Happy Mother's Day

Happy Mother's Day, to all you moms out there! Mothering is a high calling, and is not limited to those who have given birth physically. I've been blessed and challenged lately by Nurturing the Nations, by Darrow Miller. I haven't finished the book yet, but I highly recommend it. I am so glad that God made me a woman!

.(pictured here: the girl who made me a mom, and the boy who made her a mom)

Happy First Mother's Day, Michelle!

Home Again

Ah, Nepal. The country that always keeps us guessing. We scheduled our IGSL Alumni Reunion from May 1-3. That's when the Maoist Party scheduled their nationwide strike. In Nepal, strike really means strike. As in, NO STORES OF ANY KIND were open, not even the food market. As in, NO VEHICLES OF ANY KIND were allowed on the streets. So, we walked. A lot. Everyone who attended the meetings walked one, two, or three hours, just to be there. Sometimes we rode bicycles. One couple who hoped to talk with me about studying at IGSL next year walked six hours to meet me! In order to save them from further walking, when I learned about it, I biked to where they were and conducted an interview sitting on a step beside the road. This was not in a remote village, but in the capital city of Kathmandu!

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The day we left, the only vehicles allowed on the road were ambulances, and tourist buses bringing foreigners to the airport. So we walked for thirty minutes with our suitcases, with a few IGSL graduates helping us to carry them, to a place where we could meet the tourist bus. Some of our colleagues had missed the same bus a few days earlier and ended up walking, with their luggage, three hours to the airport. You can be sure that we got there early and caught that bus! Heading to the airport, the bus had to weave its way through groups of Maoists lying in the street to prevent vehicles from passing. We all breathed a collective sigh of relief when we turned onto the airport road, where we started a 22-hour journey that brought us home to Manila.

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Would we do it again? Yes, in a heartbeat! We love Nepal! Christianity is growing faster there than in any other country in the world. There is a desperate need for trained leaders to shepherd the new believers. We are so privileged to help supply that need, not only with the dozens of leaders we have trained, but with the thousands of leaders THEY have trained as they returned.

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We are so proud of our graduates. I want to introduce a few of them to you, so I will spread their stories over the next few days. In the meantime, a few random photos to give you a feel for our trip:

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Buddhist monks at the famous Boudhanath Stupa.

.The top of the Boudhanath Stupa.

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A Hindu funeral beside the Bagmati River, near the Pashupatinath Temple (laying the body on the pyre for cremation).

. Toward the end of the ceremony.

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A Christian baby dedication. The sweet old great-grandmother at the right kept everyone in line.

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One of my favorite memories, in which a deaconess (in the pink sari) who had seemed like a sedate middle-aged woman, decided that she felt like dancing during the church anniversary service. Once she got going, several of the young people joined her. I loved it.

Shopping for new clothes, before the Maoists closed the shop.

Meeting a new student, Menuka, who will join us this year at IGSL.

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Buddhist prayer flags. Prayers are printed on the flag. They believe that as long as the flag keeps flapping in the breeze, the prayers keep going up to heaven.

Feeling tired after a day of sightseeing.

We happened to run into a parade! The school administration was promoting their school, hoping to gain some new students.
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James enjoying the trek below the Annapurna Base Camp.
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View from the trek.

Deeply Troubled

Acts 17:16-34 tells of a day that the Apostle Paul spent walking around Athens, which was a city full of idols. Verse 16 (NLT) says he was deeply troubled as he saw what the people were worshiping. It’s hard to understand that passage . . . until you spend a day walking around a city full of idols. James and I spent last Friday doing just that. “Deeply troubled” describes the feeling. Our hearts ached.

I didn’t get these photos from the internet. I took them myself, one by one, with my own camera, and these are only a handful of the hundreds of idols we saw that day. I grieved as I watched people bowing to the ground in front of fearful images. We were with some of our Nepali graduates who came from Hindu backgrounds. I asked one of them, “How do you feel, watching this?” He answered, “My people are dead, but they don’t know they are dead. And it makes me so sad.”

I’ve spent the last eight days with our graduates who work in this city full of idols. We’ve spent hours talking, praying, and working together. In the midst of the oppressiveness, I keep coming back to Acts 17:16-34. I’m so glad that we serve a God not made by human hands, the Lord of heaven and earth, the one who made the world and everything in it. He himself gives life and breath to everything, and He satisfies every need. What an awesome God we serve!