In our September Update I said that we would be moving into more teaching, writing and family.  That is what we are doing.  It is so exciting to be headed into a new opportunity.

TEACHING

I am teaching for a week on “missions”  in the Justice DTS in two weeks.  That should be an amazing experience to talk about the heart of where “God meets world” with about 40 Millennials.

WRITING

I have been soliciting good advice about moving forward with a book project.  I believe that I will be developing a project proposal in the next few weeks.

FAMILY

I am more convinced than ever that OUR way forward for changing the world is through impacting individual families and “FAMILY” as a sphere of society.  A holistic approach to family will require us to do a lot of research but we are really encouraged by the feedback that we have gotten so fare about our ideas and how they fit into the “real world” of families today.

BRAZIL

We are planning a trip to Brazil, from the beginning of December to the beginning of February.  We will be working on ministry from there (university, business as mission, community development, speaking in churches, etc) as well as looking at opportunities to develop new opportunities for the things we were discussing above.  I also have to renew my Permanent Residency Visa before December 3rd, so I can’t not go !

We need to raise about $5,000 for airfare.  We have tickets secured until October 27th.  We look forward to hearing from you if you are interested.

Thank you so much for all of your support!

TEACHING

I have already been teaching in a YWAM school and have been offered opportunities to teach in a few more.  We are looking at the possibility of going back to Brazil at the end of the year which may include teaching at a few schools there as well.

WRITING

In the past few months a number of people, whose opinions I respect, have independently suggested that I consider writing a book.  While I don’t think that I am ready for a book project, I do plan on doing some writing projects in the coming months.  Leading a team of families to Nepal was, in many ways, a confirmation of some of the core ideas that I have been working on.

FAMILY

Since we began working with university students a few years ago we have noticed that many of the issues they struggle with are related to: identity, relationships, social responsibility or world view.  What these four areas have in common is that they are all developed in the context of “family.”  In our society going off to college has been seen as a way to get away from the constraints of family and yet, university students today constitute a “fatherless” generation that needs “family” more than ever.

Although I don’t yet know exactly how it will all come together, I am convinced that “family” is the missing ingredient that helps to tie together all of the things we have been doing with in the last few years with university students, missions research, theology, missional communities, etc…  I feel like I am on the edge of something powerful.

It’s been a week since our Nepal team graduated.  We had a really great debriefing experience with them before they left and it seems like our team members were all ready to go into their next adventures… it’s just hard to believe we aren’t all together since we have been so close for months in such wild circumstances.

That was an adventure!  (let’s do it again!)

On our way through Doha on our way to Nepal we were asked a number of questions about our pregnant person.  Therefore, we were very diligent about getting information about the documentation Qatar Airlines would need to have in order to avoid the situation we ended up in…

The short version is that the expecting couple were pulled from the plane because above 32 weeks one has to have an authorization from a Qatar Airlines certified physician…  As the leader I stayed behind with them as well.  Everyone was upset and crying as we sent the rest of the team on without us.

After two hours at the OB/GYN clinic our Mom-in-progress was cleared to travel and so we rested at a hotel, visited some sights and we were on the next day’s flight.  In the end we were treated well and we got to experience a Middle Eastern country during Ramadan.

We just came from the opposite side of the planet… and we got a break in the middle…

Very sad news
Two days before we left we found out that a young man on another Y outreach team like ours had accidentally fallen into a river and drowned.

We and another family moved out of our flat at APEX so that the team could stay there together during this difficult time.

We are currently on a layover in Doha, Qatar. (on the Persian Gulf near Saudi Arabia) We traveled all night and will be home tomorrow. The next segment is 14 hours.

In the next week we will be debriefing and preparing to send our students off to their next destinations after being with us. It will be sad to see them go.

When we started his outreach I had faith that things would go well but I had questions about how 5 families would be able to work and live together in close quarters for two months.

We moved five times. We ate so many things that the kids had never even heard of before coming to Nepal. We did all sorts of ministries, some of which were very emotionally and others physically draining. It is just hard sometimes to get where you are going and back.

Our final days include gathering with the staff of Y Kathmandu ministries tomorrow, debriefing our experiences here with local Y leaders, last minute shopping, packing and flying to home on the opposite side of the planet on Wednesday.

We are all in agreement that we want to push hard and finish these last few days well.

Our hope was to see if normal families could face the challenges at the ends of the earth and I am happy to report that they really can.

We feel very encouraged to continue moving in the direction of working with families as a means of impacting the next generation.

Thank you all so much for praying for us all this time! We really appreciate your support! We look forward to sharing more about how this experience is influencing our future plans.

See you soon!

We hiked out to a site where they are building a Guest House for tourist income complete with plans for Yak rentals just two days journey from the Anapurna Loop.

We also visited their orphanage which is one one of only two organic olive farms in the whole nation.

Another Banda!!

Down in Pokhara there was a transportation strike called for the day before we were scheduled to return to Kathmandu. After our previous “Banda” experience we wanted to make sure we would be safe to travel back to Kathmandu.

To understand the situation and exchange money for the trip I needed to go to the other end of town. As it turned out, the Banda transformed into a traffic holiday and I spent an enjoyable afternoon riding a private motorbike on quiet, peaceful streets. We also got the best exchange rate possible and we were able to come back when scheduled on a bus that the company reserved for only our team. The lack of traffic resulted in us getting back in record time and they dropped us off in our area of town rather than at the main terminal.

All in all, what could have been bad turned out to be the best of all options!

Good things happen!

The city is cleaner, the water is cleaner, the air is cleaner too.  Some of us have been able to shake a cough that we have been stuggling with in Kathmandu. 

We FINALLY have seen some of the high Himalayas!  We have seen Fishtail and the Anapurnas… they are HUGE.  Denise made me climb up a cellphone tower to take a better picture for my mother!

As part of serving the Y Pokhara mininstries we have been working at the Y base moving and sorting tons of rocks from a recent building project. It has been awesome to do something intensely practical.  We have also helped to finish the construction of a prayer room, worked in their pre-school classes, and went to a Tibetan refugee camp that was established over 50 years ago.

It is so beautiful here…  it is a nice “breather” after the last few weeks of pushing hard with ministry opportunities that require more planning and logistics.  It is good to see the results of something tangible and practical.  The team is doing well but will make good use of a few lighter days…

Thanks for praying for us!

50 years ago China took over Tibet and caused a wave of chaos among the Tibetan people.  Many of them became refugees in Nepal.

This week we have been at the Tibetan Guest House, working with some of the very few known Tibetan believers in Kathmandu, attending and sharing at the only Tibetan church,  four wheeling to high point Tibetan Buddhist temples in the jungle to pray for God to bless the Tibetan people, and inagurating a new Tibetan outreach ministry. It has been an honor to get connected with this front edge situation.

Pastoral Visit

The Crossroads DTS school leaders, Kevin and Julie Girton have been visiting with us of the past few days, making sure that we are all okay.  I think they think we are…

Street Kids

One of the significant challenges that face Nepal toady is the issue of homelessness among children.  This week we worked with King’s Kids, visiting and spending time with the street kids in Kathmandu.  One day we took a group of boys out of the city to bathe and play in a clean river.  The other days we played soccer, ate with them, had wound care clinics,  and generally tried to get into their world.  We had some very cool opportunities to share with them and it opened up our understanding of the practical implications of the breakdown of the family in the developing world. 

Hurting people, hurt people…

BAM!

What is BAM?  It stands for Business As Mission. 

The two families that did not go to Ilam hosted a three day seminar for Christian business owners focused on helping Nepali Christians run their businesses in a way that glorifies God and produces social transformation.  There were about 40 participants and it was a temendous success.  From this gathering there is a sense that Christian business owners are willing and ready to start networking together to make Nepal a better place within their spheres of influence. 

Principles don’t matter until they get put into practice…

We left the village of Nepaltar as the sun was coming up.  The torrential rain stopped long enough for us to load the top of the van with our luggage and get it tarped.  Getting down the mountain was curvy, slow and tedious but with a few stops to ease our motion sickness we were on our way to the “Terai,” the flat southern plains.

ONE 

Near the end of the foothills, we were the first vehicle to arrive at a place where the rains had caused a tree to fall across a electical powerline, pulling it down to about six feet off the ground.  It was  too low for our van to clear, so three of us got out to see what we could do to continue our journey.  As we were on the road, a jeep with a roof rack full of luggage (and a young man perched on top) came barreling towards us in the opposite direction.  We tried, in vain, to signal it stop but the driver didn’t see us or realize what we were doing until it was too late… the young man on top saw the line and drove for cover on the jeep’s luggage rack… the driver swerved dangerously close to one of our team mates and almost hit him… the electrical cord got caught under the jeep’s rack and was ripped from the pole… as it stretched across where we were, two of us drove for the ditch and the cable lightly clipped our team mate’s leg and came to rest on top of our van!  We gingerly removed the now “dead” cable, thanking God that it was the only “dead” thing in the situation… It could have been a disaster involving someone getting hit by the jeep, electricuted, or having a limb removed by a whipping cable flying trough the air!  After removing the line we were on our way…

TWO

About two hours down the road we were one of the first vehicles stopped at a roadside police station because about 10 miles ahead  a “banda” had been set up.  A “banda” is a form of strike or protest that involves road closures and retaliation against anyone who doesn’t respect the “banda.” After an hour of waiting the police informed us that the “banda” was over and that they would escort us through the problem area…  As we followed two police trucks with at least a dozen soldiers each, we passed the burned out hull of a bus and the piles of glass from the smashed out windows of  previous vehicles.  As we got closer to the village where the banda was, theoretically, no longer happening, I saw a young man smash out the windsheild of a tour bus and then get wrangled to the back of one of our police escort trucks while being beaten into submission with sticks.  We obviously stayed close to the other police vehicle and as we entered the village area crowds of villagers came running from both sides of the road with large stones.  We had our team get down and cover their heads in the van in case any of the stones came through the windows.  We were hit three times on different areas parts of the vehicle but fortunately there was no window damage and we were able to continue driving out of the area as the police truck stopped to confront the crowd.  It would have been very ugly if they could have stopped our van.

THREE

Even through we were able to generally calm everyone down from this stressful experience, our Hindu van driver, who doesnt speak English, was nothing short of “freaked out.”  He was driving very fast trying to get out of the area because it is common for “bandas” to effect whole districts rather that just one village.  In order to pass other vehicles, the driver was riding pretty consistently in the opposite lane of traffic.  A motorcycle coming in the opposite direction alsmost lost control because of this, causing him to swerve to avoid hitting us head on.  In response, our driver swerved at the last moment causing us to fishtail at over 50MPH and nearly lose control of our vehicle as well.   

The rest of the ride was rather uneventful, other than the driver almost falling asleep at the wheel 10 hours further down the road…

I will be watching for signs of PSTD…