Girls’ Day Out

Today’s tour took us to the Six Banyan Temple. And with Kevin temporarily (hopefully) under the weather, it was me and Maggie on our own (well, with Connie and 15 other people in the Madison group). I’ll have to admit that I was a little skeptical about going in the first place…kind of felt like I would be cheating on God. After some internal struggle, I decided it was good to educate ones’ self on other religions. So off we went. Once there it would have been easy to get caught up in the beauty of the statues or the meticulous landscape. I’ll have to admit watching the monks perform their ritual was also impressive. However, for this old Southern Baptist girl I couldn’t get past the fact that these poor souls were there to worship and offer sacrifice to a god that is dead and not the one true GOD. It saddened me to the very core that they didn’t even know that Jesus was the ultimate sacrifice and He is waiting for them. I found myself praying for these people who I don’t even know and for their Salvation. Who knew going to a Buddhist Temple would end up bringing me closer to God. He did! So one funny thing about the temple…here we are walking from altar to altar while people are praying and many in the group are snapping photos. The thought crossed my mind how different that would be if large groups of Asian tourists were standing in our balcony taking pictures while Pastor Todd is preaching the word of God.

For the lighter side of our Sunday we then headed to a government store for a little shopping. While there we got to watch a local artist work. All of his paintings were done with his fingers or the palm of his hands. His work was absolutely beautiful, but the price reflected it. After finding a few items of interest we headed back to the hotel for lunch and a nap (and to check on the patient).