Day 14: A man dies...

I awoke after a much needed 10 hours of rest. Hit my local Treehouse for some grub and headed back to the hotel to relax at the pool and catch up on my blogs. Apparently this hotel has become a haven for the Swedes, they have multiplied since last I was here. Met Gustav today who is traveling with his girlfriend for the next 4 months and then will head back to Uni in the fall. Met a weathered old Swede in a speedo who has a dolphin tatooed on his right pec. This Swede,Werner, has 3 kids in the Philippines from 2 different women, the oldest is 20, and a 5 month old from an Indo girl who he's with now. He works on a container ship that ports in Australia, 5 weeks on, 5 weeks off. He was very free in telling me where all the best "girl dancing" bars are in Southest Asia, his favorite being in Thailand at Pantai beach. Uh, thanks Werner, I'll get right on that.

Brit, my buddy from Texas A&M, picked me up on his ride about 2pm. Took me to a French Walmart of sorts off the main highway. I wanted to see how much a netbook would run me, you can find them as cheap as $200 in the states. Cheapest HP at this place was 5,800,000 Rp or $650 ... Are you kidding me? So I decided to stick with the iPhone blogging for now and Internet cafes.

Then we headed back to his pad to grab grub and watch a pirated Dvd with Natalie, his roomies fiancé. Coincidentally when we got there he had large pieces of wooden furniture that required assistance from an additional guy to move, enter me ... How convenient. We watched a movie, but kept stopping it to talk about life and ministry and theology. It was such a refreshing and encouraging conversation. 

I think it's funny when roles reverse. I first met Brit when Amanda Bostwick/OKelly brought him to help at my D-Now back when I was a youth pastor. At that time he was in college and just a wanderer trying to figure out what he wanted to do in life. A year late, summer 2003, he started youth ministry at StoneBridge Church in The Woodlands as I was leaving to move to CA. Overall we might have spoken a handful of times but never really hung out. And now he's a pastor, DTS trained, in a mission church in Kuta, working with a really tough ministry, raising support, reaching out to the Hindu's, and I'm am now the wanderer, trying to find what plans God has for me. Kinda cool. We both discovered that life over the past few years has been tough and definitely not as prescribed. Yet through the toil and pain, it redefined both of our relationships with Jesus resulting in strength and grace. This has led to so many refreshing and encouraging conversations. I love it when God surprises me like this!

On a more heartbreaking note, at bowling last night I met a man named Eric. He was an ex-pat from the states and was over here running a project for a large US company. He had met a wonderful Balinese woman, married her, and they had 2 beautiful kids together. About 5 minutes after Brit and I left, he was getting into a cab to go home and he had a heart attack. They took him to the hospital as quickly as they could, but within 30 minutes he was declared dead. It's surreal because we had literally just been bowling with him and he looked healthy and fit. He might have bowled the second best game of the round. It's strange how fast and fleeting life is and how easy it is to take it for granted. It taught me I need to be more thankful for what God has graciously given us and to remember it has an expiration date, so live for today, because tomorrow is not promised, for any of us.

Nite nite from the iPhone blogger