Wednesday, July 9, 2025
Tuesday, July 8, 2025
Why Go?
I have been enabled. He opened doors back home, He promises His Word will NOT return void. We will not see the results but He has promised—leave that up to Me. Everything is in His hands. Praise the LORD for opportunity's, especially unseen, to share His Word. Praise the LORD for He is ALWAYS with us—wherever we are.
Look for opportunities:) He will provide.
-Larry Boernsen
Look for opportunities:) He will provide.
-Larry Boernsen
Wednesday, July 2, 2025
Journey to Gamedung and Hattibang
Monday June 30th
Today we spilt into two different teams for the teaching lessons. Pastor Todd delegated the new teams as to the difficulty levels of the hikes. The first team is Pastor Todd, Larry, Carrie, and Isebell. They would be headed to Darang and Dhanbang. It about a 3 hours hike one way, teach, and the another 3 hours back down. Raju assured us all the this would be the easier of the two hikes.
The other team is Henry, Stephanie and myself (Troyal) lead by Rajan. We're headed to Gamedung and Hattibang and according to Raju our trip is allegedly the more difficult of the two.
Team one had to get up early to begin their journey, but even though our hikes are more difficult (allegedly) we didn't have to start as early. So we were able to sleep in and have nice breakfast at the hotel before Rajan picked us up.
It was about an hour drive to the base of the hill (mountain.) Then began the hiking. The first hike wasn't too difficult we had to stop a few times for one of our team members (Rajan) to catch his breath a few times. It was the perfect opportunity to stop and take in the amazing views of the surrounding foothills. Overall, it wasn't too bad and we made it in a little bit over an hour. It was gorgeous!
We had some time before the kids arrived so we explored the village, took a lot of pictures of corn for Stephanie, and said "Jai Messi" to a few of the locals. Then it was time to teach. There were about 120 kids and we received welcome scarfs before we started. The lesson went great. As beautiful as the terrain is in this country there's nothing quite like see 100 smiling faces all staring at you at once. We taught them a couple of songs: "Here Is the Cross" and "Jesus Loves Me."
After the lesson we were served Tarkari, I think I've eaten that dish 4 days in a row now (the version that Rajus wife made was the best.) Then it start to rain and rain and rain. And then it rained harder and harder and harder. Pretty soon we couldnt hear anything but rain pounding on the metal roof of the church.
Then, just like that, it stopped. So, since the rain had stopped Rajan said it was time to start heading back down the hill. About 2 1/2 minutes into our walk back down it start to rain again. A lot. It then went on to rain our entire walk back down to Rajans car. We all got SOAKED. Everything in our backpacks got SOAKED. Socks, shoes, passports, soaked.
But it was well worth it:)
All 4 of us, sopping wet, piled back into Rajans car for the short car ride over to a place that had a truck that was going to take us up to the next village. We had Rajan riding shotgun, Henry, Steph and myself in the backseat and two more guys on the roof of the truck. Ya know just a typical Nepali road trip. So we began our ascent. At first it wasn't too bad, very bumpy, lots of rocks, but our driver went about like it was his normal Monday afternoon. The higher we got, the steeper it got and the worse the "road" got. We had to go back in forth between two wheel and for wheel drive as we crawled our way practically straight up this Himalayan foothill (mountain) At one point we had to stop and the driver had to get out and move a couple of boulders out of the way. For him it was no problem and we continued on. According to Rajan the driver was "under strick orders to take us as far as possible"
As we got a couple thousand feet up in the air there were a few times where it felt like the truck was going to drive off the edge of the cliff, but we never did and the driver remained calm as a cucumber the entire time. I told myself I wasn't going to panic until he started to panic. Henry however spent half the ride on my lap. Finally we reached the part of the road where a landslide had come through and even this driver couldn't get through it. So we had to get out and start walking. The truck probably took us about 75% of the way up so we were very grateful for that and it gave us a confidence boost for the last 25%. For the most part it wasn't too bad at all. More difficult than the first hike and longer. But we were much higher so the views were some how better then before and they kept getting better and better with every step. It took about an hour and a half and by the grace of God, we made it to the top. Oh ya I forgot to mention, after we made it to the landslide and we started walking, we came across two motorcyclists. Rajan seemed to know them and he told us he needed to go with one of them to help bring supplies. So we were on our own and he said he would see us in about an hour. When we made it to the top, Our hotel was sitting perfectly at the top of the hill overlooking what we just hiked and the entire Chitwan valley, and Rajan sitting on the porch looking down at us…
The 4 of us sat up on the deck of the hotel staring out at Gods glorious creation. We talked about this and that for a few hours. The hotel served us some black tea, which might've been the best tea I've ever had. We watched a rain storm slowly make its way up the mountain and pretty soon we were covered in fog. One moment we could see probably 50 miles and the next I could barely see Rajan sitting across from me. The hotel served us more Tarkari and the biggest cucumber I've ever seen in my life. After supper it was time to head to bed. It was an incredible day. Praise the Lord!
Tuesday, June 30th
So one the reasons why our hike was considered the more difficult of the two was because it had two days of hiking whilst the other one only had the one day.
Today we had to hike about 45 minutes through the hills to the school to do our lesson. Rajan assured us it would be mostly flat and it was! We made it to the school with ease. They managed to cram about 300 kids into a room that probably should've only had 50 max. It was awesome. We did our lessons, taught them a few songs, handed out the gifts and everything went great. Of course after we were served a meal. This time instead of Tarkari it was just a bowl of Water Buffalo chunks. It was so good (kinda tasted like beef, shhhh)
On our way back to the hotel it rained a bit but nothing crazy. We got a little wet but at least our passports didn't get any worse. We stopped back at the hotel for little breather and so we could buy some rain ponchos and some "Monsoon Dew" (Nepali Mountain Dew)
As we're making our purchases it started rain very hard. We had dealt with the rain the day before and everything was still pretty wet anyways so we decided to just deal with it and walk down to the truck despite of it. We had break in our new ponchos after all. So I started the trip in front and began walking down the road we came up on. Before long I was getting yelled at that I was going the wrong way. Apparently during the night there was another landslide and we weren't able to go down the main road, we had to take the "local trail."
Now, I don't know if you've ever seen "the Lord of the Rings" but there's a scene where Samwise Gamgee is going down the "secret stairs" and instead of a steady decline as most staircases are, it's practically a straight vertical decline. On top of that, the cliff that he's on drops off about a million feet straight down. Well thats basically exactly what this "local trail" was except we had raging river right where we were walking because of all the rain. We had two local women with us and they handle it with ease, but we went SLOW. One of the ladies ripped a couple of trees out of the ground, snapped them in half little tooth picks and gave them to us for walking sticks. They probably saved our lives. After we descend the cliff we finally arrive back at the truck on the safe side of the landslide. We piled in and started driving down the hill (mountain)
I thought for sure we were home free for the rest of the journey but alas we came across and team of guys who were hard at work, trying to fix a section of the road that had washed out the year before. They just so happened to place their pile of large boulders right in the middle of where we need to pass. I was sure that we were going to have get out and to walk to rest of the way, but they were very nice and they went to work, not moving the rocks out of the way, but just rearranging them in a way so that we could just drive right over them. And that's what we did.
Once again I was beaming with confidence that we could now just coast down the hill back to civilization. But nay, we approached another bend in the road where another team of workers had a tractor sitting in the middle of the road. Once again I thought we had to get out and walk but once again they were also very nice and the one guy backed the tractor (and trailer) down the mountain leaving us with just enough room to squeeze by. As we were driving by we hit some mud and ended up bottoming out. Even in 4 wheel drive we were STUCK (Guess what I thought we were going to have to do.) But of course one the workers grabbed a shovel, crawled under our truck and in a few short minutes we were free.
Finally, we were able to ride the nice bumpy, winding road all the way back to Rajans car. There's only one way to top off an adventure like that, so we found the first Momo place we could find, making one last pit stop before heading back to the hotel to meet up with the rest of our crew.
It was truly a blessing to be able to go on an adventure like that, with the goal of spreading the amazing news of the Gospel to kids way up in the hills (mountains) of Nepal. God is so good, all the time.
Mark 16:15 He said to them, "Go into all the world and preach the gospel to all creation."
Today we spilt into two different teams for the teaching lessons. Pastor Todd delegated the new teams as to the difficulty levels of the hikes. The first team is Pastor Todd, Larry, Carrie, and Isebell. They would be headed to Darang and Dhanbang. It about a 3 hours hike one way, teach, and the another 3 hours back down. Raju assured us all the this would be the easier of the two hikes.
The other team is Henry, Stephanie and myself (Troyal) lead by Rajan. We're headed to Gamedung and Hattibang and according to Raju our trip is allegedly the more difficult of the two.
Team one had to get up early to begin their journey, but even though our hikes are more difficult (allegedly) we didn't have to start as early. So we were able to sleep in and have nice breakfast at the hotel before Rajan picked us up.
It was about an hour drive to the base of the hill (mountain.) Then began the hiking. The first hike wasn't too difficult we had to stop a few times for one of our team members (Rajan) to catch his breath a few times. It was the perfect opportunity to stop and take in the amazing views of the surrounding foothills. Overall, it wasn't too bad and we made it in a little bit over an hour. It was gorgeous!
We had some time before the kids arrived so we explored the village, took a lot of pictures of corn for Stephanie, and said "Jai Messi" to a few of the locals. Then it was time to teach. There were about 120 kids and we received welcome scarfs before we started. The lesson went great. As beautiful as the terrain is in this country there's nothing quite like see 100 smiling faces all staring at you at once. We taught them a couple of songs: "Here Is the Cross" and "Jesus Loves Me."
After the lesson we were served Tarkari, I think I've eaten that dish 4 days in a row now (the version that Rajus wife made was the best.) Then it start to rain and rain and rain. And then it rained harder and harder and harder. Pretty soon we couldnt hear anything but rain pounding on the metal roof of the church.
Then, just like that, it stopped. So, since the rain had stopped Rajan said it was time to start heading back down the hill. About 2 1/2 minutes into our walk back down it start to rain again. A lot. It then went on to rain our entire walk back down to Rajans car. We all got SOAKED. Everything in our backpacks got SOAKED. Socks, shoes, passports, soaked.
But it was well worth it:)
All 4 of us, sopping wet, piled back into Rajans car for the short car ride over to a place that had a truck that was going to take us up to the next village. We had Rajan riding shotgun, Henry, Steph and myself in the backseat and two more guys on the roof of the truck. Ya know just a typical Nepali road trip. So we began our ascent. At first it wasn't too bad, very bumpy, lots of rocks, but our driver went about like it was his normal Monday afternoon. The higher we got, the steeper it got and the worse the "road" got. We had to go back in forth between two wheel and for wheel drive as we crawled our way practically straight up this Himalayan foothill (mountain) At one point we had to stop and the driver had to get out and move a couple of boulders out of the way. For him it was no problem and we continued on. According to Rajan the driver was "under strick orders to take us as far as possible"
As we got a couple thousand feet up in the air there were a few times where it felt like the truck was going to drive off the edge of the cliff, but we never did and the driver remained calm as a cucumber the entire time. I told myself I wasn't going to panic until he started to panic. Henry however spent half the ride on my lap. Finally we reached the part of the road where a landslide had come through and even this driver couldn't get through it. So we had to get out and start walking. The truck probably took us about 75% of the way up so we were very grateful for that and it gave us a confidence boost for the last 25%. For the most part it wasn't too bad at all. More difficult than the first hike and longer. But we were much higher so the views were some how better then before and they kept getting better and better with every step. It took about an hour and a half and by the grace of God, we made it to the top. Oh ya I forgot to mention, after we made it to the landslide and we started walking, we came across two motorcyclists. Rajan seemed to know them and he told us he needed to go with one of them to help bring supplies. So we were on our own and he said he would see us in about an hour. When we made it to the top, Our hotel was sitting perfectly at the top of the hill overlooking what we just hiked and the entire Chitwan valley, and Rajan sitting on the porch looking down at us…
The 4 of us sat up on the deck of the hotel staring out at Gods glorious creation. We talked about this and that for a few hours. The hotel served us some black tea, which might've been the best tea I've ever had. We watched a rain storm slowly make its way up the mountain and pretty soon we were covered in fog. One moment we could see probably 50 miles and the next I could barely see Rajan sitting across from me. The hotel served us more Tarkari and the biggest cucumber I've ever seen in my life. After supper it was time to head to bed. It was an incredible day. Praise the Lord!
Tuesday, June 30th
So one the reasons why our hike was considered the more difficult of the two was because it had two days of hiking whilst the other one only had the one day.
Today we had to hike about 45 minutes through the hills to the school to do our lesson. Rajan assured us it would be mostly flat and it was! We made it to the school with ease. They managed to cram about 300 kids into a room that probably should've only had 50 max. It was awesome. We did our lessons, taught them a few songs, handed out the gifts and everything went great. Of course after we were served a meal. This time instead of Tarkari it was just a bowl of Water Buffalo chunks. It was so good (kinda tasted like beef, shhhh)
On our way back to the hotel it rained a bit but nothing crazy. We got a little wet but at least our passports didn't get any worse. We stopped back at the hotel for little breather and so we could buy some rain ponchos and some "Monsoon Dew" (Nepali Mountain Dew)
As we're making our purchases it started rain very hard. We had dealt with the rain the day before and everything was still pretty wet anyways so we decided to just deal with it and walk down to the truck despite of it. We had break in our new ponchos after all. So I started the trip in front and began walking down the road we came up on. Before long I was getting yelled at that I was going the wrong way. Apparently during the night there was another landslide and we weren't able to go down the main road, we had to take the "local trail."
Now, I don't know if you've ever seen "the Lord of the Rings" but there's a scene where Samwise Gamgee is going down the "secret stairs" and instead of a steady decline as most staircases are, it's practically a straight vertical decline. On top of that, the cliff that he's on drops off about a million feet straight down. Well thats basically exactly what this "local trail" was except we had raging river right where we were walking because of all the rain. We had two local women with us and they handle it with ease, but we went SLOW. One of the ladies ripped a couple of trees out of the ground, snapped them in half little tooth picks and gave them to us for walking sticks. They probably saved our lives. After we descend the cliff we finally arrive back at the truck on the safe side of the landslide. We piled in and started driving down the hill (mountain)
I thought for sure we were home free for the rest of the journey but alas we came across and team of guys who were hard at work, trying to fix a section of the road that had washed out the year before. They just so happened to place their pile of large boulders right in the middle of where we need to pass. I was sure that we were going to have get out and to walk to rest of the way, but they were very nice and they went to work, not moving the rocks out of the way, but just rearranging them in a way so that we could just drive right over them. And that's what we did.
Once again I was beaming with confidence that we could now just coast down the hill back to civilization. But nay, we approached another bend in the road where another team of workers had a tractor sitting in the middle of the road. Once again I thought we had to get out and walk but once again they were also very nice and the one guy backed the tractor (and trailer) down the mountain leaving us with just enough room to squeeze by. As we were driving by we hit some mud and ended up bottoming out. Even in 4 wheel drive we were STUCK (Guess what I thought we were going to have to do.) But of course one the workers grabbed a shovel, crawled under our truck and in a few short minutes we were free.
Finally, we were able to ride the nice bumpy, winding road all the way back to Rajans car. There's only one way to top off an adventure like that, so we found the first Momo place we could find, making one last pit stop before heading back to the hotel to meet up with the rest of our crew.
It was truly a blessing to be able to go on an adventure like that, with the goal of spreading the amazing news of the Gospel to kids way up in the hills (mountains) of Nepal. God is so good, all the time.
Mark 16:15 He said to them, "Go into all the world and preach the gospel to all creation."
- Troyal Mayhew
Tuesday, July 1, 2025
Hiking and Teaching in Darang and Dhanbang
June 30th – The Hike and Teaching in Darang
The day had come for our teams to do some hiking. We broke into two groups, and our group was supposed to do around 6 hours of hiking in one day. 3 hours to Darang, and 3 hours back. We woke up and Raju picked us up around 5:30am to head to the village that we would be staying at in Dhanbang. On the way, our car got stuck multiple times, due to the roads being so muddy, and had to get out of the car to help push, and also had to cross a small river. Once we got to the hostel we were staying at, they gave us some hot tea. It was sweet, and very good. Then it was time to start our 3 hr hike to Darang. We all had our backpacks with just the necessities and two, one liters of water. We estimated our backpacks weighed around 15 pounds each. Pastor Manooj and his son, Sujan, around 10 years old, joined us. It didn't take us long to realize that this was going to be a difficult hike, much harder than expected. We had to stop every 15-20 minutes to take a break. Pastor Manooj cut us bamboo hiking sticks to help us out. Thank goodness as there was no way we could've done it without one. At certain points during our hike a couple from our team weren't feeling well, and decided it would be best to turn back.
I, Isabelle, was one of those that headed back 3 hours in. Sujan lead me half way back and pointed out where I needed to go. Thankfully, the majority of the way back looked familiar, and I managed to get back to the hostel safely, while walking in the rain for part of it.
Larry and I, Carrie, decided we would go ahead and keep trekking on. Sujan was Larry and my guide for a while as well. He spoke very little English, but was very patient as we still needed to rest quite often as we headed up the mountain. There were multiple times he took us through a "shortcut" which caused us to literally have to use our hands and feet to get up parts of the mountain. We then got to a point where Sujan stopped. I saw a little building, and asked Sujan if that was the school. He said "school", and smiled, so I was thinking that's where we were going (Oh how wrong I was). It looked like it was just over a small hill, and I motioned if we should go. He said "Raju" so I figured he wanted to wait until Raju met up with us. So, we sat there a good 30 or more minutes waiting for Raju and Manooj to catch back up to us. Once they got there I asked if that school was where we were going, and he said "No"....so we headed on. Raju informed us that we were taking much longer than planned. At this point, it had been around 3 hours, and we were only about ½ way to the church. We asked Raju to give us an understanding on how hard the rest of the hike was going to be, and he pointed into the distance to another mountain. He explained that we would have to hike down the current mountain we were on, down to the river, then hike up that other mountain, and that the church would be right over the other mountain. As we headed down the mountain it started to rain. We stopped at a nice villager's house for about 10-15 min to try to get a little reprieve from the rain. It started to clear up, but the rain was on and off the rest of the trip. Going down, we didn't have to stop too much, but then the climb up the 2nd mountain started. I felt like we had to stop at least every 15 min for a short break. I was so tired, but the breaks really helped. Every so often I would look up and see the views of the Himalayan foothills, and it was just breathtaking. Psalm 19:1 – The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament shows His handiwork. During the hike up, we took many shortcuts, which each one seemed to get harder and harder. They even took us through a couple of cornfields, where I would lose sight of Raju and Manooj, but they were always waiting for us at the top of each obstacle. Once we got to the top of the mountain, I was sure we were almost there.....but thus, we were not. We then hiked around the mountain to the other side, with Raju pointing out where we were having lunch, telling me, "only 15 more minutes." At least 30 min later, we got to that building which turned out to be the pastor's house. They served us Dal Bhat, which consists of rice, chicken, and lentils. They were going to bring us spoons, but I was hungry, so decided to do what the Nepali's do and just ate it with my hands. I was so thankful to finally be there. At this point, our 3 hour hike had taken us 6 hours. I was so tired, but Raju had told us around 100 kids were waiting for us, so we got ready and headed to the school. Acts 1:8 – "But you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be witnesses to Me in Jerusalem, and in all Judea, and Samaria, and to the end of the earth." We went into the school, which was packed with kids and adults. There were also many people looking in through the windows and doorways. Everyone looked so excited to see us. Raju had told us that they had been waiting for us since 11am! (It was now 3:30pm) We went to the front of the church where they presented us with beautiful flower wreath necklaces. We did our lessons pretty quickly, and ended around 4:30. We then handed out gifts to all the kids, and to see the joy and excitement each kid had made this journey more than worth it. 1 Thessalonians 2:8 – So, affectionately longing for you, we were well pleased to impart to you not only the gospel of God, but also our own dear lives, because you had become dear to us. After we were done, Larry and I were doing the math and were worried that it would get dark for at least the last hour. At this point, I was exhausted. I had no idea how I was going to be able to make it back. But I knew I did not want to hike in the dark, so we started off on our hike back. The first hour or so we were going pretty fast, but had to take a few stops. Even though we were going downhill at this point, each step was so painful, and I did not want to slip and fall, so we were going slower than expected. Then around an hour or so of our trip back, Raju asked if I wanted Sajan to take my backpack. I said I would really appreciate it, and he took it happily for me....this kid just amazed me. I told Raju he was my personal Sherpa! Without my backpack, I was walking much faster (with my walking stick of course), and I felt like we made good time getting down the mountain. The sun was starting to set, and once again Larry and I were worried about hiking in the dark. Raju must have heard us, as he then gave us the suggestion of getting a delivery truck to take us back down at that first little shop, even though he did not recommend it. He wasn't 100% sure they would be able to get one, but we said yes. Not only was I afraid of walking in the dark, I just didn't know if I had it in me to walk that last ½ of the trip. As we were making our ascent up the mountain, I was really struggling. Each hill I saw, I would just pray to God to give me the strength and energy, which I know He was doing. Larry was also my little pep talker, reminding me to just focus on each step and keep going. Once we got to the top, I saw the truck waiting for us. I cried tears of joy seeing it, knowing the pain would be almost over. At this time it was getting dark, and I was so thankful that we had made it this far without having to walk in the dark. It had taken us around 2 ½ hours to walk back from the school to this ½ way point. The villagers helped Larry and I onto the bed truck and had me sit on a spare tire they had, and Larry sat on the side of the bed of the truck. We were sitting/waiting a good 30 min before we left. And then, I had one of the scariest rides of my life. At this point, the sun was completely down, and it was dark. They had a tarp covering the back part of the truck, so we could not see anything. This was probably a good thing, as it was terrifying going down this mountain. They would go fast down the mountain to make it up hills, do hairpin turns, with having to stop half way to turn the truck (with a guy banging on the back of the truck to let them know when to stop). Once again I was praying the whole way back for the Lord to keep us safe, as I heard Larry whistling a hymn. About 30-45 min later, we finally got to the hostel, a feeling of relief knowing that the Lord had been with us throughout the day and protected us through every obstacle.
July 1st – Teaching in Dhanbang
We woke and quickly got as ready as we could to head over to the church in Dhanbang. They fed us a millet pancake and eggs, which were very good. We had a group of around 120 kids in attendance. This church also presented us with lovely flower wreath necklaces. When we were done, we started to hand out gifts, but unfortunately we ran out before everyone got one. After the lessons, they wanted to feed us again – literally about 1 ½ hours of them feeding us breakfast! We told them we were not hungry, but they asked us to eat "Just a little." I just ate the rice and lentils and it was good. We then headed back to Chitwan, with Pastor Manooj and another member following us to the river to make sure we got there ok. We did get stuck once, but after around 15 min, Raju was able to get up the hill, and we walked up to meet him. When we got to the river, thankfully it was low, but we still got out and walked through as Raju drove. The rest of the trip back was pretty uneventful, with a lot of scraping of the bottom of the car (poor little city car). We got back to our wonderful A/C room at the Rainforest Resort and were able to rest for the remainder of the day.
So far, our trip has gone very well, and we thank God that he has kept us all safe, especially in the last couple days of strenuous hiking for both teams. Psalm 91:11-12 – For He shall give His Angels charge over you, to keep you in all your ways. In their hands they shall bear you up, lest you dash your foot against a stone.
Carrie and Isabelle
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