Out Flight to Nepal "Have mercy upon me, O God, according to thy loving kindness" Pslams 51:1

We made it and have been running around Nepal for the past week.  Yesterday was Saturday and our church, that will take a little getting used to, I think.  To alleviate any speculation that this whole mission thing is a conspiracy to get a little time alone with Janet I took some pictures of our flight, you'll see we are on the Lords errand.  This first one is an electrical storm that would have been probably east of New Delhi.

As you can see it was a very colorful flight.  We left SLC on time 4:50 on the 24th and were in the air 10hrs. 15mins. and landed in the Charles De Gaul Airport at 11:50 am.  We then needed to exit the airport terminal because we were changing airline from Delta to Gulf Air, so Janet finally after all these years got to Paris.  We were in Paris for 5 1/2 hours.  It sounds cool until you try to get something to eat and all you can find is dried up pastries.  Oh well, all the better after all the food I ate in the MTC.  We flew from Paris on Gulf Air to Bahrain and arrived in Bahrain at 12:40 AM, Culture, shock..I'll talk about that in a bit.  I have a great picture of the Notre Dame cathedral in Paris I took from the plane to validate our travels. 

Notre Dame de Paris

When we left for Bahrain we were starting to look like we were in the minority, which by the way is fine with me, what threw me off is how people in a crowded world navigate.  Personal space no longer exists and to the strong and aggressive go the spoils, which in this case was a place to sit, no.. a place to stand.  I think I've got the hang of it now.  The method is to protrude your elbows with hands on hips and waddle around.  That creates space, not friends, so I took my missionary badge off.  We were told to take them off when we got to Paris anyway, I just waited too long.  In Bahrain that was a trip!  Deplane onto the tarmac and on to a bus, did I say crowded bus?  To the airport terminal and in another line, did I say no personal space?  Thank goodness for large carry on baggage, which seemed to create space but not kind looks.  You would have thought that they had to catch the plane like they do the buses, that is yet another story, Oh..whoops another bus!  From Bahrain to Kathmandu and the beautifully lit sky that I showed you at the beginning.  Since we were chasing the sun were were always seeing the edge of the earth with the beauty of God's pallet, always one step ahead of us.  Here is the way we saw the Himalayas. in person for the first time in our lives!!!!!

So now for the rest of the story.  We landed in Kathmandu.

Himalayas with Kathmandu hills in foreground

Kathmandu Valley

Kathmandu City intermixed with the rice fields

Well it wasn't quite that way. You have to realize that the elevation of the airport in not necessarily high 1338m,  it is however between LOTS of huge mountains and the airport landing strip is 10000 m.  Because of all these factors the plane comes in fast and then hits the brakes, Caleb might remember that kind of landing.  

Next Chapter continuation of loving kindness!