Chapter Two: Setting the Spiritual Pace

Lower Omalo to Upper Omalo

2 hours walking

 July 22, 2021

Good Morning, Lord. Thank you for waking me gently, but with a burning desire to be in your word, to hear from you before I do anything else today. Speak to me. Reveal to me my unconfessed, unrepented, and unacknowledged sin. I don’t want anything between us. I only wanna be close to you. 

What an interesting morning. As I was laying in my tent listening to the Holy Spirit, I started to hear a song in my mind, but it’s not a very holy one. Specifically I was praying that He would speak to me from his word and remind me why I’d abandoned the comforts of the city to be here in the wilderness and He used the words of Sharpay Evans to share with me.

“I want the world nothing less, all the glam and the press, always giving me the best reviews. I want it all.” 

I am always crackin’ up at how funny the God can be sometimes. 

We set out for our hike from Omalo to Dartlo today. It would be about 10.9 kilometres or 6.8 miles. Our first stop was at the visitor’s center in Omalo to ensure that we would not need to register ourselves with the border patrol at this point because we knew we’d be hiking particularly close to the Russian border. We had the pleasure of sharing snacks and coffee and art with a tiny gal and her mother before we moved forward. It brought her so much joy to share her pop rocks and marshmallow taffy with us. 

We moved out for real this time with every intention of making our camp in Dartlo this evening, but we learned about two hours into the hike that God had other plans for us tonight. 

Upon arriving in the upper part of the village that we’d camped in last night, we met some humanitarian volunteers from the Czech Republic. They were moving some slate rock from one location to another. We engaged in conversation with them for a short moment and a few passing comments, “feel free to stay and help if you want” led us to ask God what He thought about us hanging here for a while and He gave us that permission, so we hopped in with them. 

This is the view from our campsite and a look at our time moving the slate rock.

To this day, I’m still not completely sure why we were moving those rocks, but I heard rumors of church expansion and road construction, so whatever it was, God wanted us to be a part of it. As we joined in their work, we naturally jumped on the opportunity for deeper conversation and learned that most of the members of the group identify as atheists, but appeared to be interested in the stories that we were sharing of Christ’s work around the world. 

A few hours of work led to an invitation to free lunch. This would be the first of many meals that God would provide for us. A traditional Georgian meal typically includes a warm soup, tomatoes, cucumbers, eggplant, bread, Khachapuri (fried cheese bread), wine, and other vegetables. 

After lunch, I began to feel sick. My whole body was weak and I wasn’t sure what was going on, so I opted to rest for the afternoon to ensure that I would be able to move forward when The Holy Spirit prompted us to do so. 

Not relevant, but a beautiful view from a cafe that I was writing at. 

I made a poor decision to hike up to some historic tower above the city because I thought that I would find a place to rest there, but I could not have been more wrong. I felt far more weak when I’d reached the top of the hill, but I was there, so I decided to take a look around and found myself physically bowing before the majesty of God displayed by the grandeur of the mountains in front of me. After a while, there were too many tourists for me to find any solitude, so I began to descend back into the village and was shocked when a white snake slithered across my path and onto the rocks without even acknowledging my presence. This wasn’t a coincidence. The Lord is trying to tell me something and I need to understand what’s going on here. 

When I got back to the bottom, I laid down on our packs and tried to take a nap, but was interrupted by the owner of the guest house giving me a place to sleep on a cot that she had on the porch. About that time, Lindsey had come to check on me and I invited her to join me in praying about the snake. 

You’re probably intrigued by my obsession with this animal, so here’s the scoop. When I was researching this trek, one of the details that caught my attention was that other travelers had encountered vipers on the trail. Normally I wouldn’t have minded that because I’m not afraid of snakes. No, I don’t like them, but I’m not really afraid of them. But something kept drawing my mind back to the fact that it was important enough for this author to note in their article. 

Honestly, I keep forgetting about this detail, but on our drive from Alvani to Omalo, we stopped for gas and in the bathroom there was a snakeskin hanging in the ceiling.

The night before this encounter, I had a dream that two of the gals on my squad were bit by snakes and that was noteworthy because every time I’ve ever dreamt of a snake, something bad has happened. Example: In college I had a dream about a snake and then my university was destroyed by a tornado. 

Now this idea from an article and this dream had manifested in my physical reality and I needed to get to the root of it with my Father, so I began to ask and I invited a close friend into it with me to ask. 

Later on I invited two others into it and then spent the evening alone in my tent praying and reading scripture. As I was reading in the book of Mark, I began to feel satisfied in the assumption that God was trying to tell me that there was demonic activity in this village that He’d brought us here to address. Still feeling feverish, I left it at that, shared it with the people who’d been praying with me, and then turned in for the night to get a good rest. 

 Though his day was quite heavy for me, it genuinely set the spiritual pace for my trek. 

Check out what happened next HERE.  

Thanks for reading. I love you. 

AWM