You may wonder what my day looks like here in Sarlahi.
Wonder no longer!
These times are always relative, but here’s an example of a day here in Nepal,
Most of our time was spent in village fellowships.
7:00 – wake up, yawn, snuggle into your sleeping bag for five more minutes because the air is perfectly crisp and a smidge chilly
7:05 – actually sit up, put up the mosquito net and get out of bed. Look at surroundings and realize that yes, you did sleep in a mosquito netted bed in a clubhouse in Nepal.
7:10 – go down stairs, walk past the neighbors’ house to the water pump, brush teeth, wash face, etc and get ready for the morning. Come back and go sit downstairs.
7:30 – tea time! Drink delicious coffee or tea (made with buffalo milk) and eat some cookie/biscuit type things with your team. Read the Bible, discuss the upcoming day and marvel at the fact that you currently are living in Nepal.
8:00 – go to the church (which is on property) and pray for the day, have some team time and sing some worship songs.
10:00 – breakfast. Eat amazing Nepali food that was concocted by your wonderful host family. Take seconds because they offer and the food is gloriously tasty.
12:30 – leave for the day for ministry. Usually, this involves waiting for somewhere between 5-30 minutes for an auto rickshaw or a micro bus. Travel was a combination between those and walking on foot for 30 minutes to an hour. One day we biked for an hour to get to the village we were visiting. Ruth and I had a ridiculous time – at one point we crashed into someone’s yard and all the people around us died of laughter and pointed. Embarrassing, but hysterical.
2:00 – get to where we’re supposed to be. Meet with a fellowship of believers and sit outside of a church member’s house. The five of us are warmly greeted, and we sing a few songs with them. There are usually about 20 people there. They pray and sing in Nepali, we sing “So Good” by Cory Asbury. Between the five of us we give a message and one or two testimonies. I learned this month how to give messages and how to speak about what the Lord is doing in my life. Fear of public speaking? No longer!
3:30 – we’re given refreshments (usually milk tea or coffee) and sometimes lunch. Sing songs with the group, play with children that are hanging about and take a ton of pictures of the people we were with for the day.
4:00 – start the trek back home. Hand out tracts to people we pass on the dirt road we’re walking down and say “Yesu le tapai lai prem garnu hunchha” which means “Jesus loves you.” Take pictures of random water buffalos, goats, chickens, and beautiful surroundings. Throw my hackeysack back and forth with Arjun and try not to get hit by cars that speed past on the left side of the road (which is still strange to see). Learn some words and phrases in Nepali and teach Arjun and Binod random words in English, usually slang. Arjun has taken up greeting me with “Hey dude!”
5:30 – get back to the clubhouse and rest for a little while it gets dark. Have team time, journal, or upload and edit pictures. Spend time with the five orphan children that live at the church and hang out with Arjun, Binod, or Shanta, depending on who is around that evening. Attempt to tell jokes and realize they do not translate well. Listen to jokes and realize they aren’t funny to you, either.
7:00 – dinner. Sit in candlelight because the power goes on and off until 8:30 or so, if it comes on. Accidentally hit candle over at least once per meal and have to re-light it. Headlamps are often brought down to dinner to aid in this endeavor. Eat rice, dahl (lentils), various greens and sometimes buff or chicken. I can’t really describe what is in our food because I have no idea how it’s made, but it’s delicious.
8:30 – after hanging out with brothers Saimon & Amar, the children, or Arjun, Bino, Shanta, Alu, we head back up to our room. We gather toothbrushes and head to the pump to get ready for bed.
9:00 – miraculously, I was actually in bed a lot by this time. Yes, the infamous late-nighter was asleep before 10:00 pm almost every night we were in Sarlahi. It was actually really nice. Bugs and animals serenaded me. There were also multiple honking car-horns from the main road that we lived just off of.
Here's a picture of the whole gang our last day there. We had a going away picnic. 🙂
