I have been avoiding doing a blog on Nepal. I knew eventually I would have to do this.
Nepal was incredibly hard to leave. But it really wasn’t the country of Nepal. It was our host family.
If you read my teammates blogs you’d get a snippet into it.
https://jeziepelayo.theworldrace.org/post/love-pain-the-hardest-goodbye
Our time in Nepal was rich, and anything but dull. And we could write a book on the family we stayed with. The persecuted Christians we met. The man who was chained up for 14 years demon possessed who is now free and following the Lord. Or our taxi driver Deepak.
Honestly the mention of Gressom (our 22 year old host), Papa, Manil (“Money”, brother cousin), Ramesh (“Ramone”, family friend), or Deepak (our taxi driver) will surely send me into tears.
When we arrived in Armenia we took a whole day to grieve the family we just lost.
For me I cried my fair share of tears that month in Nepal at the thought of leaving. But in the end, I think I chose to not feel. At the thought of Manil going back to Gorkha and not being able to say bye, something struck a chord within side of me. My mind and body said, “Once again you have loved more than you’ll be loved in return”. I didn’t want that to be true, so I shut down, I didn’t want to cry.
(Later, we found out that Money didn’t just leave us without saying bye, but he had important business to be done in Gorkha).
Then as we arrived in Armenia, we kept in touch with Gressom and he shared how he couldn’t go to his music gig the night we left because he was so sad, and I had no idea.
We found out just as of recent that as Deepak and Him left us and pulled away from us at the airport, as we stood there for probably 10 minutes crying looking in the direction of home, Deepak saw us crying. He said to Gressom, “They’re crying! We need to go to them!” And Gressom replies, “No! DRIVE DRIVE DRIVE!!!” As they cried their way home.
It may sound weird, but knowing that you are cry worthy… it really makes you feel loved in a different way. Knowing that your presence has made that me of an impact, that your presence gone is cry worthy. There is tremendous value in that for me.
To be loved in return in such a sweet thing.
So because of this. The mention of my Nepali family will set me off in tears. Just two nights ago I cried a puddle of tears onto our kitchen floor.
Writing a blog just doesn’t do justice in portraying these wonderful people. Please read my teams blogs, and you will get just a glimpse of the honor we had in Nepal.
