The High Life, the Good, the Strange and the Ugly About Living on a Mountan

I'm back from what was quite a different world as life live in a village on the side of a mountain does breed some strange experiences. We visited 4 rural villages in a total of 10 days. Met a lot of villagers and did a lot of hiking, my estimation is about 32 hours of hiking total. It was Me and Shem (ex-trek guide who has evagalized the areas we were going into). In 2 of the villages we stayed in the church. 2 of the villages we stayed in peoples homes.
The Good
The best thing for sure was the people we were visiting. Mostly very poor and very hospitable. Having almost nothing but sharing everything they got. Most of our travels were with 2 of the young men looking after one of the churches out their. I Spoke at the church during the Saturday service we had their. We went visiting and praying with most of the believers in the villages we were at. Though their were a lot of clouds the scenery was amazing. Overall the trip went really great i was really encouraged and i think a lot of the people were as well.
The Strange
The women get married very young out there, 13 or 14 years old. It was strange as i was speeking at the church and their was a girl who could not have been older than 15 breast feeding her kid who looked about 1 1/2 years old. Average is about 6 kids per house hold.
One man we visited had 13 kids, here is the crazy part about the guy. His first first 4 kids have "normal" names. Kid 5 on onward are named for there number born. Child five is names Five and so on all the way up to 13.
The food was strange, pictured is a typical sting needle and corn mush with berrys that numbed the mouth (we would later use the same berry to rub on our shoes to fight land leaches) meal . They eat a lot of potatoes and corn. Millet was a strange food i ate, its a seed that they make into a powder then add water and make into a much much like the corn mush. Though at several of the homes they did kill a chicken for us which really is a pretty big sacrifice for them. They said i was the only white man to ever eat eat mountain food with them most people from urban Nepal dont even want to eat their food. I think we were all happy to eat together.
The Ugly
So this is monsoon season in Nepal and it did rain everyday we were on the mountain. Many times as we were hiking. There were so many land leaches. They hang off of branches and grass and grab on you as you walk by as well as fall out of trees onto you. Their like big inch worms. I pulled probably about 60 off of my clothes and about 8 that started sucking my blood. The leaches were bad but the worst by far were the fleas. Most of the places we went had fleas. Their were not many good nights of sleep on the mountain due to fleas. By the end of the trip most of my body especially torso looks like it got a really bad outbreak of acne, flea bites all over and their still itchy.

Their are more things i could put in all these category's but there are the main things. And its nice to be back in Kathmandu and be flea free.

Rural Nepal

So tomorrow me and Shem will embark on our voyage into 4 rural Nepali villages. One of which i, tatangchi i will be the first white boy to visit. Due to land slides we will have a very long walk as the road is blocked along the way. but thats to be expected as we are going their in monsoon season. we got the bus tickets yesterday and the ticket person said its going to be a very packed but ride so i might be traveling their on the roof, i hope its not raining. Its kinda hard to know what to expect, Shem thinks their is a good chance i will cry when i see the conditions of the people. I'm sure its going to be quite an experience. I've prepared a few messages 2 of the villages have churches 2 do not (depending on your definition of church i guess I'm talking about buildings). So I'll be speaking on Saturday at the church service in Nessing (remember Saturday services here not Sunday) and a few more time at some prayer gatherings.
In other new i started making my own coffee here. When Nathan, Ben, and Bryn(poncho) were here last week we spent some time in Gorkha at pastor Raju's parents home they have a coffee tree and ended up hooking me up with some beans. Its quite a lengthy project for a cup of coffee, deshelling the beans trying to roast them in a frying pan, burning them in a frying pan and starting over eventually getting a half decent roasted bean cutting it up with a knife and eventually brewing a cup in Shem's peculator. not a bad cup of coffee but the love i put into it made it taste pretty sweet, no need for sugar.
Anyway you'll hear from me again in a couple weeks when I'm back

Back home, well kinda?

So I'm back in Katmandu and its nice to be back. Nathan, Ben, and Bryn from the Winnipeg center vineyard are here now too. Though sikkim was really nice it was exciting to get back to this dirty city. Before i left i went to the Nepal immigration office and talked to some not so helpful staff and kinda figured out how i'd only be able to get a 30 day max visa at the boarder then have to try to get another 60 days at immigration. When i got to the boarder on July 16 that day they just changed the visa rules at the boarder. They with no problem but some time as they were still figureing out how to give it to me gave me a 90 day visa at the boarder. thanks GOD.
We had a momo party here the other day that was pretty awesome. momos are like a meat pirogies and probably the favorite new food from this side of the world. The boys here know how to make them and so we spent pretty much the whole day making a huge amount of them then a good part of the night eating them. and so i'm back here in Kathmandu happy to be a part of house groups through the week and hanging out with Shem, the boys and for the next week the other winnipegers. I'm so excited now to be planing a trip around rural nepal to some remote villages probably leaving on aug. 10 we'll be visiting 4 villages one of whitch i'll be the first white man ever to go to (fact i cant actually prove). 2 of the villages have a church the other 2 have some belivers. Its been great talking to Shem about the villages. When he first went to the villages to preach about Jesus their were no believers. They threatened to beat him and thretined to kill him but hes still alive and now they got christians their and some of them have churches. So I'm going to try my hand again with speaking to some of the villages. so please pray for me, Shem and the villages as we plan the trek.

INDIA!

So i've been in Sikkim, and West Bangel India for about 3 weeks now. I met up with 4 Others from my church (Robb, Bob, Mark, and Bryn A.K.A. Poncho) and along with pastor Selas who oversees the vinyard chuches in this area and 2 translators Ramesh and his wife Salva and their daughter Brehana visited Mucrung who our church is thinking of partnering with and some of the other churches in sikkim. I made really good friends with Ramesh who is 26 and acouple years ago won gold in a national Boxing championchip. and was scrdulaed to go start fighting internationaly but had a daughter so he quit. every chuch we went to we chalanged to a Soccer match. We ended with a 2-1 record, not bad though most of our goald were scored by the indian players in our team. and most of the other team were just wearing sandals. I got one goal, not to shabby. All of our games were played on the side of mountans and 2 of 3 were in the rain, as sikkim is made up of mountans and its rainy season. It Really is such a beautiful place. and so after everybody 3 of the team left back to winnipeg on July 6 me and Bryn went to pedong where we stayed 3 nights at and orphanage run by the church. and now i'm in namchi staying with pastor Selas and spending time with Ramesh and Salva. I gave my second sermon here in Namchi on sunday. I've got to go to several diffrent peoples homes around here for dinner. anyway things have been goin really great over here and i'm excited to go back to Kathmandu on July 16

OFF TO SIKKIM

So looks like the trip so Sikkim India is a go afterall. Thats a big answer to prayer. Yeah is a 40 day strike as part of sikkim wats to seperate into its oun state. The roads are blocked off but turns out that the church got a pass to go through the road blocks. To tommorow i fly with Noel to meet the group from my church and we weill make our way Mucrung, Sikkim, India from their.
AFTER THAT I WILL BE RETURNING TO NEPAL UNTIL OCT.12 WOOOOOOO!

My first sermon

So today was the day. Shem had asked me to give the message In a rural town outside the city. I had spent a lot of time preparing the last few days for my first sermon. Shem told me to keep it simple, most of the people i was preaching to had never been to school. And they were mostly new christians. I settled on the topic of love. And so their was a transportaion strike in the city to day so we had to walk. It was about a two and a half hour walk. The view was nice on the way. We decided to take a short cut but part way into it their was a trnch dug on and the mud thrown onto the trail. It was very slipery and shem fell into the trench. All up one of his legs and his shoes were covered in mud. Anyway a little heat and a lot of mud later we arived at the church in Chumpy, well it wasnt regularly a church it was a house that we were having church at. So about 30 people came about half being under 15. We sung some nepali songs ala acapella . I gave my message and shem translated. It was nice to have a translator, as Shem spoke i could figure out my next thought. I'm very happy to anounce that it went well. Shem said he thought it was good. And he's not the kind of guy who would just say that to be nice, unlike most of you people. No offence. Yeah so afterwords we went over to one of the peoples houses for tea, well i guess its 10 of the peoples houses because it was the husband and wife the their 8 kids. Anyway I feel very blessed that things went well, I'm not much of a public speaker so I do really give the all of the credit to God. He is very good to his people you know.

THIS IS IT

So here they have saturday church survases not sunday. Last saturday I was suposed to go to a rural church and speak. Kinda scary being that i've never preached before. But they had a goodbye for the Lewises last week so it was moved to this coming saturday. Pastor Shem will be translating for me. I'm not gunna lie i'm kinda nervous.
So the team from my church in winnipeg was gunna be going out to sikkim on the 25 of this month but theirs a lot of demonstrations going on their now as part of sikkim trys to seperate into its own state. so as it stand it sounds like i ant get over their and it sounds like they wont be able to either. so it souns like we got some work to to do praying. But all the other things here are going good so i'm very tankfull for that except we still have a huge water shortage and fuel shortage so costs are going up around here. Taking the bus around here went up from about 15 cents to about 20 cents. it doesnt sound like a lot but it does affect the people here.