I’m sitting here in my tree-house writing my second Nepal
blog. For real— I’m in a tree
house! We left Katmandu a week ago
and have lived in two villages and plan on leaving for our third village in a few days. I have been
very blessed to work with some great ministries that seem to be planted in the
middle of nowhere. We took a 12
hour bus ride to the first village and traveled another 3 hours to the second. We’re apparently pretty close to the
India border — but thank God we do not have India heat this month! We have plenty of humidity because
monsoon season just started, but I’ll take that over India any day!
Before we left, we did some ministry in Katmandu. My team and I spoke at our contact’s
church and then spent a couple mornings doing house calls and praying for
healing. I really enjoy house call
ministry. It’s a blessing to me to
be invited into the smallest, poorest houses and have the families spend their
last few coins to feed us cookies and soda. It is humbling beyond words. All they want are our prayers. Even if miracle healing doesn’t occur in front of my eyes, I
still believe in the freedom and love poured out. I can see it in their eyes how grateful they are…just for my
prayers. I guess I forget how important spoken prayer is sometimes.
The church congregation in a rented, worn down one bedroom apartment.
They treated us to Nepali dancing.
Radiant Change girls and our new friends who danced wonderfully!
One of the houses we
visited and prayed for. A smiling
face to say goodbye and thank you.
The moment we arrived at the first village, kids flocked to
us to stare and laugh! Like
usual. So I brought out the guitar
and we sang songs and entertained them.
We only stayed at this village for three days and helped with baptisms
and spoke at a communion service.
The kids coming for a show.
Village charm.
I think we baptized 5 or 6 people that day. Yay new brothers and sisters in Christ!
AND my teammate Chelsea was baptized!!
Praise God for World Race memories!
So, this is my current house right now:
It’s not technically a tree house, but we affectionately
call it that. It has a few rooms
upstairs and a kitchen downstairs.
We have electricity a few hours a day, no fans though. Lots of goats and cows and pigs and
babies running wild! This is some
seriously basic living. Our toilet
is a hole in the ground with logs for our feet to squat on. We look forward to our shower at the
end of every day…which is a water pump three corn fields over. I guess God is preparing us for Africa
because I think when we move to our next village on Friday — it’s about the
most basic we can get, no electricity or anything! Being clean and well rested is really just a state of
mind! If there are no visible sand
granules sticking to my forehead then I’m clean!
We have an amazing
view. We live at the base of some
mountains. Sunrises and sunsets
are beautiful. I’ve seen a few shooting
stars at night too.
So this is our toilet. I just
wanted y’all to get an idea of what we’re dealing with : )
Every afternoon we sit on our front stoop and watch the
clouds roll in from the mountains, bringing the monsoon rain. We are SO thankful for it. It breaks the humidity and usually
leaves the rest of the day feeling windy and cool.
Our ministry this week has been building a toilet! Yeah! Building a toilet for Jesus!! …I dunno — I’ve been trying to spin it in every way possible
to make myself excited about it — but the truth is we wake up at 630am every
morning, head to the field and move bricks, cement, sand and wood and construct
foundation and walls for a toilet for a future church they hope to build in the
village! It’s been fun though…and
it’s actually how I spent my birthday this year! (it was June 14th), but because I hurt my back, have about 100 bug bites
everywhere and heat rash, my team let me sit out and relax and eat
chocolate! Such a good team. They made me cards, bought a chocolate
cake and we had pork over a bonfire.
I don’t know where I thought I’d be at 26…maybe married…maybe in my own
house with a salary and other adult-type stuff — not in the
middle-of-nowhere-Nepal peeing in corn fields and hanging out with my 6 best
friends, fighting for the last piece of chocolate in the entire village! I would definitely do this birthday
over and over again if I get the chance.
26 blessed years! Thank you
Jesus!
Laying the foundation for the toilet.
Ahhh! The afternoon rains come to cool us
down and force us to slow down and enjoy our time here.
Such colorful village
folk. A lot of them came out to
tell me Happy Birthday : )
