Note: Most communication was done through charades, drawings, with little verbal communication.
It is a long story on how we go there… On our second day of Location F, we decided that Fuego was going to split up; David, Nick, Amanda and Michelle were going on a prayer walk around the city while Marian and I were going to establish relationships with the women at our hotel.
We saw the women and asked them if we could help them around the hotel. Initially they hesitated, but then Marian asked them if we could pay them to do laundry. They said yes, and we again proceeded to ask them if we could help them around the hotel. Marian grabbed a mop and I grabbed a broom, and we started to clean. The women gave us odd looks but they went along with it.
We started to sing worship songs while we cleaned the hotel rooms and washed our clothing with them. When we were all done it was around 1:30 P.M. and Marian and I were hungry. We tried to make our way up stairs when the two women signed to us that they wanted us to join them for lunch.
While have some delicious curri and zamba (Tibetan specialties) a monk came in with another friend. The monk knew a little English and kept telling us of his plans to go to the river and the monastery. After talking to him for a while he insisted we go with him. SO WE DID!
All of Fuego went with the monk and two other male friends to the river and had a good time playing in the freezing cold water and with a hacky sack. We left the river because it started to snow and a dust storm made us run back to the car.
When we got back home we bought food to share with our new Tibetan friends when we realized that our Tibetan “Mama” made us dinner. We ate with the family and hung out with them for a few hours. We went upstairs and a few minutes later we heard a knock on our door, it was “Brother”. Brother signed to us to go with him to sing. We agreed even though we were not sure what he meant by it. We drove away in his car and ended up where we least expected, a bar.
When we got there we met an English-speaking Tibetan and hung out with him and the rest of our Tibetan friends for the rest of the night. We joined them in a Tibetan dance and they invited us to get on stage and sing. We were hesitant at first but we agreed that we would go on stage.
At the end of the night they called us up and we did it… We sang “From the Inside Out” and “Amazing Grace” to a bar full of Tibetans. While we were singing many of them got up and put silk scarves on us, representing that we were their favorite singers and wishing us “luck in the next life.”
This was probably a once in a lifetime event and it was awesome when we realized that this place and these people have probably never heard worship music before. We were privileged to be able to sing there.
