Mark and I, with Hazel, our friend from NZ went with Binai, an elder from our church, to a village to celebrate a local Christmas. We left on Christmas eve and went to a lovely little town called Bandipur. It has incredible views of the mountains, is a very clean town and just really relaxed and pretty.
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| The view while walking upto the village through the jungle |
More great english signs!
The main bazaar area - traditional Newari housing and paved streets - and oh so clean.
The views were great although this day was hazy so most of the mountains are obscured.
The next day we were met by the pastor of the church and taken down to the vilalge - 1 hours walk from where we were staying. The church mostly consisted of the pastor and his wife and 3 generations of his family although there were other members as well. The service was in a building that was his house but he is now making bricks to make his own house and a church building that is a bit bigger. The service was a typical nepali service with singing and then preaching. The children and women came and went as they pleased, the preacher answered his cellphone while preaching and we sat on the mud floor until we had no feeling in our legs. After the service we sat in the recently harvested rice field and had a traditional nepali dahl bhaat with teh fattened chicken! However, nepalis don't just eat the meat but the bone, skin, insides etc adn the bonus is the anal sphincter! We went back to Pokhara that night. it was a great day and a very different Christmas but we enjoyed it.
Us walking to the village with the pastor showing us the way.
The room where church is held - it is about 4 square meters.
Around the house/church
The bricks that he is making - the quality is great!
The church building - the roomis the bottom mud coloured one
The kids getting ready for church - playing the traditional nepali instruments
Us eating dahl bhaat in the rice field - we were the guests of honour so we were given chairs which made me really embarrassed!
We came home to our tree and our presents to each other!!
Hello Mark and Jo, I found your blog while researching on Nepal, my husband Andy and I (Laura along with our son(Asher) would hope to return back to missions in 2012(july) and Nepal (KISC) would be strongly on our heart. So its been great to see what life is like there for you. Many blessings to you and maybe we will meet one day soon.
ReplyDeleteHI Laura
ReplyDeleteit is always exciting to hear about thinking about coming to Nepal - and school teachers are really needed at the INF schools as well as KISC. Please feel free to email us on the above address if you want more info and hopefully we may meet sometime.
Blessings