Village Christmas

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.

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!!

I found some more photos!

I found some more photos from conference that I missed and I think some of you will like them! Mark and I, along with one other lady were asked to organise a games afternoon. We organised a mixture of active and mental games both about Nepal and other places so that something should interest everyone.

Again, the photos show it all I think!

 They had to make bridges with news paper, straws and kebab sticks

 while at the same time play hacky with a soccer ball...........

 get water from one end to another using a holey container...........

 And spit jubes as far as possible - the winner spat it 10m!!

 Some may know this man!

 They also had to listen to TV theme songs and identify them

 And finally we tested the bridges - the plan was that they hold 1 L of water but they were much stronger than we thought so we had to try other weights!!

 like the room rubbish bins full of water..........

 and children.................