Chitwan it's people and places: "...Ye know, from the first day that I came into Asia, after what manner I have been with you all seasons, Serving the Lord with all humility of mind" Acts 20:18, 19

We are going to Chitwan with the Treasures to show them some of the projects we are working on in Nepal. There are two sewing centers that have been very successful to date.  On our way there we encountered some weather related problem.  The monsoons have caused many mudslides and of course the roads are right in the way.  When the roads are blocked we wait until they can clear some of the debris away, at least enough for one lane to pass through.  Then a policeman directs traffic because the bigger the truck the more they bully others around causing worse traffic jams.

 The two centers are operated by women that have been trained in some other centers and now are training here.  The organization that we work with was developed for the blind and disabled of Nepal, so the women in these centers have various handicapping conditions.  The woman in the front on the right has an interesting story.  Usha's story: She went to Kathmandu for sewing training and learned her skills very well.  A side note is that she, like so many women, lived with her husband and he lived in his mothers house.  The mother did not like Usha

very much and was constantly badgering her because she was handicapped and would not be anything but a hindrance to her son.  Her husband was a moma's boy like most of the men in Nepal and wouldn't make the mother stop.  When Usha went to Kathmandu for training she stayed and  did not want to go back to Chitwan because her husband's home was so uncomfortable for her.  She was a very good student and became a very competent seamstress and started making money. OK, this part I don't understand, she would send her husband money.  Before long the husband's mother saw that she was successful and started being nice to her.  You know what happened next, she moved home and they lived happily ever after.  Not quite,

when she got to Chitwan her husband's mother wasn't that nice to her and started in on her again. Usha now is more self assured, tells her husband to be on her side and tell his mom to back off.  Her husband saw who now was the successful one, so now who is wearing the pants in the family, yup Usha.  One of the goals of this sewing center training is to help these women who have been looked down on because, they are women and because of their handicap.  These two conditions have put them at the bottom of the food chain so to speak.  You can see why they need that confidence builder, so many years of their lives they have been looked down on, this training brings them to a different status or level in society.  This status or level and/or caste system is alive and working in Nepal.

This young women on the left is another of those that have been able to gain employment through the training.

This is the second training center we visited in Chitwan, it was a very rainy day, as you can see the centers are very small yet they serve a huge purpose.  This center employs four women and is very successful in that it is able to pay the rent and provide for those who work here.  Look closely and you will see that the roof is attached with rocks sitting on the steel to hold it down, it works.



 This is inside of  the center, very simple and plain, but it works and assists these women well.  Look closely and you sill see that the sewing machines are treadle type, they work well, especially when they have no electricity.  Also note the beams holding the steel up, it is bamboo, very lite and sturdy and small to help create more head room in these already short structures.  The man in the center of the crowd is our partner Rakesh Hamal.  He is a tremendous asset to us and  to our continued success here.






This last picture is Uhsa with the woman who runs the other center in Chitwan and her mother, the woman in the pink is Sister Treasure who came from Hong Kong to see what we are in Chitwan we decided to see some of the sights, so... we found a rickshaw and off we went.










NOT!!



We decided to take a drive to the the Chitwan National Park to ride an elephant through the jungle but, it has been raining for the last three days steady (monsoons).
It was just too wet to go on the elephants, so we decided to take a short walk through the jungle on an elephant path to visit a natural history museum.  Did I mention we walked on an elephant path?  Do you know what road apples are, well elephants do the same thing but more like road watermelons.  The picture is the trail through some of the jungle.









As we were leaving I was standing the on edge of the river looking and what came to visit, yup, some street dogs.  These dogs look a lot like Dingos,they are very curious and hang around close to you, not aggressive,  just there.

 
This is what I was looking at when the dog came,  look closely and you will see a boat filled with water.  I'm sure the boats are filled with water because of the rain, I don't know why they were not upside down, unless they were just to heavy to turn.  They looked like they were about 20 feet long and maybe 30 inches wide and solid wood pitched on the outside.

Ok, off through the jungle.  As we were walking and looking around Janet looks across the river and what does she see, a wild elephant.  It kept walking around foraging but with it's back to us, if you look closely you can see it in the very middle of the picture, it was huge! We knew we would see some more elephants that were trained and used for the tourists to ride through the jungle but that was cool, baaph re baaph! (wow!)

When we got to the staging area we saw a man with elephant, he first told the elephant to lie down and then he took a large broom affair and brushed the elephant off on that side and then the elephant turned onto it's other side and the then brushed the dust off that side of the elephant.  Cool, I couldn't even get Odie to wait to go outside of the house to Pee.  Pretty amazing!

Well now for the really good stuff regarding our trek trough the jungle.  Janet knowing we were going into the jungle decided that the best foot attire would be to wear her $300.00 Birkenstock sandals.  As you can see that they became a nuisance because every step meant they would sink and stay, then when she wanted to move the shoes (sandals key word) wanted to remain in the foot hole.  The going was tough!

 Mud, as you can see made her one tough hombre, YUK!!  Even the dog was amazed that she was able to 4 wheel through this stuff.  My question and I haven't gotten an answer yet is why was she smiling?  Well after a few tugs to help her get unstuck we were through the  bog and on our way.
 I wonder if all of those times I had to come and get the boys out of the mud, when their trucks and jeeps were stuck, was the Lords way of preparing me for this day, to get their mom unstuck.

 I would like you to know that I braved the cobras in the brush and skirted around the mud holes.

Even though I didn't get chased by a cobra, I did however find a little blood sucker.  You can see by the size of its behind he is enjoying my blood.  If that wasn't enough, awhile later I was brushing the bugs off of my hat and shoulders and what should appear, Yes another one of the little bloodsuckers.  This one had enough time to have had a seven course meal and and was starting on the dessert.  This little leech was not that little if you compare it's size to that of Janet's index finger you can see it has eaten a lot of me.

 Well to keep a long story short I asked Janet to get the little sucker off of me, well she had no idea how to get it off so she asked another person to help.  Then she decided this was a Kodak moment and said to wait a minute so she could take a picture then the camera wouldn't work and she asked me what she needed to do to get it to work and she tried again and the flash wasn't on so again I needed to turn the flash on, in the mean while the little sucker is enjoying it's meal.  Well we finally got it off.  when I got home I decided to look  on the internet how to remove a leech, plenty of information on the subject.

It is easy just put you finger nail under it's mouth and push it off, but be careful you don't push on the wrong end because it will regurgitate the contents back into you, yuk.  Well I decided to keep a credit card with me to get between me and the little suckers mouths, for future meetings.
As we were thus engaged we looked across the river and saw a family fishing.  They do it a little different than we do it.  They fish with these nets, they throw the nets up the river and pull them down river.  The boys big and small would like that kind of fishing.  They were catching fish about 4 to 7 inches long.

Did I mention that crocodiles are living in the river?   When we were watching I saw one (croc) just floating along.  It didn't seem to cause the family too much alarm, I guess they were catching a lot.  One of the main staples of the families in this area is fish and or course rice.  Fishing for them was not for fun it is their dinner.

Enough of the fun, we were driving back to our hotel to wash the mud off and check for more leeches when I saw this man riding his rickshaw.  I am constantly amazed by these people, with gas so expensive what better way to transport any thing than muscle power.  Rickshaws are not only for people, as we often think, but, they make a great pickup truck.  That is a cord of wood in his rig.

I saw these girls riding on the bike and thought how often we would not go out in the rain, especially on a bike.  Then you have to realize this is their form of transportation, umbrella and all.  I often see people on the motorcycles and motorbikes with an umbrella.  Check out the ducks, they are farm animals, they are used for eggs and meat.  These guys think they own the road because, as you can see,  they were chasing the girls on the bike.










I thought you might like to see a different way of garbage collection.  People bring their garbage to this location, which is in the center of town (Chitwan) and throw it in a pile.  The dogs rummage through as well as some of the very poor, and the cows.  Every few weeks the garbage man brings his tractor and front loader, people with shovels, and put it into his trailer and haul it away.  You can see in the background the shops and buildings being built, notice the bamboo scaffolding on the buildings.

 This is a very different and humbling place, what they take for granted and is common to them would be repulsive to some of us, Yet they are our brothers and sister.  They choose just like us to come to this earth and experience these earthly bodies,  I know because I have seen some of them that were with me when I stood up and voted for Gods plan for us on this earth.  I would never have guessed at that time that my circumstance would be so different than my brothers and sisters.

What is it that I need to learn from this experience?  Humility, Perseverance, Long Suffering, Kindness, King Benjamin said it so well for me in the book of Mosiah, he said;  "Perhaps thou shalt say: The man has brought upon himself his misery; therefore I will stay my hand, and will not give unto him of my food, nor impart unto him of my substance that he may not suffer, for his punishments are just- But I say unto you, O man, whosoever doeth this the same hath great cause to repent; and except he repenteth of that which he hath done he perisheth forever, and hath no interest in the kingdom of God...  And now, if God, who has created you, on whom you are dependent for your lives and for all that ye have and are, doth grant unto you whatsoever ye ask that is right, in faith, believing that ye shall receive, O then, how ye ought to impart of the substance that ye have one to another."

This idea of having no interest in the kingdom of god is a sobering thought.  What kind of a person have I been?  Have I really tried to help those in need?  Those are questions that I need to determine for myself and work on being better, not just here in Nepal, but always in all things that I do!

Well it s time to get on to our next big adventure, what ever that may be.

Next chapter: How the lord blesses those in need.

Our Corner of the Vineyard "...and he doth sound these glad tidings among all his people, yea, even to them that are scattered abroad upon the face of the earth; wherefore they have come unto us. And they are made known unto us in plain terms, that we may understand, that we cannot err; and this because of our, being wanders in a strange land; therefore, we are thus highly favored, for we have these glad tidings declared unto us in all parts of our vineyard." Alma 13: 22,23

Back in Kathmandu and members to visit.  Janet and I went to visit a young women named Sarada, she is a member of the church in Kathmandu.  Her husband works out of the country, he is a painter and makes good money working in Saudi Arabia.  He has been gone about two years and will be home this month, she hopes.

This the house that she lives in with her daughter Ruth.  Janet is with her visiting teaching companion, Rukmina, in the picture on the right.  Rukmina is also our Didi, she took us to meet Sarada.  Sarada lives a little out of town.  They, Kathmanduers, consider anyone that lives outside of the ring road out of town.  The Kathmandu valley is about as large as the  SL valley but has more ups and down because it is a hilly area.  The divisions of the valley are like the Salt Lake Valley, with West Valley City, Sandy,  So. Jordan, Herriman, etc., being separate but within the valley.  So we live in Bansbari, a subdivision, outside the ring road.  Bansbari if you are interested is named because of the bamboo growing in the area.  " Bans = Bamboo, Bari = bush".

Back to visiting the Members.

 I told you that Sarada had a daughter, her name is Ruth.  Ruth is a charmer!  We were visiting for a while when Ruth came home from school.  We took some pictures and then Ruth wanted to be the photographer.  What fun she had!  The picture above of us is her work.
 We had some food with Sarada.  She was very insistent that we eat with her.  Adam, Aaron, Josh and Caleb will relate to that.  She lives in a one room apartment with very little based on our standards, yet she just had to feed us!

  Amazing when you see how much she gave us.  I asked if she would eat with us and she said no.  I asked if she was waiting to eat with her daughter and she said she was, OK.  Rukmina, with the plate is our Didi, Ruth is the little one with the smile, Janet is to her right, and Sarada is in the back.  They are sitting on Sarada's bed.  Look closely in the back and you can see the burner that she used to cook the baht (rice) on.  On the wall behind them you can see a picture of the family, husband is on the left side of the picture.  Sarada was taught the gospel by her husband and she joined the church.  They live so far from the Branch house that she doesn't come regularly.  So Janet's visits will be very important to her staying active in the church.

When we were going up to Sarada's apartment we saw these children in this room sewing sequins on this red silk which will be used for making Sari's.  It kind of looked like what I would imagine a sweat shop.  I went in to talk to the adults and children inside and ask if I could take a picture.

 While I was in the room I saw this little one working so hard and so serious.  I took her picture for you to see.  Look closely at the intricate work in sewing the bling onto this material.  You can see all of the jewels and sequins on the material near her arm.  She was so serious that even when I asked her to smile she wouldn't.

This young woman (girl) is one of my home teaching families, her name is Swikriri.  She is 16 years old, and the only member of the church in her family.  Her family are Hindu and so it makes it hard for her to be active in the church.  Church is on Saturday and often her mother has her watch her siblings and then she can't come to the meetings.
An interesting note about school, Swikriri is working on her bachelors degree.  They complete school when they are about 15 and then can go on to higher school.  The nurses we work with are 19 or twenty and the doctors are mid twenty's. They start high school, they call it college, working on their college degrees, then move into their area of study and take none of the General Education classes because that is done in their high school.  Swikriri is studying Business, she is taking accounting classes right now.

This week we had a young man leave from the branch to go on a mission, to India.  His name is Krishna Nepali.  He is from a small village outside of Kathmandu.  He has never been further from his home than the Kathmandu valley and was very nervous about leaving, especially on an airplane.  I mentioned that being christian is difficult  especially when you are the only one in your family.  Now here is the story of the influence of our Father in Heaven on his children.  The man next to Elder Nepali is his father who traveled from his village to send his son off.  When I was speaking to Dad he told me that He was proud of his son and God would be with him as he brought good things to the people he would meet, and that God would be with him and protect him.

Remember this man is not a member of the church.  He also brought with him 20,000 rupees and gave it to Pres. Bishnu to help support his son on the mission.  20,00 rupees is about $ 230.00.  When you realize that the average wage is maybe $80.00 a month, it is amazing.  The other part of this is that they are farmers and survive by the things they grow and have very little cash.  This was an amazing sacrifice for his family.
The picture to the left is of me,  Elder Nepali, his father, Janet and our Branch President, Bishnu Adhikari.  Everyone goes by their first names.  I haven't figured out if it is because we missionaries can't pronounce their full names or it is just a Nepali thing to do.

There are other members we are visiting they just don't know it yet.  First is my buddy Hussian, he is a resident of the READ Nepal Leprosy clinic.  Each visit is the same, a bear hug with all his might, then showing us all of the things is is doing to help at the clinic.  If people want to stay at the clinic they have chores to do daily to assist with the care and maintenance of the facility.





I took this picture without him knowing so you could see the gentleness in his face.  In Nepal those who have leprosy are outcasts because, according to Hindu thinking, they have committed grievous sins in their life before, so they are shunned.  Mostly, they are beggars on the street and have no medical care which, if they could get, would  stop the progression of the disease.  Read Nepal is run to help assist the lepers get medical help.  It is run by a man, Raj Kumar Shah, who was shunned and cast out of his village when he was diagnosed as having leprosy.  He determined to make life better for those suffering as he did.  This is a link to his web site, it gives a lot of information, http://www.readnepal.info .
Raj has a very interesting story of prejudice and moving on in spite of the barriers he faced, he wants to create a clinic in the village that cast him out.

In this last picture of Hussian he is getting his wounds cleaned and bandaged.  He specifically called me in the the surgery room and wanted his picture taken of the cleaning and bandaging.  If you haven't guessed by now he is a very lonely man and thrives on the missionaries visiting with him.

This is Kanchi possibly one of my favorite people, look at the beautiful smile on her face, she epitomizes Alma 5:14, and she hasn't even read the book.  Let me tell you a little of her story, as you can see she is old, duh!  She was cast out of her house because she was to old to contribute, she moves very slowly and has a very large hump on her back.  Yes, literally put to the streets because of her age related slowcomotion, my word, and her deformity.  Raj found her one day on the porch of his church and took her in.  She has lived at the clinic since then and does her share of chores around the place.  She does not have leprosy, she is just an outcast.  Did I mention to look  at her face, she is so very resilient and loving, most of the time...

When I took this picture I wanted to be seen with the humble and meek, so I asked if I could have my picture taken with her, she grumbled because she was getting water.  When I put my arm around her she started getting a little feisty and began complaining, then she told me to hurry because, she would probably die before the picture was taken.  She has a personality!

You have got to love  her!!

This is Raj with his son Abhishek.  Raj being the President of Read Nepal.  As you can clearly see there is much to do, and none of it is what I expected to be doing.  Sometimes the Lord give us hurdles he knows we can cross, we just need to make the effort.  Maybe that is what President Kimbal meant when he said "Just Do It!".

There will much more to say at a latter date.

The next chapter will focus on our visit to Chitwan, the  people and places.

Rebuilding our street "Bansbari Road" - " To everything there is a season..., a time to break down, and a time to build up; Eccl. 3:1-3

Back to Bansbari Road, as I have mentioned the streets are being widened.  The traffic is so very congested the people about four and sometime five times during the day traffic come to a stop for about 90 minutes.

 It is literally faster to walk, albeit hazardous to your health, for a variety of reasons, cars and motorcycles on top of the list, if the traffic is to slow they will go onto the walkways.  The debris on the walkways and roads makes it very difficult to navigate when walking.  As you can see if there is a clear sidewalk the cars park or drive on them.





Back to rebuilding the roads.  Caleb, Aaron, and the rest of you, we are going to have a test.  The test is simple see how many things you find wrong with the following pictures based on your cultural perspective.  This first picture is the front of a building that has had the concrete broken off from the front of the building, first floor and the roof of the building.  They are in the process of cutting the re-bar from the structure before they knock the pillars down.  The man with the sledge hammer is about to start pounding on the pillar to knock enough concrete away so they can cut the re-bar away from the remaining structure

This is the same person just from another angle, you can see more clearly the remaining part of the floor that he is going to break out.  That is what he is standing on.

These fine young men are breaking the pillars as they come down, first one hits the concrete and then the other, on and on they pound.  Immediately above them is the guy with the sledge hammer breaking up the pillar.
















The pile of bricks that you see was taken out of the buildings that are being partially demolished.  A person will sit on these brick and chip the mortar off and then stack them for reuse, look closely and you can see and stack of bricks immediately behind the pile of bricks.

You can see the person cleaning the bricks and those that have been cleaned and are not being used again in the building are sold and hauled away.  One by one they are loaded onto the truck.

This building has the front removed and the concrete floor broken out, and a footing poured for the new store front to include the pillars for the next floor and roof.  You can see where the wall between the store fronts has been broken and right in front of the wall is the re-bar for the pillar.  As soon as the pillar has been poured a mason will fill in the gap between the two stores.  It is amazing how they can get those gaps filled.  Once the gap is filled they will put stucco on the wall to finish it.

Building the form for the pillars - no special form just carpenters doing their job.  Standard forms wouldn't work because there is no standard, each store and dwelling is a different size and shape.

Now to start the rebuilding, first you need to get the bricks and mortar to the masons.  There are no fancy forklifts or conveyor belts just hard labor!  One of the workers shovels the sand/concrete mix, or bricks into the basket and up he goes on the ladder You will see some of the ladders and stairs in some pictures later.

These are the masons installing the bricks on the house  and store fronts.  This scaffolding is the norm, it is bamboo lashed together with a hemp twine.

This man when he saw me, I waved and I asked if I could take his picture, and he said that was very OK.  I didn't take this picture from the correct angle for you to see what he is standing on.  So...here is a description of his perch,  he is standing on a piece of wood about the with of a 2X4 protruding from the wall, setting the bricks.  You can see his work in the back.  Those are windows that he is setting in the wall.






One important thing that I forgot is the building infrastructure, in this case, the sewer.  These guys are connecting the sewer from the house to the street.  Notice how deep the sewer is?  Not your standard 5 to 6 feet, no need, it doesn't freeze in Kathmandu.

This building is getting close to being finished.  They need to plaster the front of the building and clean the debris from around the front of the store and off of the sidewalks.  The government has told them they need to clean up or they, the government, would!  Things are looking up.








These are the finish carpenters building the shelves and other necessary cabinetry for the store.  They have no power tools only hand ones.  A small hand saw connected to one of these men's arm was used to cut the boards to size and then nailing.  The most interesting part is they do not use finish nails, so you can see clearly the nail heads.



Now back to the tales of Bansbari.  This week has been interesting, our internet has been down, and I realized how much we rely on the internet for our work.  I called and they, "Subisa Cable" our internet service provider, told me they were having trouble with there router and the service would be up in a half hour.  Well and good.  Did I  mentions that our internet was down also about a week ago also and they told me the router was down and everything would be working in about a half hour?  I called numerous time during that day and finally they told me someone would be out to fix the problem.  About 4 days later a person came to look at our service, which in the mean time had started itself.  It had been raining heavily and I just thought that could have been the problem.  Week two, the computer is down and the half hour is up, so I called again.  I explained the the cable light on the modem was not lit, and hadn't been since the night before.  The representative on the phone said, " OH, I will have some one come out".  One hour , Two hours, no technician, so I called again.  I was told they would come out soon.  One hour, two hours, you get the drift, no technician.  I called again and told them I need this done today and they said they would have some one out around two o'clock.  Two o'clock and the technician comes and tells us that the problem is not with our line to the house, but that it was old and would need to be replaced someday, or our modem. He said the problem must lie in the switch out on the street and someone would come and check it and fix it if necessary.

Remember Bansbari road is being rebuilt. These two lines on this photo are the power line, I think that one of the poles must have fallen somewhere, oh well, just be careful and don't touch it.  This did not just happen, it has been this way since we arrived and how much before then I do not know, hence, the segue into the next part of the story.

  The technicians came to fix the switch and up the pole one of them went.  Did I mention that it has been raining an awfully lot lately?




  Up the pole on his aluminium ladder, which by the way he brought on his scooter.












 Here is a picture of him getting to the switch box.  The part that you may not see is that the poles contain all genre of wires, electrical, telephone, cable, and internet.  You also need to know that the power is 240 volts in Nepal not the 120 volts you find in the US.  If you are not sure what that means, ask Aaron, he will explain it to you.  When the technician got into the spider web of wires he used his head to wiggle into the wires and pushed them out of the way, then climbed right in.  He got into the switch box and determined that it was broken and he had to take it down to the repair truck to fix it.

NOT!!!  What you see is what you get.  The story about the internet ends happily, however.  It works well, for now.  

The real story, however is about these amazing people.  They are the most ingenious, and creative problem solvers I have ever seen.  If you lived where the roads were jammed and traffic was very slow and the best way to travel was to go by scooter, would you carry the ladder?  If you had to fix a sophisticated piece of technology on the street could you?  They are, as Tiffnie would call them, the McGuivers of the world.  If it needs fixing they will find a way, with their limited means to " Do It ", as President Kimball would often say!  I know that God knows and loves them, he makes life functional for them and soon there will be a way to teach them of His love and concern for them.  They are amazing!! Pray for them!!

Next Chapter - Visiting the members for strength, our corner of the vineyard.