Sophia's Christmas highlight

Sophia got a tricycle for Christmas!! She loves it, especially the bell.

Family Christmas Time

For Christmas morning Bo decided he wanted homeade cinnamon rolls, so Summer got up early to make them. They were so good that we decided this should be a Christmas tradition for us on Christmas morning. The girls enjoyed all their new presents. Thank you to all the family that sent gifts for us. We really enjoy that.

ESL Tibetan Christmas party

I teach three Tibetan ladies ESL every week. For Christmas I invited them to my home for a meal and to listen to the Christmas story. They speak no English so through my and Bo's attempts to share and through listening to a CD with the Christmas story they heard the message. Pray for these ladies as they hear and understand more about what I try to teach them every week.

Tibetan Christmas Party

Christmas Party: We held a Christmas party in our home for four very close Tibetan families. We wanted them to know the real reason for the season. We played Christmas Pictionary, Hot Potato with a Yak, and sang Christmas songs. Bo read from a children's book the Christmas story and asked questions afterwards. The children seemed to really understand that we celebrate the birth of Christmas for Jesus' birthday and not for Santa Claus. They asked many great questions. We had a wonderful time together and had lots of good American style food for them. Bo grilled some steaks and I made all the side dishes. The kids really enjoyed the cupcakes.

You break you buy

This was our first you break you buy purchase. Sophia picked up this little wedding figurine and plop. The lady standing there brought it to the counter and made me buy it. Luckily it was only $4.

Toilet problem

This is a story about our house helper, Dolma. In our home when she uses the bathroom, she always leaves the seat up. It always bothers me because in my culture the only people that leave the seat up are men. So I started asking my other friends if they have this problem. They said that Nepali people are not used to sitting on toilets because they only use squatty potties, which I do not have a picture of. Next time I am out, I will have to take a picture of one and post it. I will try to describe it. It is like the toilet in the picture except that it is on the ground. Basically two steps with a hole in the middle. Some have a way to flush them and others don't. For the ones that don't you just juse a bucket of water to flush. Anyway. We learned that Dolma, lifts up the seat and stands and squats on the toilet to use the bathroom. So while we were in India, we found a perfect solution to our problem. We found a toilet that have a place to put your feet, but it also has a seat shaped just the same, for those who prefer sitting.

India

We enjoyed our time in India because the city we were in had a bizarre without traffic. There is no such place in Kathmandu. In Kathmandu, even if it says no bikes (meaning motorcycles) there will still be motorcylces, cars, richshaws, bicycles, etc. So it was nice to walk and shop and eat at little coffee shops that gave balloons to your kids and just do normal things that we can not do in KTM. They even had a Dominoes Pizza, which for those of you that do not know, Nepal has no fast food chain of any kind. We ate at Dominoes three times within one week! We did tourist things like visit waterfalls and parks and the kings palace. We stayed in our friend Tashi's family's hotel. Tashi is Lhakpa's wife from the previous post. Everyday we got to see the mountain Kanchanjanga, which is the third highest mountain in the world. That was a beautiful site. Although it took all of 7 hours total from Kathmandu to Gantok, it was a fun trip.

Urinal

This is a picture of a small sign on a tree at the Indian Immigration office that said urinal. Yes the sign is pointing to the cement block with two bricks on the ground and no door!! There is not even a hole in the ground like most "sqatty potties" here.

Gantok, Sikkhim, India

We took a trip as a family to Gantok, Sikkhim, India. That is in the northeast corner of India between Nepal and Bhutan. Boy was it an exciting adventure. First we took a 45 minute plane ride to Bhadrapur, which is on the border of Nepal and India. Then we took a 30 minute taxi ride to the border. At the border, first you go into Nepal's immigration (picture that says Immigration). The next picture is Bo communicating at the border how much a taxi ride was going to cost all the way to Gantok. We are so thankful our friend Lhakpa, (the man in the blue shirt in the picture of Bo with a bunch of guys. This picture is the actual border.) came along with us because he speaks their language! Then on the India side, we have to go to India's immigration office, which at first looks like a building (picture of Bo walking holding Izzy), but once you get there, the actual office is next to it in a HUT!

The Fall part of the birthday party

For Sophia's birthday party we had bobbing for apples, hanging apples (see pic), and corn hole. Bo did an awesome job and making the corn hole platforms. (Thanks dad for the sander!) I made the corn bags and voila we had a fun game. We had fifteen teams of two play in the tournament which lasted about 4 hours, but it was fun to watch, so noone seemed to mind that it took so long. We also did games for the kids like Pass the Pumpkin and pin the nose on the pumpkin. We wanted our girls to see what a fall party was like since they do not have such things over here. I think we pulled off a good one!

Sophia's 3rd Birthday Party

For Sophia's 3rd birthday we decided to have a Fall Party. We invited almost all the foreigners we know in Kathmandu so we had about 50 people here. It was fun. Making chili for that many people was not, but I had another girl help me and we both just borrowed pots from our landlords. Sophia asked for a yellow and pink cake, so that is what I made for her. Her grandmother sent her a princess dress for her birthday. She loved it and did not want to take it off.

Trekking into the mountains

Last week, we went to into the Himalayan Mountains together with our children. We took two flights to get as high up as we could without having to hike. We flew to Pokhara then to Jomsom. From Jomsom, we hiked up to a village called Kagbeni. Bo carried Sophia and Summer carried Isabella. During the trek, Sophia kept saying she did not like the mountains and that she wanted to go home, but once we got there, she quite complaining and enjoyed herself. It took us four hours to hike because the wind was horrible. The typical weather conditions for this area of the mountains is around 11:00 AM the wind gets really hard and lasts into the night. It is very windy, so it is hard to trek. We stayed in the guest house of our landlord’s family. We had so many immediate connections with the family because we knew his family in Kathmandu.
Our daily routine was to walk around the village trying to find a person of peace that would be willing to talk to us and listen to the Good News of Jesus Christ. We were clearly rejected by one girl, but she still enjoyed our company and invited us back the next day for Tibetan food.
The family we were staying with invited us to a dowry ceremony for their family. This was exciting because that was an open door to meeting people. This was something I have never experienced before. We were sitting in a small stone house, with food being cooked over a fire in the home. The bride’s family had traveled several hours from another village to meet the groom’s family. The bride’s family is required to give gold, silver, and clothes to the groom’s family. As this was taking place, there was a man recording everything given and all the attendants were standing in a circle around this mound of gifts being given. It reminded me of when Abraham sent his servant to his country to find a wife for his son Isaac. Genesis 24:10 says, “Then the servant took ten camels from the camels of his master, and set out with a variety of good things of his master’s in his hand, and arose and went to Mesopotamia, to the city of Nahor.” Then in Gen. 24:22 he gave Rebekah a gold ring and two bracelets. Later upon acceptance of the proposal in Gen. 24:53 it says, “The servant brought out articles of silver and articles of gold, and garments, and gave them to Rebekah; he also gave precious things to her brother and to her mother.” It was really neat to see that this culture of a wedding is still present today amongst the Tibetan culture. Due to the circumstances, there were no opportunities to share at the party, but it did open up doors a few days later to meet with some of the people that we had met at the party.
There were times when we were giving a nap to Izzy so we had time to sit with the family and share. They were willing to listen, but not willing to accept. On our second to last day we took some Gospel books and cd’s and dvd’s to an open square in the town and we played the Story of Jesus out loud on a recorder allowing an opportunity for people to come as questions and take whatever material they wanted to take. Through this came one family who we met the day after and asked if they had watched the dvd. They said yes and that they were interested in learning more and invited us into their small one room home. They heard the gospel for the first time through the grace of God giving Bo the language skills to share with them. We think they truly understood and want to know him so we are sending one of our national believers to meet them.
The last two days it began to rain, which it should not have been doing at this time of year, so we did not come prepared for rain. We had planned to take a jeep back down to Jomson instead of hiking, but because of the rain several landslides had occurred and the jeeps could not pass. Therefore, we had to hike in the cold rain with the girls. But because God is gracious, he knew that our two porters who carried our bags needed to hear the gospel. The family we were staying with sent their two friends to carry our bags while we carried the girls. These two guys were Tibetan, unlike most porters who are Nepali. This gave Bo a chance to share with them as we hike back down. God also held off the wind, which in this land, no wind is like the arctic having a warm day. Because there was no wind, it only took us two hours to hike back. Amazing!
To close our story, I want to thank FBC Moss Bluff for purchasing the back carrier for Sophia. This was an incredible opportunity for our family to have some time to spend with our people group in their village, outside of the city. Thank you.

Pictures around Kagbeni

There were plenty of animals, cows, horses, goats, and chickens for Sophia to play with in the village.

YakDonalds

This village has a Yak Donalds, which of course is nothing like McDonalds! Kagbeni is made of many old stone homes. They store wood on the bottom floor and on the roof.

Dowry Ceremony

This is a picture of the dowry ceremony and of our free time with the family. We helped prepare dried tomatoes.

Jomson Airport

As I mentioned, the last day we hiked in the cold rain. Sophia stayed dry under her rain cover. I had to tie a towel around Izzy to dry to keep her dry. We wore two hats. One to try to keep the rain out of our face and another for the cold so the wind didn't get in our ears. There is also a picture of the airport in Jomson. It is a small landing strip in front of a beautiful mountain. The flight goes between many mountains, so it is an adventurous flight.