Nepal.
I have come to adore Nepal. The people. The food. The
environment. It’s beautiful.
I will be honest and say that I originally wanted to be in
the mountains of Nepal for ministry this month. It’s not every day that you
visit, let alone live in, the country with the biggest mountain in the world!
So when I found out we’d be in a little village 13 hours from any mountains, I
was slightly disappointed. But we left from Kathmandu one evening and our
journey to our next ministry continued.
We were dropped off at a street corner that was supposedly a
“bus stop,” or so they said…
We spent 2 hours playing guitar and singing random lyrics.
Tricia grabbed Andrew’s hat and passed it around to make some money. We made a
total of 27 rupees that night! Only about 38 cents in America…but, hey, now I
can say we sang money on a Nepalese street for rupees one night!
When our bus finally arrived, we climbed on the worst bus
I’ve ever experienced. Having super long legs didn’t serve me well over the
next 16 hours as we sat in traffic, got held up behind a massive accident and
stopped at random times for no reason at all. What was supposed to take 13
hours took far too long and when we finally arrived in our village, we were all
completely exhausted.
We arrived in our village, and I immediately found our room
and collapsed on my bed. The next few hours and days were a blur because of the
exhaustion we were all feeling. I hadn’t realized until this month what 8
straight months of ministry will do to a person without any time for personal
rest. But slowly, I began to catch up on rest and got into the swing of ministry
again. We had several days of door to door evangelism and then we moved into
working with a local school where one of our translators worked.
We would leave our place at 5:30 am, walk to the school, and
teach from around 6 until 10 am. I got put with a class that eventually got
nicknamed “the mustaches.” It was relative to a class of seniors in high school
back in the states. After an awkward introduction, I started going over
pronunciation with them…much like hooked on phonics. At first, they looked at
me awkwardly, but after going through several letters, ,they caught on and in
just a few minutes, we were all laughing hysterically.
Imagine 20 high school students saying “F is like ff, ff,
ff, like ff-fish” or “I is like ii, ii, ii, like ii-igloo.”
On a whim, I came up with a game to test their pronunciation
and set the girls up against the boys. They competed for a good hour before the
boys came back from a huge deficit in points and took the win from the girls.
They loved it!
We spent the rest of the time talking about life in Nepal
vs. life in America. I answered so many questions about the percentage of
agriculturists in the states and the outlook on jobs. It was funny how their
questions were so unique to the culture that they live here.
I realized in those few hours and over the next few days how
much I really LOVE teaching. It came more naturally than it even has before and
I had a blast with the students. It was amazing to go in and hear how they were
speaking and leave hearing them speak more correct and with a much better
pronunciation! It was something so simple, yet so rewarding!
Over the next few days, we returned to the school to
continue teaching. I took on an afternoon class of 5th graders and,
once again, fell in love with them.
I hope that they got something out of the lessons that I
brought in, but I know, without a doubt, that I left those classes with a
reawakening of my desire to teach. I’ve come to the realization that it really
is something I excel in and it’s something I truly love to do.
So much so that on the second to last day, I made my team
(my amazing, generous, incredible team!!) get up at 5:30 again to say goodbye
to the students and teach one last class. The experience definitely touched me
and it’s something I won’t long forget.
