Jeremiah 7:23-24 But this thing commanded I them, saying, Obey my voice, and I will be your God, and ye shall be my people: and walk ye in all the ways that I have commanded you, that it may be well unto you. But they hearkened not, nor inclined their ear, but walked in the counsels and in the imagination of their evil heart, and went backward, and not forward.

It's been a few weeks since I sat down and wrote my last blog.  We're either not busy enough doing anything interesting or running around like chickens with their heads cut off.  There is not much middle ground here in Nepal.   A few nights ago as  I was reading the scriptures, the Old Testament, and came across this scripture in Jeremiah I thought about Nepal and really how they seem to be moving 'backward and not forward'.  There is something everyday that I just have to shake my head and say "really, are you kidding me?"  As humanitarian missionaries, everyday is an adventure (well, almost everyday) we have the opportunity to see and do different things that other missionaries in other countries don't get a chance to do.

The week after my last blog was a week of office work, emails, a little shopping and some much needed rest to get ready for the following week when we had friends coming from Salt Lake and the next month.

One night we went to our Branch President's home for dinner with his family.  What an amazing family, who live the gospel and have strong testimonies and are such an example to our Branch.  Sister Mangala fixed a wonderful meal, a little American a little Nepali.  She makes the best apple pie.  She asked me if I would help her learn to cook a few American dishes, someone from Choice Humanitarian from Salt Lake is coming to stay with them in a couple of months and she would like to cook American.  Ideas anyone?

  Mangala, Rebecca, Smina, Jeewarshav and President Bishnu Adhikari

Our new Branch Presidency, Brother Dearden, President Bishnu and Brother GC, can you guess which one isn't Nepali?  This will be a great Branch Presidency, all so committed to the gospel.

We also had 2 firesides at our home, YM/YW and YSA.  This is a few of the Young Single Adults

Young Men and Young Women

Last week was a very busy week, full of fun and adventure when we had our friends come for a visit for nine days, and yes, we still did our missionary work. 

Hugs and kisses to our wonderful family who sent much needed items,  wire nuts, shirts, socks, all the baby caps (those got into the country without a hitch, whew!), and goodies and cards  from our grandchildren.

Mark and Marsha Adams and Chris Dyson, friends from working at the prison and from school came and we had a great time showing them our Nepal.  The first day they arrived it was the Holi Festival, the real Holi festival.  Chris said you can't come to Nepal during Holi and not experience it, so out we went~!

This one was taken after we had all come in once and showered and then gone back out before going to get kurtas.  Showers?  What were we thinking?

We had made arrangements to take Chris and Marsha first thing to get measured for kurtas.  Let me tell you how accommodating the people of Nepal are.  Two days before they got here, I had Rukmina call the kurta shop owner to see if she would be open, she said she'd be open all day, the tailor told us he would not be open until 5:00 in the evening when things settled down a little.  The morning they arrived Sugam (who is a friend of ours and whose wife owns the kurta shop) called and asked what time we would be coming.  I told him it would be later in the afternoon because the tailor would not be there.  He said okay and that they would meet us there.  She had decided not to open but came and opened her shop just for us and and also arranged with the tailor who also decided not to open to come to her shop and get the measurements for the kurtas.  When you buy the kurtas, you pick out the kurta kit which has the scarf, the trousers and the kurta all together and then the tailor measures, finds out how long you want the sleeves and the type of neck and collar you want.  He charged 300 rps to make them which is about $3.35 and had them both ready within the week.  

I had asked Rukmina if she would cook a Nepali meal this night, she made razma (beans) bhat (rice), pickle (a very hot and spicy potato salad) and keil (rice pudding).  Very ati meto (yummy) dinner, since the three of them hadn't slept in 48 hours it was early to bed and get ready for our trip to Pokhara the next day.

Rakesh had arranged for us all (E/S Rempp included) to travel to Pokhara for a wheelchair distribution.  We left around 10:00 in the morning.  On the way we wanted to stop and take the gondola up to the Manakamana temple and see the sight at the top of the mountain.  But first Marsha wanted to walk on the bridge across the Trihuli River.

Marsha and a man carrying his duko full of wares

Carol on the bridge with the kids

On to Manakamana

Holy man on top of the mountain

Streets of Manakamana

We found our first bangles here

We stopped at the Riverside Resort for lunch and headed onto Pokhara, where we checked into our hotel, walked up and down the streets for a little bit and went to bed early again because we were getting up at 5:00 to take the hike up to see the sunrise over the Anupurna Range.

It was pretty hazy this morning and we couldn't see the mountains very well, but the sunrise was still beautiful and I needed the exercise anyway.

Walking through the little villages coming down from the sunrise hike.

A beautiful view of Fishtail

We lost Mark - don't know how we could lose Mark but we did.  He was having a hard time, this is a hard hike, so he told us to all go on and he would wait for us.  After we had hiked to the top and then got to the bottom, no Mark, we thought maybe he had walked down a little further to where the van had dropped us off, Kent and Marsha went down and then hiked back up to where Chris and I were waiting but still no Mark.  Our guide took off back up the mountain asking everyone if they had seen a big man?  About an hour later here comes Mark with the guide and our van driver who had also gone up to look for him.  Mark had made it up to the top and somehow we had missed  him coming down.  Don't know how we did that but he made lots of new friends at the top of the mountain and along his way.  

We went over to the Mountain Climbing museum, very interesting history.  We also had to climb Everest.

We then went back to our hotel, ate breakfast, showered and got ready for the wheelchair distribution.

Kent got to speak and so did Carol, this was also a closing ceremony for the sewing center in Pokhara that the Rempps are in charge of.  Their names along with Latter-Day Saint Charities was in the paper the next day.

Kent Menden  hall and Carol Remple (I have another funny story later) at least they got LDSC right, I think.  It was all in Nepali and Rakesh read it to us

There is a Nepali folk song called Resam Fi Ri Ri, Carol had everybody singing it by the time she was done.

Carol and I call these lovely badges, pretty paper plates, I'm keeping a collection of them.  This was a grandmother of one of the wheelchair recipients.

This beautiful woman also received a wheelchair, a few weeks ago her husband had tried to poison her because of her disability, he is still on the run.

After the wheelchair distribution, on our way back to the hotel, Kent realized we weren't going the direction to the hotel, he asked Buddha, our driver, where he was taking us and he said that Rakesh had told him to take us to the World Peace Pagoda, another hike up another mountain.  Rakesh had stayed back to clean up after the distribution but he didn't want everyone to miss an opportunity.  We slowly made our way up to the Pagoda, it is beautiful but I was too tired to take any pictures. 

 After yet another hike we got back to the hotel, and then went to dinner at the Everest Steak House, I'm not sure what the steak was but I'm pretty sure it wasn't BEEF.  

Pokhara is very different than Kathmandu, little traffic, no dust, no honking horns or barking dogs but it is a tourist place so you have music playing all through the streets most of the night, but it's a pretty fun place to be for a change and the shopping is always fun.  So we walked the streets of Pokhara looking for good deals.

The next morning we got up early and had breakfast, we wanted to get an early start because we had Easter treats that we wanted to get ready for church on Saturday and wanted to get to bed early because almost everyone in the van had a part in church the next day, Mark was speaking, Kent and Greg were teaching the 5th Sunday adult lesson and Chris had been asked to come and talk to the YW.  So off we went, about an hour into the drive, our friend Sugam, who had come to Pokhara with us received a phone call, there was a problem in Dumali about 5 miles ahead of us.  Someone had been arrested the night before and on the way to the police station he had died, so the city was protesting.  Roads were closed, no cars were moving either way.  We stopped at a roadside restaurant, got cold drink and talked about what we should  do?  After Rakesh had made several phone calls and one to the police department in Dumali he was told that traffic would not be moving until later in the evening.  So we headed back to Pokhara for some more shopping.  We called President Bishnu and told him our dilemma, he talked to Rakesh to verify that we had no other options than to stay another night.  We all felt bad for having to miss Church.  Mark, Marsha and Chris really wanted to see and meet the branch and share the gifts they had brought.  When we got back and checked back into our hotel, which we were lucky to get because everyone was having to come back to Pokhara, we went to get a bite to eat.  We found a little restaurant that looked safe enough to eat at, safe is relative in Nepal.  We sat down, got our menus and then we saw under the mocktails that you could order a Shirley Remple, I must have been a little tired, I started laughing so hard and couldn't stop.  I wanted one of those but I didn't know if I could ask for a Shirley Remple with a straight face.  And then I noticed they had marlic bread also on the menu.  It was another one of those funny Nepal stories.  We ate, shopped, had dinner and went to bed and set out again the next morning.  On the way out Rakesh saw some women planting rice and asked if we'd like to stop and plant some rice.  YES!

Stuck in the mud AGAIN

They make it look so easy, I'm sure they had to redo what we did.

This is still how they plow the fields in Nepal

We made it home but missed Church  :(  

I did get another baby blanket made while traveling though .

Sunday we had made plans to go and visit one of our branch members in Bhaktapor and see the city and then go to Pashupati and READ Nepal Leprosy clinic.  When we got to Bhaktapor and found Suman, he told us he had been to Church, which was the first time since we've been here.  We told him we felt bad that we'd missed him but made him promise he would come again next Saturday.

Suman with his wife Rosina and baby son, (I can't remember his name) and Sundar, Suman's father.

Chris coming out of Suman's house

Pottery Square in Bhaktapor

And Chris thought she was short

On to READ Nepal Leprosy Clinic to talk with Raj about the chickens so I can close the chicken project and also to share the amazing things he does there with friends.

    

Mark with Hossan, the hugger.

Lagan was at the clinic getting her foot wrapped, several blogs ago I wrote about her and how she was maybe going go have her foot amputated.  She didn't have to have it done and her foot has healed, it looked so good.  When she saw me she called me "mommy" like she did when we visited her a few months ago and then called Kent "baabu" which is father.  She wanted us all to come to her home with her, we had to tell her another time.  I was so glad to see her and that she was doing better.

And then we checked on the chickens, they are now getting eggs and are able to use them to feed those who live at READ Nepal and also they have enough to start selling some of the eggs.  I can now close out the project and report that they didn't eat the chickens before they got eggs.  YEAH!!

We then walked over to Pashupati and walked around.  Chris teaches at Evergreen Jr. High and they have been studying about the Hindu religion so this was a perfect opportunity for her to watch where they burn the bodies and then throw the ashes into the Bagmati river.  We could tell they were getting ready to burn because they were setting the wood on the platform.  We've seen bodies burning before but never the whole process.  So we found a good seat and watched.  The carried in a body and took it down to the river (this is a very yucky, dirty river but it is a holy river), and dipped the feet in.  The body is all wrapped in cloth.  The family then puts flowers and garlands over the body and the body is then placed on top of the wood. A piece of wood is placed in the mouth and set on fire.  They add fuel on top and then the body just burns.  We didn't stay for the whole thing, it usually takes about 4 hours and then the ashes are swept into the holy river.

Chris with the Holy Men

 Marsha, Chris, Mary (Raj's cute daughter, she wanted to walk over to Pashupati with us) and me

Burning Body

We came home rested for 45 minutes and then went to Fire and Ice for pizza and then went and picked up kurtas.  

Chris and her kurta

Marsha and her kurta

  We went home, the travel agent brought over their Everest tickets for the next morning, we then called it a day and went to bed.  

On April 1st we all got up early, they were on their way to the airport for their flight pver Everest and Kent and I worked on the computer for a little while catching up on things that needed to be done.  We then went to the airport to pick up Chris, Marsha and Mark and went to breakfast at Mike's, one of our favorite breakfast places.  We had things we had to deliver to Paropakar hospital and thought that would be an experience of a lifetime to see government hospital in Nepal.  We delivered our stuff and then went over to check out the NICU.  They put us all in gowns and let us go in.  There were two tiny little babies that did not look very good.  I asked if these babies would live, they said they didn't know.  I went over to one and stood over his little bed and I said to the doctor, "this baby is not breathing" no response, I told her again, "I don't think this baby is breathing", she then started pushing buttons on the wall, the warming bed that he had been in was not turned on and the baby had died.  I don't really know if it had anything to do with the bed being on or not, but nobody was really paying attention to these babies.  Another baby was hooked up to all sorts of things and was foaming at the mouth, I asked what was going on with this baby and she said that he had many problems and that the father had signed a 'do not resuscitate order'.  I've been in enough NICU's to last me a lifetime, especially in Nepal.  I do not care to see another one.  We then came home and picked up Rukmina because we were going to go visit Sarada and her family and needed someone to translate.  When we had made arrangements to visit a couple of days before I had asked Rukmina to please ask her not to feed us.  

When we got there she had chick peas and kiel (rice pudding).  It was a good experience for our friends to see how so many Nepalis live, in a one room apartment.  Even Sarada's mother had been staying there for a few weeks.  What humble dwellings they live in and yet they are happy and have what they need.  I feel embarrassed and ashamed some days of all that I have and all that I think I need.  

 Ruth singing and dancing for us. that's their kitchen cupboard behind her

Chris and Marsha had brought a little gift for Ruth

Ganesh, Sarada, Ruth and Sarada's little mother

We then went to Swayambu Temple - the Monkey Temple

Since we had rented a van for the last couple of days we decided to go up to the Sleeping Goddess temple for a quick stroll through the temple grounds and then went to the bangle shop to buy more bangles to go with our kurtas.  We then came home to get dressed in our kurtas because we were going to a new (to us) Nepali Cultural Restaurant for dinner, the Bhanchha  Ghar.

  

New kurtas

Bhanchha Ghar

Dancing to Resam Fi Ri Ri

I'm about funned out but we still have one more day. 

On Tuesday, we've decided that Mark needs to have a Nepali haircut experience, the works!  I thought I had a picture of Mark under the hairdryer, guess not, but Marsha wanted the massage too.

Marsha and Chris still had a few more things on their list to take home so off we went to Asan Bazaar for shopping, stopped at KFC to let them experience KFC in Nepal and then back out  to finish their shopping.

We're all exhausted we went to dinner at Nina's where they met some of our special Nepali friends.  They have brought with them a Utah license plate for Nina's cafe and an American Eagle shirt for Niraj.  He lived in Colorado for several years and he told us that was his favorite American store.  

Yesterday we said goodbye to our dear friends and dropped them off at the airport.  It was a fun, hectic week, and we have lots of things going on this month and it will be crazy.  Between us and the Rempps we have visitors galore, we've spent the day trying to coordinate our calendars but right now we're waiting for Rakesh  to come and I'm sure uncoordinate those calendars.  I hope we get it figured out in the next day or two.  

Gretings coming for 10 days from US to look at water projects

Dodsons coming for 10 days from Hong Kong to make sure we're being good missionaries and doing what we need to be doing

Dr. Clark and the nurses coming for 10 days from Utah for HBB training and somewhere amongst all this Brother Chia also coming from Hong Kong for a few days and wants to see all of these projects.  

Missionary work is interesting, exciting and a ton of work, but we're making progress in Nepal, pretty soon every government official will know who LDSC is and hopefully in the near future missionaries will be able to come into this country.  In the meantime, if we could just see them move forward instead of backward our hearts would be so happy, not because we think it's the right thing but the people in Nepal deserve better.  They deserve to have their children live happy, healthy lives and get an education, 33% of children do not go to school in Nepal. Education is a huge issue here, it will help them move forward.   They deserve and need to figure out a way to have clean water and electricity.   They need to know that there is one God, a Heavenly Father who loves them and they need and deserve to have hope.  Hope for a future, hope for a better life, hope for something beyond this life.  I am grateful to my Savior for the blessings that are mine as I serve a mission in Nepal, for the opportunities to serve and meet wonderful people who need to know what I know and who need to have faith and hope and move forward in this life so that they may move forward in the next life.