India/Nepal Report #19 (really #20): Tues, Nov. 20, 2012 at 1 p.m. from Kathmandu, Nepal
Dear Family and Friends:
I will just get this started because lunch should be ready soon and then we will have the taxi coming at 2:15 to take us to the meeting today at 3. We just got back from a walk of more than an hour to and from the German bakery we heard about having good bread and other things. We shopped our way there and back stopping to buy postcards, bananas, and tomatoes in addition to the bread. We also stopped at a Travel Agency along the way to check about possibilities to fly from here to Delhi or directly to Mumbai and save the return to Calcutta to change terminals at night and fly to Mumbai from there. It would cost too much to change and our refund from the tickets we now have for that part would come slow if ever. So we will keep to the scheduled flights.
WEDNESDAY, Nov 21 at 7 p.m. HAPPY THANKSGIVING EVERYBODY!
No time to do more until now. Things are happening faster than we can write about them. I’ll begin with today and work back. We left here by taxi for the church at 11:15 a.m. Pastor Umesh met us there with his small car and took us out to see our SDA Hospital (Scheer Memorial) in Banepa village some 25 Km from here. It is a nice campus with immaculate gardens. They can accommodate 150 patients but only have 60 at the moment. That puts a real strain on finances. Their school of nursing helps carry the financial load. Just now they are in dire need of a good surgeon and have been trying for two years to acquire one.
Mrs. Jenson (Cathy, wife of Chuck the Mission President) is serving as interim Director of the hospital since August when the former one (Charles Schultz) returned to USA. The Division would like for her to continue permanently, but that is not a good thing. She has a home furnished on the hospital grounds and lives there, but her husband Chuck lives in their rooms at the Mission Building here in Kathmandu. It is not good for them to be apart that way. We should pray for a good solution. He could live there but his work is here and it would consume a lot of time just getting back and forth.
Both Chuck and Cathy returned from the Division meetings in India, feeling very ill. They may have eaten contaminated food there. We saw her and had lunch with her at the hospital today. Conchee, the maid/cook here prepared rice, dahl, and some soy protein bits we had not seen before along with mixed cooked vegetables and a salad that we took for the meal. It seems that the hospital cafeteria food is not safe for them (or us) to eat without consequences. At the hospital we saw the wall built several years ago by Maranatha to keep out tigers that were attacking the patients. An email from Tina Baehm told about that since she and George were on the trip that built the wall. We mentioned it to Bhaju and he said, “Human tigers are even worse.” Bhaju was the first SDA in Nepal and has a fascinating story of his journey of faith. We may share it sometime at home.
We have really enjoyed visiting with the Jensons. They have served in India for several years before Nepal. He taught at Spicer College and also got his early schooling at Vincent Hill School in India. We have heard of that before from some of our past friends who served in India. Now we are learning many things firsthand that our missionary friends had been talking about when we served as their pastor. (Patts and Cavinesses in Battle Creek and Charles Bonney at Gentry to mention a few). They served in India in areas that were very hot and looked forward to spending some time at Vincent Hill in the mountains where it was cooler to recuperate.
Sunday afternoon following the meeting, Bhaju took us by taxi to visit the historic section of Kathmandu where the kings were crowned etc. We hurried along and did get to see a “living goddess.” She is a little girl less than 12 years old who appears for about half a minute in her special garb bedecked with jewels and gold/silver. No photos are allowed but we bought a postcard to show you sometime. There is great competition among hundreds of girls all over Nepal in being selected as the “living goddess.” They start at less than five years old and are intensely interviewed. One part includes being in a dark room with the heads of decapitated buffalo, sheep, dogs etc. If they scream they are disqualified. Once selected they are “home schooled” in that upper room and if they leave, their feet must never touch the ground. They are carried about on palanquins carried by four to six bearers. These girls forfeit a normal childhood. Sometimes they appear in a chamber where no foreigners are allowed, but Hindu devotees are allowed to worship at her feet. There are many stories about how this came about. At puberty she must leave and go out into the world to live a normal life while another is selected to fill her place. She is considered a reincarnation of one of the gods.
The place where this “goddess” lives is in a temple enclosure that serves both Hindus and Buddhists. Ecumenism exists in Nepal, you see. Buddha was born in Nepal and the story is that he reached the exalted state of a Brahman (Bull) after 184,000 reincarnations. Then he concentrated on meditation to the point where he became nothing. He is thus an example for all who are going through the various stages of reincarnation from insect to bull. The end result is NOTHING, hence atheism.
Chuck thought we should take a day off and fly to Buddha’s birthplace. He offered to preach the evangelistic sermon to release us for that. When we heard the cost it was easy to say no. I can think of much better ways to spend that much money.
We are glad we came to Nepal for the series of meetings since we were in Mizoram and not too far away. The cost of the meetings was within our reach. There is some good interest that can be followed up by Pastor Umesh and the Mission. Even with changing times of the meetings we have had a good attendance even if some do come late. Chuck would like for us to come back and conduct a large city meeting later. He thinks the time is ripe here for it. We have not made any promises. As always, the Lord will have to lead in that if it is to happen. Right now we are looking forward to closing out after five more meetings and heading home. It continues to be a great experience with many unexpected things coming up daily.
The power is cut here routinely but we learned tonight from Chuck that you can go on line and see a schedule for it and plan accordingly. Tonight, I closed the sermon exactly at five and 5 seconds later the power went off. The video projector did not get its usual cooling, but that is no different from when the power changes and it is stopped without benefit of cooling the bulb. We know that bulb life is shorter because of those unceremonious interruptions but it was bought for use in mission work and that is where it gets its exercise.
Tonight we have power and Mary Alice was able to get the High Priest robes ironed for use on Sabbath. The last few days the power has gone off at about sundown, just when people need it most. Then it comes on again during the night sometime, so we leave the computer plugged in to catch that opportunity for recharging. We have returned back to our room by flashlight and we sometimes shower and dress by flashlight also.
Last night Chuck brought up a propane heater that we could use this morning to take the chill off the room while dressing following the shower. Fortunately, the shower is nice and warm and the cold water we close with is REALLY cold. It makes for a good reaction to the skin and braces us for the cool room afterward while dressing.
Today we were able to have most of the Bible verses used in my sermon, in Nepali. A girl in the office was able to download to my computer a free copy of a font in Nepali. Now the texts are not nonsense syllables but intelligible (to them). The current challenge is to get them into the right places in my PowerPoint sermon slides. As it turns out, the Nepali texts are not accepted by PowerPoint, but they are accepted by my Mac Keynote counterpart. The problem is that my sermons are in PowerPoint. So now I have to copy and paste each slide of each sermon into Keynote in order to have the texts in Nepali. When they come into Keynote, they come as very small pictures and must be manually dragged to fit into the normal screen size. Today I ran out of time to do that and we had to project some in the small format. However, it was large enough on the wall that the people could read it from the back of the room and Pastor Umesh could read them from the computer screen rather than squinting in the dim light to read from his small Nepali Bible.
Such is the continuing saga of temporary life in Nepal.
With love and blessings,
Glenn and Mary Alice (Dad and Mom, Grandpa and Grandma)