“Jai Mashi!” (jai mah-see – pronunciation) to all of my loyal readers! This is a greeting that Christians say to each other here in Nepal! It is said with your hands pressed together and a slight bow, exactly how you greet people with “namaste” in India and Nepal! (non-Christians greeting)
I cannot believe that it is February 18th already! On March 10th we fly to Vietnam! Time is flying by so fast! I am learning so much too, God is amazing! I just wanted to give an update about Nepal so far (we are now being challenged to blog twice a week)!
I am absolutely LOVING Nepal so far! I don’t know what it is exactly, but I love it. Since being here, we have been doing different assignments every day, this has proved to be both interesting but also frustrated at times. We, as Americans, really like to be “in the know,” and they do not tell us hardly anything ahead of time, ever. For example, the one day we were told that we were going to be going out and praying. We show up to our host’s house for worship in our “kurtas” (long, modest shirts we wore in India), long pants/jeans, and our sandals, only to find out that we were going to be “trekking” (hiking) to a Hindu temple to pray there. Let me tell you, Meg was not prepared to trek up this mountain an hour, to a temple, and then back down again. Meg had a backpack filled with her 2 journals, Bible, sandwich making condiments (jelly, honey, and peanut butter jars) for her team, and her tablet. It was SO difficult getting up that hill, but when I was finally at the top, it was worth it!
S Squad at the top of the Hindu temple! (I’m in the back, top right corner with the sun in my face)
Our other assignments have also incuded praying and witnessing to people in the slums, a soccer outreach to the kids in the slums (they do not go to school because their families cannot afford to send them), praying over a Buddhist temple (it was really hard seeing all the people there worshipping knowing they don’t know Jesus and they aren’t saved so we prayed that they would find Jesus), and having a lot of “Amad” time (which is an hour of quiet time each day before we do our assignments to spend with the Lord!) Our host talks about God so romantically, it is beautiful, yet strange to hear. Part of that romance our host talks about is that sacred “Amad” time! Sometimes you feel like you are doing a lot, other times you feel like you aren’t doing anything, hence, where the frustration sets in!
I was really looking forward to begin serving and loving on the Nepali people, especially with all that God has been teaching me! However, every day since arriving to our “home” here in Nepal, I have experienced feelings of anger, frustration, lack of patience, annoyance, etc with people on my squad who aren’t even doing anything wrong. I realized just a few days ago that the reason why I was feeling these feelings was that the devil was stealing my joy, and many days he was successful. He knows what is on my heart and what message I desire to share with people about Jesus and how much God loves them and desires a relationship with them! Since I realized what the devil was up to, he has not been stealing my joy since! I will say though that sickness is RUNNING RAMPANT through our squad: diarrhea, colds/sinus issues/headaches, body aches, throwing up, bacteria infections, dehydration, food poisioning, hospital visits (not me this time, don’t worry but we have had 4 go to the hospital since arriving at our “home” here in Nepal), you name it, we probably have had someone get it! Welcome to all squad month I guess haha! The dust every where and altitude has not helped either! People literally walk around with masks on here covering their noses and mouths because of how awful the dust is! You can feel the dust in your lungs, it’s gross!
Things are starting to look up though now! I am getting my groove back! Here in Nepal, they do church on Saturday and Sunday is just another day. We went to an awesome church today and I got to give the sermon I wrote during debrief. God is just so awesome, the words He gave me I think really made an impact! It would not have been that good at all without Him giving me those words to say during debrief! I loved the church we went to. The way they worship is just so beautiful, they literally worship with every part of their being! I wish that I worshipped like they worship all the time! The church was just so warm and welcoming! We traveled with another team we had not worked with yet and Malia from their group gave a testimony that was incredible! The Spirit was moving there for sure! After the service, we were served tea, “biscuits” (cracker/cookie things), and hardboiled eggs. It was great. We then went out to lunch with our translator, who is our host’s oldest son and he did a wonderful job translating at church today!
The rest of our schedule for Nepal is almost in place, it’s crazy! Tomorrow is an adventure/off day so my team is trying to find an adventure-y type of thing to do, Monday through Wednesday we are serving women (I am very excited for this), Wednesday night is a fun night with our squad: girl/guy nights, Thursday and Friday we do not have our assignments yet but have squad meetings both nights, next Saturday we will have church again, the following Sunday is another adventure/off day, and then the next 8 days are in a village somewhere, when we return “home,” we clean the house and get ready to fly out to Vietnam on March 10th!
Prayer Requests:
health and safety for my squad
the Holy Spirit to be prompting us who to speak to
the Nepali people’s hearts to turn to Jesus
Thanks everyone! Love you all and God Bless you all!
I’ll never get used to the sight of the breath-taking mountains of Nepal. This is from our “house’s” rooftop!
