Clouds seemed sprinkled across the pure blue sky.

The trip is winding down. The sun if finally out, plants are beginning to grow, dogs bark and cows are mooing in the fields around us as we hear roosters in the morning calling to the sun…WAKE UP…

Last week we went to Pokhara to check on the work CFH has been working on there.

Majestic sparsely snow-capped mountains peeked thru the feathery clouds in a blue blue sky, I am finally on the way to Pokhara. The mountains are not as covered with snow as in previous years. The weather has changed here, glaciers are melting, snow has not fallen and one can see dark rock where once all one could see was snow. But still they are wonderful and many are still covered in white caps.I was happy as it was if they were finally saying hello! I had not seen them since arriving as they were always covered by a mist…so allusive this trip. The winding road thru the mountains has been improved in spots and so the trip was less bumpy in a local bus that turned out quite well. The journey is still around 7 hrs but so different than the trips I took in the beginning of this trip, of mini buses, trucs and motorcycles.

Another week of work very satisfying to the soul….

She sits every morning outside my kitchen window squatting in a lean-two shed next door that is little more than a 4×6 cubical made of tin and block. A man nearby hacks every morning and I am told that he has the lung disease called TB. I am not sure about this as everything is a “gastric stomach” issue that has anything to do with ones abdomen. A cement floor covered in layers of soot from previous fires and a piece of board are there to meet her. Crumpled bags made of plastics and fiber form a wall at one end, red, yellow and white greet my eyes. Three old bricks elevate a flat pot that she cooks on blackened with years of wear with the wooden handle pocked from previous spitting fires. She is old ( I think) but one cannot tell as thin grey smoke billows past her into our kitchen window in whiffs that wakes me up. She shoos the chickens out as she enters her cave. She does not sing but stokes the fire with little twigs gathered earlier from the parched field across the road. A black and white crumpled piece of cloth is wrapped around her head and she is overtly dressed in things that do not match, a bluish skirt, with multicolored strips and layers of cloth surround her body down to her ankles. A red sash ties everything together. None looks clean . At 5:30am a cock crows, in dismal light filled with smoke and mist, during this cold winter morning and I wonder how this old woman does this! Upon her feet are battered flip flops that in a previous life were red. Her toes peek out from under her skirt which are bare and stained. She is constant and has done this since the first day I was here. I am not sure what she is cooking but a large light brown cow and her calf share another small shed that is attached. The overall space is cramped between two walls and buildings and down a slope made of cement that is narrow and a water drain. This is Nepal.

January 25 – Trip to the Bankariya people

Another 8 hours of rough roads up and down mountains, through flat lands, over metal and sometimes wooden bridges that creaked as the jeep went over and thru small rivers to bring rice and blankets to a people displaced from the mountains. The team was up at 5:30 am to get ready, blankets were assembles and we waited for the jeep. Sher and Kalpana, Sandip and Saru, I and Rajan got into the jeep and all the blankets were on top. We began our way on another very cold morning in Kathmandu. I don’t think my nose has strayed this cold for years.

January 17, 18, 19 – children’s ministry classes – Kidz at Heart

This week has been full of wonderful opportunities to learn about Childrens Ministry and place it in Nepal. A group originating in Arizona ( so funny) is here with team members from different states they are doing such a wonderful job making childrens ministry appropriately encouraging and engaging for all ages. We went with Kidz at Heart and helped them deliver warm clothing and evaluated this village and the people for further work in Dhading while another team went to Dolakha and delivered book bags to 100 school children who lost everything and Sandip and team went to a village in Nagarkot to deliver blankets to a small village of 20 families we heard about.