We made it to Nepal!
My team (Wildflowers) and another all girls team (Team Rebound) are staying in a village in Haripur Sarlahi, about 12 miles North of India.
Our ministry for this month consists of:
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Teaching in church
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House visits
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Door to door evangelism
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Building a church fence
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Some construction work for the church
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Maintaining church garden
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Prayer walks
So I thought I'd write blogs in a journalistic way so that way you know what I'm up to on a daily basis. This also helps me document all the cool God moments.
Here it goes!
May 4th, 2013
We land in Kathmandu.
We leave the airport and head to a big white bus.
After a 10 hour bumpy bus ride through the mountains, we arrived at the village of Haripur. It's dusty, hot and in the middle of nowhere. Let me explain the ride. We were on the kind of roads that had pot holes every few feet and had drop offs hundreds of feet below. One wrong turn and you'd fly off the mountain. Thank God for a great driver.
My team and I live on the second floor of a school building. 6 girls in one room.
The bathroom (squatty potty) is about half a block away from where we sleep. I don't drink water after 8pm just so I don't have to get up in the middle of the night. It's pitch black out here! I love it 🙂
Being in a village is so peaceful.
After we settle in, our ministry contact, who we call “Uncle” or “Pastor Uncle” (I'll come back to the reason why we call him Uncle) said that dinner was ready. They made us fried rice and potatoes. It was the best meal I had in weeks. They also had cold water for us! Cold water!! It's crazy to think how something so simple is such a gift.
After dinner Uncle said that we had to be up and ready for tea time at 6:30am, I thought “I'll pass. I'm tired!” Then he said that our next meal wouldn't come till 9:30 am, my next thought was “I'll be there! Ha!”
Ok, the reason we call our contact Uncle is because this culture finds it offensive to call the elders by name, calling them by name would result in, and I quote, “you'll get a spanking on face, on cheek.” We were laughing but he was super serious.
May 5th, 2013
Feliz Cinco De Mayo!
I barely made it to tea time, I woke up so late. I probably had one of the worst nights on the Race. I was beyond exhausted to wait for Uncle to set up our mosquitoes nets and I fell asleep without bug spray. I woke up in the middle of the night getting attacked by those blood suckers. I couldn't go back to sleep after that.
Tea time consists of tea, cookies and prayer. This is also the time when the kids are preparing for class to start. It's nice to see their smiling faces in the morning.
After tea time I went back to my room and celebrated Cinco De Mayo with canned re-fried beans, jalapenos and chips. Can you believe I found Old El Paso brand beans and jalapenos in Nepal!? ((CRAZY)) I was pretty stinkin excited!
After our 9:30am meal my team and I headed out to the neighboring village where construction has started for a new church. The village is about 1 ½ miles away from where we live. As we walked through the village we saw a lot of curious faces coming out of mud huts. We passed a lot of cows, water buffaloes and goats. We also crossed a stream to get there. The water was cool and refreshing on our legs and feet. We were greeted by the construction workers and we were asked to pray over the land in which the church would be built on. As we were praying over the land, older women from the village came to listen to the word. We sang a couple songs, one of which they knew in their language (Nepali). We took turns singing it. It was amazing!
We read out of Psalm 127:1
Unless the Lord builds a house,
the work of the builders is wasted.
Unless the Lord protects a city,
guarding it with sentries will do no good.
We dedicated the land and church to God and prayed blessings over it. We declared that lives would be saved and transformed by the love and power of God.
After we prayed we sat and had fellowship with the women. They brought us hot sweet tea, it was the best tea I've had on the Race! I've thought about that tea almost everyday since being here! It's so dang good!
We walked back from ministry and Uncle said we could take the rest of the day off to rest and pray. It was nice to rest. My body hasn't fully adjusted to the elevation change and lack of sleep from our travel days.
Please keep Uncle in prayer, his daughter is scheduled to have surgery this week and he can't be with her in Kathmandu since we are his responsibility this month. He also had a long travel day since he traveled 10 hours to Kathmandu to pick us up and 10 hours back to the village. Please pray for peace and rest over him.
Thank you.
I am still in need of another $2,879 to meet my next deadline. If you feel led to donate to me or one of my team members or know someone who may be interested, please click the “Support Me” link to the left of this page or share this blog site
