^the view from our rooftop terrace
Hello from the Top of the World! Being here in the Himalayas is so refreshing. Soaking up the sun and the Son! Nepal is crazy beautiful y’all. God is crazy beautiful y’all!
^photo taken from the top of Monkey Temple overlooking Kathmandu
We have been in Nepal for almost 2 weeks now. Our first several days here were travel days, debrief, off days, and the beginning of ministry.
^our Air India flight from India to Nepal
Travel days: these went smoothly! Graham and I (Logistics!) successfully got the entire squad of 44 from their ministry cities in India to Bangalore through customs and visas entering Nepal and safely to Kathmandu! Graham and Whitney: they call us Gratney. Hilarious 🙂 We’re a good team! I promised you a Logistics blog soon, stay tuned.
^this is my squad!! all 44 of us
Debrief: we will have 4 debriefs during our Race. Debriefs are a time in between a country where some of the AIM staff (Adventures in Missions) comes and re-connects with us. There are worship nights, one-on-one times, just moments for us to get together as a squad and touch base in person with AIM staff. This debrief was interesting because we are going right into all-squad month, which is when all 44 of us are together in the same city doing the same ministry for the month. As opposed to India and all the next months where we will split off into teams across the country. So it’s been fun seeing the whole squad of 44 again after just being with my team last month in India!
^veggie momos! A staple food in Nepal. They also come in chicken and buff (water buffalo). My veggie momos are filled with cabbage, carrots, and greens. You can get them steamed or fried. Yum! Loving Nepali food!
^a group rented mopeds to run around town. It was so fun! Not pictured: the guys who drove them! Except for Grace on the right, she drove like an all-star!!
Off days: there is a local trekker tourist town called Thamel. I found legit coffee and it makes me so happy 🙂 locally grown and roasted beans with a La Marzocco espresso machine… yessssss. Nepal is spoiling me! We have spent a lot of our off days in Thamel visiting this coffee shop (Himalayan Java), shopping around town, taking local bus transportation to and from our home, catching a Bollywood movie (called Bang Bang, it was awesome!!! it was the India equivalent of the Tom Cruise and Cameron Diaz movie Night and Day), stuff like that. It’s fun to be with the whole squad and making friends outside of my team! 🙂
^photos from our trekking ministry
Beginning of ministry: one day we went for some trekking ministry. We “hiked” up a “mountain” haha it was really just like taking steps up to a hill. Easy peasy, but my legs are definitely sore! It was a Hindu temple that overlooked the city of Kathmandu with a 360 degree view. Once we got to the top, we found a platform just outside of the temple grounds and we worshipped the one true God. Our musicians carried their guitars up and we worshipped God. It was so incredibly beautiful. And then we all grabbed a rock and wrote a message for the city of Kathmandu – a message of hope, revelation, trust, truth, scriptures, anything that God put on our hearts to proclaim for the city.
^our prayer rock altar on top of the Hindu temple mountain
Nepal is the fastest growing country towards Christianity right now. Some of the ministries that we will be doing are soccer leagues, ultimate frisbee games, teaching English, helping out a local Mexican food restaurant (these people are from Atlanta, and their restaurant The Lazy Gringo apparently tastes superb, I’m excited to taste a bit of home!). There is a nearby coffee shop called Top of the World Coffee, and they have asked for some barista help from our team for the next few weeks; I signed up!! I’m excited. 🙂 I’ll write more about that later.
FUN THINGS the squad wants to do here: some people (not me!) are getting tattoos and piercings, plan to go paragliding or parahawking (so if you haven’t heard of parahawking, don’t feel dumb, I hadn’t either. Apparently it’s paragliding but you have these big gloves on and you hold a piece of meat and a hawk named Kevin that has been trained flies with you, lands on your arm, eats the meat from your hand, and flies away — WHAT!! hahaha hilarious), white water rafting, overnight hikes, bungy jumping, etc. What I want to do: canyon swing!!! So it’s the world’s highest giant swing y’all. 160 meters high, 100 meter freefall, 240 meter arch – all swinging at 150 km/hr! (that’s over 93 mph!!!) Whoa. I want to do it so bad!! Hopefully I’ll get to and I will post all about it!
THANKS for your prayers of safety getting us from month 1 India to month 2 Nepal!! We are all trying our best to stay strong and healthy. Please pray against any sicknesses! Especially since we are with all 44 people this month and things could easily spread!
PRAY FOR extended ministry here in Nepal, for the local church and missionaries, for all of the programs we will be working with. PRAY FOR our work at the The Lazy Gringo and Top of the World Coffee. PRAY FOR unity among our squad and teams.
We have 3 more weeks in Nepal. I will try to post one more blog (especially if I get pictures of my EPIC TOTALLY AWESOME CANYON SWING I hope to do!). Next post will also include travel plans to month 3 Thailand so that y’all can pray for our travels.
FUNDING UPDATE: I have met my third deadline out of four!! So I will be here definitely up until March 1 at least. Yay praise God! THANK YOU to all of my supporters – financial supporters and PRAYER supporters! Couldn’t do this without y’all. So I have $4,500 left to raise until March 1 to be here the entire 11 months! I am believing in God’s provision that this will happen! HOW TO DONATE: click “Support Me!” on the left side of this page or at the top by the money progress bar!
Thanks for reading. Comment on my blog!! I love reading your messages!!! 🙂 Even though I am having a really great time, I do miss all of y’all back home! Love y’all, miss y’all. 🙂
Whitney
