Welcome to the Year 2069.
So there are a couple of things I’ve learned in my first week in Nepal. In short, they like to do things a little different here than the rest of the world. But I guess when the top of the world is in your country it gives you that right. For example, the time here is 9 hours and 45 minutes ahead of EST. It seems a little odd, but why not make it 45 minutes off EST. If I ruled a country I would probably do the same thing. I would maybe even go for a 23-minute time difference or something unique like that. A couple of days ago we were laughing about a billboard that was advertising a fitness center that was opening in 2069. We’ve since seen a couple more similar signs. So a quick Google search found:
- Nepali calendar is a Lunar Calendar, which is about 57 years ahead of the English Calendar. Current Nepali Year is 2069.
- In the Nepali calendar months may not have the same number of days every year unlike English Calendar. For example, the month Magh is of 29 days in year 2063, and 30 days in 2062, and 29 days in 2061.
- Each year's calendar is prepared by the finest Astrologers.
- Holidays can jump from one month to another in any year.
Other than these oddities, Nepal has been incredible so far. We have stayed mostly in the capitol city of Kathmandu, but the mountains have been unbelievably beautiful. And the city is so green. We are staying in the middle of the city, but there is literally a rice paddy across the street and people grow corn and other vegetables on their roofs. Best of all, we are eating so well this month. Last month my team literally ate rice and curried chicken for EVERY meal. This month our contact is cooking for us and it’s been a total blessing!! In fact, the other night our teams bought a rotisserie chicken and cooked garlic mashed potatoes and green beans for dinner!!
On the ministry side of things we are working with a contact that is involved in SOOO many different things. If you would like more info you can visit www.churchesnetwork.com. The first thing we did was to lead the service at a local church. The interesting thing about it was that church is held on Saturdays here instead of on Sundays. On Sunday we were able to help with a Bible distribution that is held every two weeks. This was actually held in the living room of the house we are staying in this month. It’s the only free Bible distribution in Nepal. They give out free Bibles and then charge 700 rupees ($8) for other Bibles to help offset the cost of getting them shipped to Nepal. People mail Bibles here to Nepal, but our contact Reuben has to pay to get them from the shipping company. The last shipment cost $500 for him to just get them out.
It was cool for our team members to talk to people as they came through. One man we met was Amos. He is the principal of the Bible College where our contacts wife graduated. He traveled 3 days just to get a Bible. He rode by bus 1 day and walked for 2 days. Amos bought 5 or 6 Bibles and he was absolutely thrilled to be able to get them. His passion for God’s word was so convicting, but also so inspiring at the same time. In America we have access to Bibles literally everywhere, even on our smart phones, but how often do we as Christians find things to do besides read it? The Bible is the best selling book of all time, but it may also be one of the least read out of people that own one. I know I’m so guilty of this myself. Shoot, I’d like to say I would, but there are days where I’m not even sure if I didn’t have a Bible if I’d be willing to travel 6 days round trip to get a Bible. And on top of all that the Bibles we had were all in English. So these people were traveling from all over Nepal to get Bibles that were in their second language. Absolutely Crazy!!!! I hope this challenges you like it has me this week to really dig deeper into God’s word. Don’t take it for granted. Read it and meditate on it because God wants to teach you about his truths and a lot of people still don’t have the access to it like we do in America.
The other thing we’ve been working on is to get the directory for all of the churches in Nepal online. They have books in print, but they know that with online access people will be better able to find churches in their area if they can just look on the website. It’s tedious work typing names and addresses that are so foreign to an English speaking person, but I know that there will be fruit from it, so I’ll keep pressing on.
Today we are actually leaving Kathmandu for a week. We will be traveling 10-13 hours East on a bus to a town called Damak.
From there we will hike up a mountain to the village we’ll be working in. Our contact told us that locals can make the hike in 1 hour, but for us it will probably take 4 hours, so it will be interesting to see how that plays out. Apparently part of it involves walking through a jungle, so we’re pretty pumped about that. Once we get there we will be helping to construct a school that a previous World Race team started. We’ll also be doing house visits to encourage local pastors in the area.
Oh, I almost forgot to mention that our 2 teams went to a Nepalese wedding yesterday. The best part of it all was that the wedding started at 2pm and our contact told us we weren’t leaving our house to make the 25 minute bus ride until 3:00pm. Doesn’t make a lot of sense to us as Americans, right?! Well we still aren’t sure exactly when it started, but we still sat through an hour of the wedding. For those wondering, it was very similar to an American wedding except the bride and groom never showed any emotion, which is typical in this culture and there was no kiss at the end of the ceremony. So there you go.
Just another week on the World Race! Continue to pray for us. We’re so encouraged by the support and have really seen the fruit of how God is working.
