Hello all! Hope all is good back home for all our families!
Unfortunately this evening Chris hasn’t been very well and has been sick – which we think is just something he ate as no other symptons! So he is ok but not feeling nice but is now in bed sleeping – which is good! We know you guys will be praying back home – so for his sickness to go and not grow into something worse and also just for him to regain his strength in time for our big bus journey to Pokhara on Sunday. Thankyou!
Some of us started our day with watching the amazing sunrise over the Himalayas – when the sun eventually came over the mountains the sun rose really quickly!! Was so lovely to see it! 
Today we visited a number of church organisations – one being the National Christian Fellowship of Nepal. I’m going to just say a few bits about one of the parts in this organisation which was the Grace Community Project. This for me really hit me and made a great impact on how I was feeling! So the project helps partly with the people living with HIV/Aids, the prevention of HIV/Aids and more understanding of it in the younger generation and also helping people to be able to teach about this. They have a set project for the people who have HIV/AIDS and they get toegther and make things like candles and soaps. They have a really good relationship wth these people and with the workers going out to tell others by it – they also work with the trafficking of children and either give out advice and things to protect them more or the children want to change and they are given supprt to do so.
The other places we visited were the Ebeniser Bible College – which was a very simple place. The leadership training department. Mission commission of Nepal and the Human Development and Community Services. – I will leave them for further discussion from the others.
This evening we were invited to the Patan Churchs’ Youth Service! We were asked to do the sermon and eventually settled on the ‘Community’ theme! Joanna started with a great bible verse – Ephesians 4:1-6 – and spoke of this very well indeed! We then all gave a little bit on local community – that was my area and I just explained how my home church community worked well and not so well and how we can learn alot from other church communities to take back with us! Chris didn’t get a chance to chat but Chuli then spoke about the world community! It was a great atmosphere when it came to the worship and the little band they had were really good – i loved it!! Whilst at the back of the service – when Joanna and Chuli spoke I counted how many youth were there – a thing I got from my grandma and grandad – haha – and there were over 160 people!! I didn’t tell Joanna until after we went out! She did great!
So a jam-packed day with one illness isn’t the best but we learnt a lot of the community of Nepal and the local places we visited!
Today was a fairly busy day. We went to see lots of different-but-related organisations – National Christian Fellowship of Nepal, Grace Community Services (basically the social work wing of NCFN), Mission Commission of Nepal (missionary training), Leaders’ Training Department (I think – my notes are upstairs – for pastors and church leaders), then after lunch the Ebenezer Bible College and the Human Development and Community Services. It was really good to hear about the work that has been and still is going on in the country. What was especially fascinating was how quickly the work has developed. The HDCS started informally in 2001 and already runs 3 hospitals!
It was good to visit the Youth Fellowship at Koinonia Patan Church. We were asked yesterday to speak at it, with a suggested time oif 40 mins, but we decided that included translation! Speaking went much better than I anticipated. Because Ram Prasad was translating, it felt like I was speaking just to him rather than to the 160+ young people (age range was 16-30ish). Saying that, most of them seemed to understand most of what I was saying even before the translation. I could get used to this preaching thing. 
Chuli and Suzi were much more interesting than I was, and of course with Chris off throwing up I had to make up something on the spot about NYA for the national community section. All in all it seemd to go well. Ram Prasad said I spoke like a pastor, but I’m fairly sure he meant my actual speaking voice rather than anything I was actually saying. Chuli said he had been worried about translating me, but it didn’t end up being a problem. I blame my mother for passing on her teacher’s voice!!
My stomach is coping. I keep thinking it might go bad at short notice, but it’s holding on. Or in, which is more important!
Tomorrow we go to church, because Saturday is the day off rather than Sunday, so they do church then. We decided not to go to the 8am service! So it will be 10.30-12.30, and then we plan on going shopping before Pete and John arrive. We’ll probably startr in Thamel, which is the touristy bit, but I sort of hope we wander a bit rather than sticking to such a potentially inauthentic area. We did some wandering around near the hotel yesterday and it was nice to see people on the street rather than from Gypsy, the Jeep of Doom and Harbinger of Painful Death. Chris filmed the car journey yesterday, and he’ll hopefully upload it at some point when he’s back so you can have a look. It needs a travel sickness warning! I’m not quite sure how Chris managed not to throw up on the way back tonight! Ram Prasad was being careful (probably because he would have been in the firing line) but it was still a bit rough.
We walked to the big wicker thing yesterday. It is a mobile temple which will be taken through the streets, and the crush to see it causes a couple of deaths every year. I wonder if it is (or is realated to) the Jagannath thing that we get juggernaut from. Chris has some good pics of it and of the worshippers around it. It was both really primitive looking and somehow much more real than most UK worship. The connection with the numinous (CTCL, 1st year Divinity) very much alive here. If I’m being honest, it really made me feel like there’s something missing in the UK in general/church in the UK/my life. Hmm.
But we haven’t experienced Nepali church yet, so I may change my mind about it all tomorrow.
It is wonderful to see so many young people at an evening service on a Friday night. We counted around 160. Such enthusiasm and passion for worship really moved me. Chris was in a bad shape midway during the service. I think the Mo Mo is definitely a No No for him for the time being!
