It’s a simple question.
On the outside, at least.
Do you want to go to Nepal?
Do you want to turn your life upside down?
Do you want to live in a country where the concept of around the clock, full-year electricity is a fairy tale?
Do you want your teen sons to be two heads taller than adult men?
Do you want to worry about air pollution, water quality, and food-borne illnesses on a daily basis?
Do you want to start all over — buying dishes, towels, and sheets for your borrowed beds– at 40?
Are you joking me?
Those who ask are usually strangers to the Great Commission. They are often those whose lives will have unfillable holes with our leaving– family and friends who are grappling with the fact that the command to go is actually a command to leave, to uproot, and to walk into a place they cannot follow.
Going to Nepal is not a want. Not for any member of our family. No one here has blissfully written off this place and time without struggling with a sense of loss. Not a single person under this roof has been immune to moments, days, of crushing sadness as the letting go has forced us to shake the soil of this life from our feet and step, gingerly, into this calling.
Going to Nepal is a need. There is work for us. There is a reason for this: and that reason is not just centered on the Nepalis we will work with. It’s also about us. The call is for each of us, for something that we can’t even see or imagine as we sit here, counting socks and buying water purification tablets. God has plans for us, plans to prosper us. What does that look like? I wish I could tell you. I wish I could know for myself, so that in my moments of fearing that I will not have warm enough pajamas for 9 people to sleep comfortably in an unheated house, I could point to the fruit and say, “There. This is worth it. Be still.”
But I don’t have that future in my hands. And I– we– never will, unless we go.
To Nepal.
Do I want that? Yes.
People have asked our departure date and for details on how to assist with our transition. We arrive in Nepal on September 18. We are still in need of prayer team members, monthly support partners, as well as donations to help us setting up house and begin settling in Kathmandu. We would love to talk to you about how you can be a part of this work; contact us on the About Us page, leave a comment here, email us, or simply use the PayPal button below. Thank you!
(Photos from our trip to Norris Dam State Park, Rocky Top, Tennessee)