Church history and visit from friends

Last Tuesday morning (Feb 11) we went for Nepali breakfast at the house of Deependra and Buddhi Maya. Deependra is the head of INF Nepal, and both he and his wife have been involved in the Nepali church since it started. Their parents were instrumental in starting the Nepali church when Nepal opened up to the outside world in 1952. Before that they had been living in India, where they had become Christians, and as a result, before 1952 were not allowed to return to Nepal. Breakfast was yummy (fried roti, curried potatoes and eggs, and fried rice), and then Buddhi told us about the history of the church in Nepal, and the present joys and struggles. It is so amazing that the history of the church is still within living memory – we also got to meet the wife of the first pastor, who is now almost 97 (shown below). There was lots of persecution early on – Nepalis were put in prison for being Christians even. However more and more religious freedom has been granted over the years, and now Nepal is officially a secular state (no longer the only remaining Hindu state in the world) as part of the peace process in 2006.

I was feeling really exhausted the latter half of last week – finishing up language classes and anticipating the start of work this week. I was sorry to be finishing up the full time language learning that I had been enjoying, and feeling nervous about starting at the hospital on Monday. So it was perfect timing (for me) when my friends Clayton and Catherine-Anne emailed to say they were coming to town from Kathmandu. It was not so perfect timing for them, as they had been hoping to get to the town where Catherine-Anne had worked 4 years ago, but couldn't because of strikes in Nepal. But it meant they came to Pokhara instead, and it was wonderful to see them.

I met them in Lakeside, and we chatted, and wandered in the shops, and then had dinner at a nice restaurant. It felt like a piece of my old life to be sitting with friends from Toronto in a restaurant, enjoying drinks, good food and conversation. It was great to catch up, talk about life in Nepal, and just to kick back and relax. It was exactly what I needed on the weekend when I was feeling a the stress of a new change

On Sunday we went down to Green Pastures Hospital, so Catherine-Anne could look up some Nepali friends she knew 4 years ago, and so Clayton finally got to see the place he had heard so much about. There were two particular people who she was delighted to see again – an always smiling man who works at the hospital, who has no fingers and toes due to leprosy but remembered her fondly from 4 years ago, and an 85 year old woman who lives in the retirement house there. She was happy we came to visit, though when C-A asked her if she was fine, her reply (with a big smile) was 'Little sister, I can't see, and can hardly hear. How can I be fine?'. However, when asked she sang us a song from her village, which was lovely.

It was fun to have my first guests to show off our place to, and to cook dinner for. This was a mix of old and new, sharing dinner with old friends from Canada in my place in Nepal, with a dinner cooked by headlamp and eaten by candlelight, as the power was out. (more pics here) It was early to bed for us all, as they were headed back to Ktm first thing in the morning, and I was starting work. I'll talk about my first week of work on my next post...