Hello my friends! Sorry
that you’re getting all these blog posts at once, but we don’t have
the internet in the Himalayas.
That’s where I’m living
this month by the way, on a mountain and in the Himalayas. It’s
gorgeous.
I read my last blog
before starting to write this one and it kind of made me laugh. I
wrote that blog the first night we spent with our contact and there
was a lot that I didn’t know as I was writing that.
For example, at that time
I didn’t realize that we were only spending 10 days at that ministry
and that I would be soon heading to a different, much more remote
location in Nepal. So yesterday my team and I hopped on a bus and
rode to another mountain.
We were on the bus only
about an hour, but what’s funny is that there were rumors of a ‘bus
strike’ yesterday. And in that case our contact told us that at 5am
we would put on our 20kg packs and start our 30km trek to the new
contact. Full of dread, we prayed and prayed against that strike. I
think that all five of us would have ended up dead.
Anyway,
no bus strike (thank you Jesus), just an hour bus ride and surprise,
a
forty minute hike up the mountain-complete with our packs on our
backs. It was hilariously awful. It was actually what I thought the
World Race was going to be like in the first place.
Against the odds, we made
it up the mountain and we have arrived at our new contact this month.
Everything that I said about the last place we were at being the
most remote place I’ve ever been-erase that from your memory. This
is way more remote.
We’re living up in a tree
house (slightly reminiscent of Cambodia) and we have an outdoor
spicket that we go to to bathe in.
(the water only turns on at 5pm and the entire community comes to this spicket to do laundry and fill their earthen-ware jars with water. so, at 5 o’clock exactly the three of us head down in our ‘shower clothes’ with our soap and shower–together, with the entire community watching us and waiting in line.)
We have about six piglets, at
least ten goats, two buffalo, about 100 chickens and a momma dog with
her puppy that hang out with us, and my body will soon turn into
either a giant bug bite or one big wart. (Yes, warts…they are a
new occurrence in my life. I don’t know where they have come from,
but I hate them and there is nothing I can do about them for at least
another couple weeks.) Oh, and it’s still hot. I was hoping the
fact that we’re up on a mountain, would make the temperature drop a few degree, but instead it’s increased.
But, we’re still pushing.
We’re still tired. We’re still in month nine. We’ve long come to the
realization that we’re not here to change the world, in fact it’s an
incredible day if even one life is changed because of our presence.
But, we’re still here. And though I feel gross
and sweaty and like I’m not making any difference at all-soon, I’ll
be at home. I’ll take a (hot) shower and look back at all the Lord
has done these past eleven months.
I’ll get to look at
myself in a (full length) mirror and see the new life that He has
created and I will know that this has all been worth it.
I love you guys.
See you soon.
