since we've been home

the neighbors went crabbing and we received the benefits:
d and jacob
tim - a bit tried - just 2 days after we arrived

beautiful isa (our dear friends drew and bekah's daughter)

tim and ben - listening to the wind (drew and bekah's son)
faith!
sisters
tim and me

it has been great being home. the olympics are on tonight. i am making dinner and we will be watching. this weekend we will celebrate my birthday. and soon and very soon we will be in denver!!

pictures of nepal

so yeah for a fast internet connection and the alleviated fear of computer viruses. we are at kurtis and erins house and i have some time to post a few pictures of our last few weeks in nepal.

here with are with gotham and reka (calvin forgive the way i am spelling their names - please let me know if the spelling is incorrect). they are parents of the home word made flesh has for girls. they have adopted almost a dozen girls and treat them as their own - bring them into their family. it is a beautiful thing to watch. we had the privilege of getting to know them better and eating meals with them - such amazing dal bhat. they also prayed for us before we left - a blessing to be surrounded by them and their children and prayed over.
tim with gita, rita, and sumitra (girls we knew from 2003. good friends and wonderful to see them again - they are all sisters).
tim with calvin, andrew and jesse. word made flesh staff in nepal. great guys - this was taken at our last dinner in kathmandu.
tim and calvin. we love calvin. he is such a good friend to us. it was a great joy to be with him and around him and his community for 2 months. please pray for calvin and the word made flesh staff in nepal. they are doing great work in the name of and for the glory of jesus. calvin's blog is linked to ours on the right hand side of the screen. so please pray for calvin and if the Lord leads you to give to the field of nepal he would be able to tell you how.
tim and roop - we got to know roop in 2002/2003 as well. he helped out with the drop in center for kids. he is on word made flesh staff and primarily drives the girls to and from school and also brings them their lunch everyday. we had the privilege of having dinner with roop and his family. great guy.
kids at peace children's home - one of the homes run by Tiny Hands International. and the kids' hero here is our dear friend mike. mike in 2002 had the vision to see quality christian orphanages here in nepal - so he started one - with the help of his church. mike is now connected with tiny hands, as he is good friends with john, the president. we were able to visit a few of the homes run by tiny hands. it is difficult to express the joy we felt as the kids asked us about mike, showed us their pictures they have of mike and ask when mike would be back. we are so proud of the faithfulness of our dear friend. these kids' lives will be changed forever because of the Lord's use of him and his obedience.
motorcycles. fun times. we are hard core bikers.
calvin and charlie - equally hard core.
me with sumitra and her son james. sumitra is also on word made flesh staff. she supports the home for girls with her time and energy - cleaning and as their tutor after school. she has the biggest heart and warmly welcomed us into her home for meals and freely offered us her friendship. pray for her as she and her husband are praying about big changes for their family. she gives the best hugs too.

the Lord truly blessed us during our time in nepal. getting to know better our friends and the culture as well as seeing His work changed us. He enlarged our hearts further for the oppressed, orphaned, widowed and poor. He also granted us rest and healing and a time of sweet intimacy for us as a couple - for i don't think we have ever spent so much time together. it was great. i love it that tim and i are best friends and our friendship was grown through this experience. thank you for your prayers and journeying with us.

many have asked - so i wanted to let you all know that i will continue to blog. i imagine there are many more adventures, funny stories and challenges ahead. for now we are enjoying a month to reconnect with life in north america. i already have some super cute pictures of drew and bekah's children. we saw them a few days ago! and the adventures of moving to canada have already begun - previous thoughts to the contrary - canada is a different country - not just an expansion of america. and things are a bit different here :) (that thought is for you kurtis - our proud canadian friend).

we still do not have a place to live nor any outside source of income - prayers for a home and a job are appreciated. thank you for them.

back in bellingham

after 48 hours - lots of time on a plane and even more hours in airports around the world we are in bellingham. and i find myself wide awake at 5 am. tim of course is still asleep (as is the rest of my family).

the trip was relatively uneventful. a few highlights or interesting moments:
1. tim and i had a 5 hour layover in bahrain - a country off the coast of saudi arabia. the airport was full of individuals in more typical middle eastern attire. i was reminded of my heart connection to the middle east and loved being back in that part of the world even for a short time. the time also reminded me of the rich time we had in israel. it was a bit difficult getting used to seeing most women in black coverings - head to toe. about 1/3 of which either had their whole face covered with a black veil or everything covered but their eyes. tim and i had a funny moment as we sat in the mcdonalds at the airport looking around at the people with a brittney spears concert on the tv - worlds collide.

2. i am convinced, at least for the time being, that a U.S. customer service representative for United airlines in the customs luggage temporary pickup area is one of the most stressful jobs in the world. as tim and i waited for a "lost" (temporarily - the bag was too excited and was headed toward the plane for seattle without us) bag we witnessed multiple break downs in the relationships around us, as families negotiated the seemingly very difficult task of recovering luggage in the narrow time of a 2-3 hour layover in U.S. customs before being processed and re-checking their bags. some families unknowingly greatly complicated their lives by only checking their luggage through to washington d.c. and not their final destination. oh dear. and the poor customer service representatives were often the ones to receive the indirect (or direct)stress/anger/lack of patience/frustration of many. not a job i would enjoy.

3. moments after going through customs and being overwhelmed with smell of ketchup and greasy burgers - further confirming, yes we are now in america. if the tee-shirts for sale of barak obama and john mccain left any question.

4. seeing my mom and danielle at the airport. so good. cried tears of joy. feels good to be home.

5. seeing faith. she was thrilled to see us (i was afraid she was going to ignore us out of sadness about being left for 7 months). she cried noises of joy and couldn't stop kissing us - going back and forth between tim and i - such a happy dog.

6. other things i love about being home - the soft feel of carpet. hot water showers. clean smelling clothes, towels and sheets. a queen size bed - so comfortable and so much space to sleep. drinking a cup of coffee in my pajamas. the expectation of fresh bagels for breakfast.

thank you all for your prayers for our journey. we look forward with great excitement to seeing many of you this month. i think more tears are on the way as we are reminded of the amazing friends and family we have and how good it feels to be back together again.

next post - from bellingham

tim and i leave at 6 am tomorrow morning to head to the airport and we will spend the next 48 hours or so in the air on at airports. i will get online and let you all know when we make it safe. thank you for your prayers, kristi

happy birthday!

two special people we know are celebrating their birthdays tomorrow. and its important to celebrate birthdays well and with great fanfare (if being married to kristi taught me one bit of wisdom at all).

so brooke, happy birthday sister! can't wait to see you. i think gabe (being the wonderful husband he is) ought to do all the work around the house tomorrow, breakfast in bed, special projects you may need done, etc. you deserve it! and feel free to use "tim says so," if you need to.

dad, happy birthday dad! we can't wait to see you either. dad, let's try to keep this year from being life threatening. can we commit to that? good. so enjoy your day dad, go crazy wild nuts! sleep in until 7:30, work half a day, read a non-theological book, have dessert tonight! you've earned it you crazy guy. :)

if you know either of these two, wish them happy birthday tomorrow for us and give 'em a big hug. we love them both.

goodbye charlie

we said goodbye to charlie last night. as we were parting ways i told him i was only excited to see him go because it meant we will be leaving in a few days.

we rode motorcycles, oh yes we did. tim had a great time. i did too. we started the adventure on a bit of a stressful/traumatic side but we worked through it. let me just say it is difficult to navigate a motorcycle through a crowded market packed with pedestrians and merchants after just conquering a road being re-paved even for the best of cyclists (can you even apply that term here? - so new to this motorcycle world). at one point a nepali man said to tim, "so difficult" as he was walking by. haha. but after we got over it and didn't die in the crazy intersections we had a good time. although come to think of it at one point i took off my helmet because i was sweating and fearing horrible hair and tim turns to me and says, "kristi, what would defense (my unusual nickname for my beautiful sister) say about the safety of this situation?" in her honor and for tim's sake i promptly put the helmet back on as i was imaging the nepali news headline "american couple dies in tragic motercycle crash." (mom i hope you aren't reading this). but yeah - it was fun. i loved seeing kathmandu and getting a better feel for the city and we drove past some interesting temples and other sites. we took some pictures but those will have to wait for a later date.

ok. that's about it. 3 days. 3 days. trying to savor every moment.

the amazing knight

opening night for batman in nepal - we were there - along with most of the word made flesh american staff. the movie was amazing. tim reported that it received a 95% rating on rotten tomatoes so we knew it would be good. movies are a bit funny in nepal as people love to cheer during the movie and there is an intermission and they charge extra for the seats in the back of the theater (so we sit up front of course). but so fun. the movie made me even more excited to come home as good movies remind me of my family and the family legacy of love for movies. it won't be long now.

tim is going riding with calvin today. calvin is going to teach tim how to ride a motorcycle. tim is very excited. he continues to talk about getting a bike when we are home... we will have to see about that. the fact they get good gas mileage is a plus but danger is not such a huge plus.

well that's about it. peace.

9 days - what?!

yes 9 days and we will be on a plane headed in the general direction of the states. granted it will be many, many hours later that we will actually arrive in seattle but the thought of beginning the long journey home is extremely exciting for us.

we are looking forward to much about being home - seeing our family and friends (simply being able to call them when we like and knowing we won't wake them up), eating foods with the general confidence we won't get sick and similar thought for drinking water out of the tap, eating chips and salsa!, cheddar cheese (yum), working (yes i am actually excited to begin work again), seeing faith (oh, sweet faith), etc...

but there is definitely a bitter sweet feeling to the good-byes. we have felt so fortunate to be able to have these 7 months of traveling - the Lord has given us so much during this time - rest, lots of time to be together, a fuller picture of His Word, sweet new friendships, a reminder of why we choose to live simple and generous lives, an expansion of our heart for the poor and oppressed, a chance to reflect of what the Lord did in Denver (in us and in the work He called us to) - i think i could go on for a while but for now those are the highlights.

again thank you for walking with us through this blog. just knowing you all read this has helped me feel more connected to home. we would continue to covet your prayers - to finish our time here well (there is still people to be with, dal bhat to eat, books to read), for saftey in our travels, for jobs, a place to live, that we could sell our car, that faith would not go into serious depression when she realizes her long wonderful vacation with my parents is coming to an end, and that we may in this transition continue to remember who we are in Christ - to love well - to remain in the present and to honor Him. so thanks. kristi

trekking pictures

so it begins - picture from day one of the trek (above)

a typical view walking through the villages and hills (below)
yes, we did cross this - i guess tim has to find a treacher on every trip :)
guest house in chomrong first time around
walking up to Base Camp - one of tim's favorite moments up to this point - a beautiful valley
we are at Annapurna Base Camp and this is our first view of the mountains all trip!
it is 5:00 am and we don't care because the mountains are out and it is amazing to see
12 hours and many high and low moments later and we have arrived at chomrong and the mountains are out again.
finished. i think we look tired :)

we had a great trip. i am thankful for a day to be at calvin's house and have the time to load some pictures. i also applied for a few jobs today. thank you for your prayers. now we will see what happens. if anyone knows of someone looking for a counselor/advocate in vancouver let me know. :)

job seeker

tim and i are currently in an internet cafe where he is working on getting his stuff together for regent and i am looking for jobs. at this point there looks like many different kinds of opportunities in vancouver - we will see if any of them want to give me a job.

overall feeling at the moment: looking for jobs can be difficult and exhausting.

prayers appreciated. :)

perspective: I trust the Lord will provide for tim and i. I believe He has equipped me as a capable counselor. I will be faithful to look for jobs and continue to trust in His timing and provision.

back to k-town

(hom and tim on the way to english class and the great distraction of the Annapurna mountain range)

we are back safe and sound in kathmandu. we had a bit of a near death experience on the plane flight, but trauma aside we are doing just fine. you see, yesterday we had a 3 hour delay for our flight due to rain. tim and i wonder if the pilot was trying to make up for the lost time because he flew very fast the whole way. the two points i could tell (or believe i could tell) was after the take off and just as we were landing. as i saw kathmandu quickly approaching and houses flying past i thought to myself, "wow it seems like we are going fast; i wonder when he is going to slow down." well we got closer and closer to the ground and he still had not slowed down the plane. then the pilot dips the plane into a low bank and i can see the ground/runway only 15-20 feet below. and again i think, "huh - usually we are a lot straighter at this point when i have flown before." i look out the window and he is making a 50-75 degree turn and the wing is maybe 10 feet from the ground. the pilot then overcompensates and makes an extremely rough landing and the plane is all over the runway. at this point most passengers on the plane are talking to each other wondering if what we all just saw really happened and saying things like, "that could have been really bad. did you see how close we were? what was he thinking?" well you get the idea. needless to say i was glad my mom wasn't on the plane with us - i think she may have never flown again and she already hates little planes. :)

some pictures - not as many as i would like but tim is hungry.

manu, phyllis, rubina (phyllis's cousin), hom outside the international mountaineering museum
young life club - 6:00 am
manu and i after church

such a great week. loved every moment. something we will never forget. hopefully more pictures soon. got to go before we all get cranky.

young life

yesterday was a day filled with young life activities. we started our day at 6 am with club. about 115 students were there - it was amazing to us to see so many excited kids so early in the morning. sitting in club i was reflecting on the good that the Lord does through Young Life - seeing these students (most of whom are not christians) singing at the top of their voices, playing games and listening intently to tim was a reminder of the effectiveness of Young Life and the Lord's faithfulness to the ministry. Also as i was watching tim i was filled with pride. He did a great job sharing funny stories with tons of energy and also clearly communicating a story about Jesus. I told him afterwards that I believe if Ken where there he would have been so proud - a tribute to the legacy he has (and is continuing) to leave his family.

after tim played soccer and i talked to some relatively shy girls in english (they have learned much from their english class). in the afternoon we did a training for young life volunteers - i talked about counseling skills and tim did an overview of the fundamentals of being a Young Life leader.

In the afternoon tim and hom went to talk more about Young Life, while Manu and I stayed home and talked. Being with them is such a pleasure. We have talked much and laughed a lot as well.

At 5:00 pm we had another club. Tim introduced a few new games and mixers to the kids and they LOVED it. He also gave another talk - again - i was so proud.

Last night I watched Hom and Manu make dal bhat, with the hope of being able to create a more authentic dal bhat when we return home. we will see. I asked that today after church we go and buy some of the spices they use - so we hope to do that. Whelp I better go. it is time for breakfast.

we leave tomorrow. we will be happy to return to kathmandu but sad also to leave our good friends. this week has been amazing in so many ways and i know we will never forget it. and i know we will hope to continue our friendship with Hom and Manu however we can.

pokhara

we continue to have fun in pokhara with our new friends hom, manu, and their daughter phyllis. today we helped out at a sunday school teacher training conference. kristi spoke for about 2 hours on basic counseling skills (she did great!). i also had a chance to share a short devotional with them. in the afternoon we visited a all-city church soccer tournament. it was fun.



tomorrow we start our day again at 6am and teach the younglife english class. in the afternoon we are meeting with the local younglife volunteer team and running a training session. kristi will do basic counseling skills again i will talk about the basics of being a volunteer leader.



we will be here until sunday and then back to kathmandu. once we get back we only have 2 more weeks in kathmandu until we are back in the states. crazy! after being gone almost half a year the end of our time overseas seems near.

alright, gotta run. more dal bhat to eat!

english class and chipotle

tim and i are currently staying with hom, a nepali christian working for young life, and his family. we arrived yesterday afternoon and have been having a great time. yesterday we went to city hall for a celebration honoring a 10 year old boy who rescued a 4 year old girl out of a 60 foot deep pit. evidently the police and military failed in their attempts to rescue her and the rescue effort had pretty much been given up, when a young boy decided to go down in basket. he was able to get the girl in the basket and his brother pulled them both up out of the hole. it was on nepali tv across the country. the father of the boy in a christian pastor in pokhara and so much celebration has been going on for the last couple of weeks where nepal christians are declaring the glory of the Lord and praising God for the safety/rescue/opportunity to share the Gospel out of this situation.

last evening after a meal of dal bat (traditional nepali dish of rice, dal (lentil soup) and curry) we went to bed under a hot pink mosquito net. we were thankful for the protection. we woke up early - around 5:15 - to a beautiful day. out our bedroom window is/was the mountains. AMAZING!! took so many pictures. i can't wait to show all of you. the sky is still clear and i am remembering what a day without clouds is like and loving it!

at 6:00 am we arrived with hom to his young life club room. (after tim took the camera away from me because i was making us late by taking so many pictures of the mountains) waiting for us were about 90 students for english class. a month and a half ago hom started a free english class for students in the area. the class quickly grew and now around 90 attend everyday at 6:00 am for an hour and a half. many travel long distances. tim and i (it is so funny to think of it for those of you who know our english skills - haha) taught conversational english for the full time. we played simon says, the telephone game, did some skits and taught them typical english sayings. we had a great time. we will probably go again a couple more times this week.

this afternoon hom wants to take us to some more typical tourist sites around pokhara. tomorrow tim and i will speak to a group of sunday school teachers - tim a more devotional talk and i will talk about counseling kids. and much more also to look forward to in the rest of the week.

one more thing and then i will end this post which is getting longer and longer.

CHIPOTLE - AUGUST 12th around 6:30 or 7:00 pm - Buckley and Quincy - come if you can. tim and i will arrive at DIA around 5:20 and i hope to quickly head to chipotle. i would love for anyone who can to join us. i imagine we will be hanging out for a while, so even if you don't like burritos come and say hi. we are thinking we will spend the first few days in colorado down in the springs before janae starts school but hope to be in aurora 3-4 days around the 18th. please let others know who don't read the blog. i am just so excited to come home and see our dear friends - i had to let people know now. and if you won't be in town or can't make it we understand - we just want everyone to feel invited.

also - to answer some questions - i don't think tim had much trauma on the trip - although the first day he did get two leaches on his neck after we were helped across a raging river - where the bridge had been washed away by a landslide. apparently we were supposed to turn off the normal trail to avoid the problem, but we didn't. oops. glad our mothers weren't around at the time.

back in pokhara

we are back in pokhara after 7 days of trekking. we had a great time, but find ourselves very tired. a few highlights and lower-lights and simple facts -

simple fact #1 - it is rainy season in nepal. therefore it rained everyday, some days it rained most of the day. we often wondered into guest houses soaked. so it goes. also keeping our boots dry was a battle tim never gave up on. go tim.

highlight #1 - we made it to Annapurna Base Camp - unlike our attempt 5 years ago. in this effort up, up, up we did, however miss our dear friend Andy (who was with us 5 years ago).

highlight #2 - not only did we make it to A.B.C. but we were able to see the mountains - granted we had to get up at 4:50 am and they were only visible for 30 min but we saw them none the less.

highlight #3 - the very same day we were up at 4:50 we were still hiking 12 hours later, motivated by the hope for a hot shower and returning to a guest house we really like, we saw the mountains again - this time from chomrung. AMAZING!! two great views in one day. we felt like this truly was a gift, given the fact that it was cloudy the majority of the trip and we ran into many trekkers who did not get good views the whole time they were on the trail.

lower-light #1 - same day as the amazing views - 9 hours into the day. it is raining. it has been raining harder than it had the whole trip. we are an hour away from a place to stop. i recently fell and sprained my left hand ring finger, discovered i had been attacked by a leach and was bleeding (for the second time that day - yuck!) and my boots are sopping wet. i begin to cry. not having much fun at this point. (oh and earlier that day i also had fallen in some poop - and tim thought it better not to tell me at the time - thinking a similar response might occur. all totaled however, i only fell 3 times on the trip which isn't bad for me). tim offers me some water, hoping that will help. and a hug. i recover, we move on. i pray for the rain to stop. and 10 min later it DOES!!! thank you Lord for answered prayers. and the sun comes out for the first time all trip and we decide to keep hiking and because of our decision we were able to experience highlight #3.

highlight #4 - due to the fact that it is the rainy season - there were a ton, a ton, of waterfalls. beautiful! (brooke k. - i thought of you often and your love for waterfalls).

highlight #5- tim and i had many great conversations on the trail. i am incredibly thankful for the chance to get away and be together - it was a very special time for us.

we took many pictures. of course we don't know what they look like because of our broken viewfinder/screen but we are hoping some of them turned out. when we return to kathmandu or have a safer way to put them up on the blog (safer than connecting all of our electronic devices that still are working into a public nepali internet cafe computer) we will do so.

today we are meeting hom and will spend the next week with him and his family. i hope to be able to post more while we are with them.