Day 15: Daju (and return to Lijiang)
I tell you, open your eyes and look at the fields! They are ripe for harvest.
~ John 4:35
(see also: Matthew 9:37-38 and Luke 10:2)
So yesterday I was exhausted and cranky and didn't really appreciate the fields we were walking through. I felt bad about that, because I wanted to enjoy what I was doing and seeing. So today God gave me another chance to enjoy it. :) Today was very relaxing. In the morning we walked around the countryside and the village for a while, ate lunch, and went back to Lijiang by bus. (Those roads are ridiculously crazy, unpaved and going up winding mountains with blind curves, but I guess if you drive them every day you just get used to it.) There was a cute little girl on our bus who kept smiling at me and we made faces at each other for a while to entertain ourselves. In Lijiang we checked into another hostel and just kinda chilled out for a while. We walked around a bit after dark again and went to bed. The interesting thing was that we had a dorm room this time, with about 8 beds (and only 5 of us girls) and they let one of the beds to a guy. Hmmm....we all changed in the bathroom. But he was nice, from Ireland, and we actually hung out the next day.
Let me back up. For lunch we were still in Daju, and we had this *awesome* fried rice -- it had goat cheese in it! They really like their goat cheese in these parts. That's just fine with me, because it's one of my new favorite Chinese foods. The other girls didn't like it so much, though. I was the only one who finished my whole plate, and it was a big honkin' plate too. I have eaten so much recently, I don't know if I'll be able to eat again! (no, that's a lie. I'll definitely be able to eat again) Before lunch was the really cool part, though. We had a nice relaxing morning, and then we walked around to what we thought were some other villages (but I guess they were still part of Daju). It has been SO awesome for me to just see how these people live. Honestly, I think I could live here for a while. They have everything they need right here. They have all these fields where they raise their own crops (and crops to sell), they raise their own animals (we saw lots of cows -- even at our guesthouse they have chickens and pigs), they have water from the mountains, they can make their own clothes, they have little supermarkets in town, a school, a hospital....and they live in this valley surrounded by mountains with a big river at the bottom. Honestly, what more do they need? I'll get back to that in a minute. I've decided that I definitely prefer smaller towns to bigger cities. I love the quiet. Sometimes I even like the solitude. I loved that about the gorge. And there we were today, walking through their fields of wheat, rice, mustard, beautiful yellow flowers, and who knows what else. It was just incredible. I felt so....free. Free in a way I don't feel in my own town or even some of the towns we've visited. I felt like I could just run through the fields and be happy for a long, long time.
As we were walking along through the fields (guided by some friendly villagers) the verse I put at the top today came to me. A lot of the fields (especially some of the wheat) were starting to look nice and ripe. And of course the Bible verse is talking about more than just the crops you plant in the ground, it's talking about people. This town -- Daju -- has foreigners passing through occasionally after finishing the gorge, but no foreigners live here. Most of the people here are the Naxi minority. I don't know what they believe, but I'm pretty sure most of them haven't heard the Gospel. But look at the fields -- they are ripe for the harvest. These people, who are so friendly and warm, are also loved dearly by God, and need Him. I would love to be that foreigner who has a chance to live among them, to learn how to work with them, learn about them, share with them and love them. The fields are ripe for the harvest, so ask the Lord of the Harvest to send workers.
How beautiful on the mountains are the feet of those who bring good news!
~ Isaiah 52:7
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