Blog 1 -- Jay Mahsee!

Jay mahsee!

(that's "praise the Lord/Messiah!" in Nepali, the common Christian greeting)

Wow. So much took place over the course of the past 2 weeks that I hardly know where to begin to share with all my friends and family the adventure of our trip to Nepal. It was definitely the most incredible experience of my life! Truth be told, if you said I could go back tomorrow, I would pack fast and be on that plane in a heartbeat. I LOVED it!!!

So how in the world do I put all of it into words to share with you? Well, I'll just try my best. But there's no way I can begin to do it justice. God will have to fill in what I can never adequately explain.

Our flights over on Singapore Airlines (from Houston to Moscow, then Moscow to Singapore) felt much more like a vacation than a mission trip. What an awesome airline and an incredible airport in Singapore! But we knew we were entering the mission field once we boarded Silk Air and could not land in Kathmandu because of the fog...and we were running low on fuel...so we were rerouted to India.

We sat on the plane in India for a few hours while the pilot negotiated the price of fuel with the airport (no, we're not in Kansas anymore). Sasha and I basically ran our own little daycare in the middle of that airplane with lots of screaming, cranky, and even sick babies/toddlers whose moms seemed to not even notice their need for attention. The sick baby was our own little Asha, who had been sick with fever ever since we left Houston and was not doing well at all. Her poor mommy was so worn out from caring for her, too, because she didn't want to go to anyone but mama and she didn't sleep so well on the first two flights. She finally let Sasha hold her while we were on the ground in India, so Om Maya got a little break. Bless her heart, though--little Asha was miserable!

Once we refueled, we flew back to Kathmandu and finally landed in Nepal 5 hours later than scheduled. So much for our first day in Nepal! It was dark when we arrived, and the city basically looked like a riot with all the trash fires burning, few lights (no street lights at all), crazy drivers unlike anything we had experienced, horns blaring, and people walking or hanging out at roadside stands everywhere. Sasha's comment was, "It feels like we were dropped into the middle of a riot!" That about sums it up.

We stayed in a very low class hotel that night. Now, Michael had told ServLife that we wanted a real experience--not to be the Americans put up in some lush hotel while the people we came to serve were roughing it in reality. Well, we got Nepali reality all right. We quickly realized we wouldn't be taking a shower for a few days (unless we could stand freezing cold water), and Joel recommended we use our own bedding at the hotel. Glad that was on the packing list, along with toilet paper.

With the sights and sounds from our room, I told Sasha it reminded me of the movie "Big" when Tom Hanks is in that little motel room--you know, he closes the window and curtains as tight as possible and shoves furniture in front of the door. I tried to close our windows to block out some of the noise of the city, but then discovered they WERE closed. Oh well. When someone knocked on the door in a Nepali male voice, I wasn't sure whether I should open the door or not. Thank heavens I did--it was someone from the hotel bringing up bottled water for drinking and brushing our teeth. Welcome to the mission field.

Once we put our luggage in our rooms, our guide for our trip took us out to eat. Mark Storm and his wife Jenn have lived in Kathmandu for over 4 years now. He lived in Lubbock as a little boy, then grew up in Mississippi. When he and Jenn were newly married living in California, both working as engineers, they went on a mission trip to the Philippines and felt called to missions after that point. They joined ServLife staff and lived in Thailand for a year, then moved to Kathmandu. They now have two precious tow-headed children: Solomon (3) and Sophia (1). Mark heads up the Hope Fund in Nepal, while Jenn is part owner of the Beauty for Ashes business that employs Nepali women to make jewelry, bags, etc. to keep them out of brothels and disciple them as new Christians. It was such a joy to meet them!

So Mark took us to a restaurant that was started by Australian missionaries a number of years ago, called the Red Dingo. We got to eat normal food one last time for dinner! Joel Vestal, the founder of ServLife, joined us for dinner and gave us all the low-down for our time at the church-planters' conference and our trip out to western rural Nepal the following week. That was actually our only time with Joel, because he had been in India for a couple of weeks already, including a church-planters' conference at which one of our friends from Tomball--Chris Criswell--taught, just as Michael would do in Nepal for the next two days. The next morning Joel headed home to Indiana.

After dinner we headed back to our hotel, the Hungry Treat Hotel (I guess that name was due to the restaurant attached to it??? ...at which we never ate, thank heavens). Sasha and I roomed together, while Michael and Gil each had their own room. Om Maya and Asha went and stayed with family (her husband's brother-in-law who runs an orphanage) so she could properly care for poor little Asha who was still very ill. I wasn't sure Sasha was going to handle our conditions, but she got over her initial shock and we both took some meds to help us fall asleep. Thank heavens for ear plugs! We slept hard. We needed it after 40 hours of travel!

Even though it was an eventful day, I was thankful for the experience. I learned a LOT about life on the other side of the world that day. But my lessons were just beginning....

I will post some photos and videos as soon as I can. We are having trouble getting them to download from our camera/camcorder to the computer. Hopefully we'll get it figured out and you can see all of this for yourselves. Even better, I pray that some day each of you gets to go on such an adventure and experience it all for yourselves!

Loving for Jesus,

Julie