For our final week of
ministry in Nepal we packed up our bags and moved to an even more remote place
than before. Getting here we took a 30 minute bus and when we got off and
grabbed our packs we waited around for our contact to show up. As we all stood
around we absent mindedly looked about us wondering in which direction the
church or house was that we would be staying at, expecting it not to be too
far. Well one thing you learn on the World Race is to never have expectations;
well I screwed that up in this case, because the place we we’re going to was
nowhere near by.
Our contact soon showed up
and we began walking, we first made our way across the river on a long swinging
bridge and then we hiked up the mountain in front of us for 40 minutes before we
finally made it.
Walking up the mountain
with all my gear on I barely made it, it was the hottest part of the day, I had
sweat pouring off my body and into my eyes, and if it wasn’t for the Hindu
woman dragging me by my hand up the rocky path, and my constant singing of
“Baby there ain’t no mountain high enough” to keep myself in a positive mood I
probably would’ve never made it. I’m sure that I would’ve sat down half way
there crying, and refusing to go any further.
We are living on the top
floor of a two story mud house. Us girls have our own room and two beds to
share and it’s really not that bad compared to some places I’ve been, until you
look at the ceiling, which is covered with cobwebs and spiders. Then there is a
small attic above us and the floor is covered with dirt and straw, so every
once in a while something will fall on us while we are lying down. Our first
night here Laura and I woke up to a loud thump and quickly discovered that a
huge rat had fallen out of the ceiling and was running out the door. This place
also has the largest cockroaches I have ever seen in my life, I seriously
didn’t know they could possibly get that big, and they loved hanging out on our
walls at night time.
Ministry here has been really
straining, not because we do much but because we do a lot of walking. We do a
lot of hiking up mountains, usually walking for over an hour just to reach
either a school or go and visit 3-4 homes.
Today we walked for over
about an hour and a half before we arrived at a school. Like most places we
have been in this country a majority of the kids had never seen white people
before. So as soon as we walked up in our sweaty messes we were surrounded by a
couple hundred students just wanting to look at us. At this point we are all so
exhausted and grumpy that we didn’t want to do anything, but we fought through
it anyways. We started with a couple songs, shared about our beliefs, and then
I had 2 kids come up and help me and I made them act out the story of David and
Goliath as I shared it.
An interesting thing about
being in the middle of nowhere is that we always have electricity, but we have
a limited supply of water. Every evening we have to wait until after 5, when
they turn on the one community faucet where everyone goes to collect water,
before we can shower. So us girls go first and bathe in our clothes while we
have an audience watching us and waiting their turn to either fill up their
buckets, do laundry, or bathe.
I guess they also don’t
have anywhere around here to buy clean water for us to drink so we have boiled
water, which to me tastes a lot like bacon, but I can’t really complain too
much because at least we have some sort of water to drink. Then every evening
as we sit and eat dinner on our straw mats outside I love to watch as the
Grandma takes the pot that she just cooked our food in and brings it over to
the goats and lets them lick it clean.
