Leaving the orphanage was one of the hardest things I have ever done. I cannot explain to anyone how emotionally draining it was. I never want to do that again. The whole last day we were there it was like a ghost town, no one spoke and when we did talk to the children, they would all cry. We did a little going away party for them and bought them coke and cookies but they knew what was coming so it wasn’t that fun. About 2 hours before we left we got all of our bags together and just waited in the court yard until it was time for our bus. All of the children gathered around their favorite World Racer and gave us presents and cried. My favorite little boy named Predeep stayed in my arms the whole time. He’s only 5 years old and so tiny and I just carried him around until we left. I probably gave each kid at least 20 goodbye kisses and got double back what I had given. The children were showering us with their favorite jewelry and sweet little notes as goodbye presents. God is ridiculous too, the whole month I had been thinking to myself that I needed a watch because I never knew what time it was and one of the older boys just as we were about to leave put his watch on my arm. Hmmm. Ridiculous. Everyone made fun of me because I continued to cry all the way to the bus stop and while we waited. I was a mess.
Travel from India to Nepal
1. Night bus from Hyman Junction to Hydrabad, India.
2. Spent the night in the airport. Took a plane from Hydrabad to Delhi, India.
3. Took a 12 hour sleeper train from Delhi to some random bus stop that is about 2 hours from the border of India and Nepal.
4. Bus stop in India to Kathmandu, Nepal that took about 10 hours.
5. Stayed in Kathmandu for about 30 hours.
6. 7 hour truck ride to GEMS. Got to see Mt. Everest.
We have been in Nepal for about 10 days and I absolutely loveeee it. Kathmandu is definitely some place that I would love to visit again. There are so many little coffee shops and places to buy cheap hiking gear. For instance, I got a sweet North Face jacket for 18 bucks. (don’t hate on North Face guys, this is the home of the tallest mountain in the world, I’m allowed to wear it here.) Okay and we also got to eat veggies and spaghetti. Best 30 hours of my life were spent in Kathmandu. Also on our way to our ministry site we got to see Mt. Everest, who can say they’ve done that in a life time?
GEMS is the name of our ministry contact that we are staying at. You can go to www.GEMS.com and it will tell you all about the ministries they have throughout India and Nepal. Anyways, at this particular site there is an orphanage, a discipleship school for young men, and all of this farm land with sugar cane, doll, rice, and fish ponds. Our reason for being here is to clean out the fish pondsJ. Now we all thought we were going to be actually taking fish out of the ponds but actually they ponds are dry (praise the Lord), the bad part is we are cleaning the bush off the sides and digging and extra foot in the bottom of the pond.
A normal day for us looks like this. Wake up at 6am for worship with all the people on the compound who didn’t make it to 4:30am worship……… Cook our own breakfast, normally a boiled egg rice and chi tea!! Pump water from the hand pump to wash dishes. Around 9:15 head to the fish pond. One shovel, one hoe, and rice bags are our tools. We dig up the CLAY not dirt, put it in the rice bags and the carry it up the hill and dump it. Pictures and videos will follow this month, don’t worry. Have a lunch break, consists of noodles, maybe an egg,. Head back out to the pond. Hot Chi tea break somewhere during this. It’s about 80 degrees here because we are about 15 miles from the India border, so were we are is EXACTLY like India. Get off work at 4:30 then shower and cook dinner. I’ve cooked dinner once with Johnny and it was ballin but we also burnt every pan, almost killed each other, almost lost our faces in a hot steam accident, ruined about 3 cups of rice, messed up the hot plate so now one eye on it doesn’t work right, and took longer than 2 hours to prepare “stir fry”, so we aren’t allowed to cook anymore. Which I am completely ok with not cooking anymore.
While we aren’t really seeing the fruits of our work here right now they told us yesterday that by us doing this is will make it possible for the ministry here to bring in more fish so they can sell them to make money to keep up the school and orphanage. We will not be staying here the whole month though. We will be heading back up about 30miles to an English school and staying with one of our contacts named Daniel and his wife Teresa and their daughter Kristina. We will be painting the school and doing some roofing and farm work for the last week we are here in Nepal.
I’m super thankful for this month and the quality time I’m getting to spend with my team and how uplifting they have all been. Literally God couldn’t have put me with better people to sharpen me spiritually and challenge me in my walk with Him.
