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
No comments:
Post a Comment