Wednesday Night Stories: The Rudy Pants

One of my very favorite people in the world is Rudy, one of my teammates and roommates in East Asia.

Rudy is French-Cameroonian and his loves include mixing Sprite and beer, missed layups, and learning guitar chords via YouTube. He also enjoys 魚香肉絲 (yu xiang rou si, fish fragarance pork strips, much more delicious than it sounds) and the Will Smith film Seven Pounds (He watched it 3 times in 24 hours). Further, he loves sleeping in public, at some point in the future I will have an entire post titled, "Pictures of Rudy Sleeping in Public."

But more than any of those, Rudy is a man who has met Jesus. I don't know anyone who more joyfully and continually communes with the Lord. He stays up until 3 AM trying to learn guitar chords so he can worship. He would routinely be late for class because he was praying and lost track of time. He's met Jesus and his life has changed and it's incredibly clear every day in Rudy's life.

As I said, one of my favorite people on Earth.

Rudy only reiterated this title one day while we were traveling in Malaysia.

After we left Kuala Lumpur, we spent two days in a part of the Malaysian rainforest called Taman Negara. We hiked, got lost in the rainforest, and rode on boats, it was pretty incredible.

By this point of the trip we'd been through a week-long conference and then had been staying in hostels for three or four nights with no access to laundry facilities. So when the company that arranged our rainforest travel gave us all a promotional t-shirt we were all very eager to have a new, clean shirt.

Even more exciting, the shirt has an image of a dinosaur walking on a bridge, which come on(!) where else can I get a shirt with that on it!

Rudy, in particular, was running short on clothes and after a day of hiking that included blood, sweat, animals, and possibly rash-inducing plants he was all the more eager to change.

But upon returning to our room, Rudy discovered he didn't have a single clean pair of pants or shorts into which he could change. And we were in a hurry, trying to get cleaned up to get some dinner, but Rudy was confident and told us he had a plan.

I don't remember what happened next, but upon returning to the room, this is what I found.

I hit the ground.

If it's not clear, this is Rudy . . . wearing his new, clean t-shirt as pants . . . with his legs through the arm holes . . . and a belt holding it up around his waist.

And, quite proudly, Rudy wore his new "outfit" to dinner and for the rest of the night.

He's my hero.