local train back to my stop.
It was a sad thing to say goodbye to all my friends at IC but all good things must come to an end. It was off to Hong Kong.
Hong Kong, it’s a big city and it might be my favorite city that I have visited. There was a lot to see and do there. The first night there we went to an interesting place, Modern Toilet, it doesn’t sell toilets. It sells food. It was actually very reasonable and tasty. The next day we went to actual Hong Kong Island, because our hotel (the YMCA) was in Kowloon. We saw the sights, visited Victoria peak overlooking the city. At the end of the day we took the ferry back to Kowloon and watched the light show. It was the whole city and quite a show, you can see pictures if you want. The next day we went to see the giant Buddha. We took a bus there and then several of us took a sky rail back to the hotel.
There were about 10 of our group who went to Macau. It was quite a city, similar but different to Hong Kong. While we were there 7 of us went bungy (that is the British spelling) jumping. It is the highest bungy in the world, 233 meters (764.4 ft) high. It was 4 to 6 seconds of freefall. I enjoyed the rush.
Since this blog post is over 1,400 words long and I have cover most of what I did in Asia I shall create a second blog post about what I have done down under, in New Zealand and Australia.