Jake's Thought for the Week

Let nothing perturb you, nothing frighten you. All things pass. God does not change. Patience achieves everything. -Mother Teresa-

Last week as I was driving home from practice I decided to make my weekly call home to tell my parents hi and see what everyone was up to. Now when I call home this usually involves a minimum twenty minute conversation with my mother while my dad is occasionally throwing in a few smart comments in the background. My dad is not one to talk on the phone and certainly is not one for small talk. However, last Wednesday night when I called home my dad picked up the phone and as only my dad can do, he encouraged me to get to the book store and pick up the book he just finished reading called Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortensen. He said he read it in his book club (which I did give a small chuckle to as I thought that must be the kind of club you join when your kids are all grown up and out of the house)!! He gave me a quick synopsis all in less than a minute and then he was gone and my Mom was back ready to give the scoop of everything that has occurred in Minnesota over the past week. :)

I thought this book must be extremely important since my Dad had this urgency to tell me about it, so the next day I jumped down to Borders and picked it up. To give you a quick recap of the book it is a true story about a young man who was not sure about the direction of his life. While he was searching for his purpose in life he decided to take a year off and pursue his passion for mountain climbing. Since he had been a small boy he had learned to scale some of the largest mountains in the world as his parents traveled as missionaries throughout Africa, The Middle East, and Asia. He had scaled every great mountain in the world with the exception of K2 which is often regarded as the most challenging and life risking mountain in the world.

Through his 7 month journey on the mountain, and his failure to reach the summit, Greg had discovered remote villages where education was limited or non-existent. He came across one village where the kids were doing math problems in the dirt. As Greg comes to understand the people and the culture he decides to make it his life passion to build schools throughout Pakistan and particularly the villages that lie in the vast mount region of K2. Please note that at the time of Greg’s discovery of the villages and his desire to build the schools the Taliban ruled the country and had outlawed all education especially the education of women.

You can go and get the book to read the whole story and the journey it has taken to make this project a reality. I am just about a third of the way through the book but the reason I decided to share it with all of you is because of the caption that began one of the chapters. Let nothing perturb you, nothing frighten you. All things pass. God does not change. Patience achieves everything.

This was one of those times that God was using something to speak directly to me. I know over the past few weeks I have been all of the things above except for patient. It reminded me that in order to accomplish anything great - whether that is building schools in Pakistan or simply reaching goals in basketball - patience is the key that unlocks the impossible. We will have our great moments and we will definitely have the moments we second guess everything, but with patience and trust in God all things are possible.

Go Attack,
Jake Sullivan