Dear Supporters,
I am attaching many picture files here. I hope this email reaches you and you are able to view these.
We finished all the seminars on Wednesday. Picture (a4) shows the class of 2022 of my seminar in Nepal. They dressed me up with gifts of the Nepali traditional costumes of hat, Dhaka Topi, and a scarf.
Then, we took off for a whirlwind tour of interior of Nepal, westward from Kathmandu, to the town of Gorkha. We stopped at 5 churches on the way. First, we visited Junu’s home and church. She is one person I mentioned in my last email. Boy, it was a tough climb. Now I know why Junu was so fit. It was a good part of an hour climbing steep uphill on a tractor-hardened road to her home, followed by more climb to her church. I was moved just for being up there and meeting this pastor who built the church there 15 years ago with the help of Christian organization YM. Most of his church members climb an hour of the same course to come to church on Saturdays! (From the circled homes in picture (b03))
Gorkha is a historic city where Gorkha Kingdome from there unified the entire Nepal in 18th century. In picture (b04), the circle shows where the kingdom and the temple were and big business centers located today. We didn’t go up there. However, this church building in town you see in pictures (b05 and b06) looked a perfect place for future trainings in much larger scale (as long as it’s not in summer time—the whole place was steaming hot.)
The elderly couple in picture (b07) arrived in Gorkha some 70 years ago as one of the very first Christians in town, escaping from persecutions in their hometown, and now the entire town block and more are evangelized with many churches around today. The gentleman still does healing ministry and told me, in a Nepali dialect, “God must be blessing American Christians specially since many comes to teach Nepalis.”
I think I know now why the road travelling in Nepal is so slow and treacherous. First, their terrains are so steep in every direction. The pictures in (b08 to b10) are taken at about 1,300 feet above sea level with a river flowing at the bottom of valley. However, the hills on both sides are so steep that they looked like some places we see in much higher elevations in other countries. They had to build the roads carving out that steep mountain side most of the way, and they are narrow and poorly maintained and with so many curves. This is the main highway system connecting two largest cities. All the trucks, buses, motorcycles, some pedestrians just make the traffic very slow. Then, there are cliff like passes we had to climb and the traffic moves up in snail’s pace even without any hazards. Sometimes, we were stuck over 30 minutes on a spot. The traffic on the other side of canyon in picture (b11) is where we were 40 minutes ago. If you ever come to this country to travel on the road, make sure you have a good company to ride with (we did), a good safe driver (we did), and good supply of snacks with you (we didn’t). It was a tough travelling.
Well, with this, I am signing off from Nepal. After attending worship today, tomorrow I will obtain a COVID test result, hopefully negative, and then flying out in the evening. I will be home in 3 or 4 days.
Thank you so much for your prayer support—it meant a world to me personally. We all should be blessed and truly be praising God for His mighty work in this mission of His and His allowance for us to participate.
May your walk with God be filled with joy and blessing.
Jay Lee