Just call me YMCA-mber because I’ve been a part of the village people for the past two-ish weeks, and sorry that the bloggage has been a long time coming.
After travel day from hades, we got to take another bus to Salarhi, Nepal– a.k.a: center of the sun. It was the hottest place I’ve been to yet, and my first real village experience. We stayed in a paper mache-esque bungalow right next door to the church and a school.
Water buffalos, haystacks, goats, and pigeons (which we ate a few times) galore, this place was in the middle o’ nowhere. The pastor and his family were way hospitable and we were taken care of really well. Even after I saw a cobra in our place-yes, I almost passed out, the entire village was involved in trying to hunt it down, which was hilariously the talk of the town that week.
We played ping pong on this cement table they had, and spent every day with a few kids that gave us Nepalese lessons and escorted us to the local Wal-Mart (small hut with cold drinks available).
Our main ministry was “evangelism”-which I still can’t say without feeling hilarious-I refuse to call myself a missionary because it still sounds creepy… But, we walked three hours there and three back to go to other villages where we would talk to people about God — talk about tan lines… It was amazing to me how curious people were about why we were there and it was hilarious that people would stop whatever they were doing to come listen to us.
The villagers still worship idols at these little temples everywhere and a lot of them don’t know why they do it, but just because it’s family tradition. So it was awesome to go out with him and try to tell people about Jesus, who most of them had never heard of.
We met with some of the Christians that our pastor knew, which was way cool because some of them were the only believers in their village, and we got to encourage them. It was cool to meet these believers because they have a special greeting with each other- you say “Jamesi” and for everyone else you just say “Namaste.” Besides the undercover/ “you’re in” kind of greeting, though, they were always smiling, seemed more content, happy, and just more alive if I’m being honest.
Memorable things:
-Food was awesome, even pigeon
– Fell at the well where I ripped my pants from being caught in a tree limb
– Got weird skin infections this month from village livin’- my eye looked like Oprah’s when she doesn’t have makeup on
– Bus rides=nuts- puked on, spat on, sat on — literally insane.
– Picnic with our host family at the “beach”(a.k.a.-fraggle rock-esque next to river of mud/sewage)
