{"id":76,"date":"2018-03-22T15:24:46","date_gmt":"2018-03-22T19:24:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/bruce-enemark\/?p=76"},"modified":"2018-03-22T15:24:46","modified_gmt":"2018-03-22T19:24:46","slug":"encouragement-is-part-of-discipleship-in-south-asia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/bruce-enemark\/2018\/03\/22\/encouragement-is-part-of-discipleship-in-south-asia\/","title":{"rendered":"Encouragement Is Part of Discipleship in South Asia"},"content":{"rendered":"

The wonders of Nepal. The breathtaking vistas of the Himalayas. No, I’ve never been, but Larry and Jill Goring were just over there to encourage the believers in Nepal. I want to let Jill tell you about their trip.\"\"<\/em><\/p>\n

From the third floor terrace of \u2018our\u2019 guest house I have a 360 degree view of this amazing city\u2026mostly 3-storied half-finished, some un-painted and many brightly painted cement houses and apartment complexes stretching to the foot of the mountain ranges that surround the city on this 4000 foot plateau. Here in the outskirts most of the narrow \u2018roads\u2019 are dirt and rock or crumbled asphalt; people on bright motorcycles, bicycles, rattle-trap trucks, ingenious tractors and the occasional beat up taxi go by. And lots of people on foot: ladies in brightly colored loose pantaloons, jackets, scarves; men in jeans and down jackets and the ubiquitous wool cap. ‘Holi,’ a huge Hindu holiday last week, celebrated the official end of winter, but the weather is still pleasant and everyone seems to wear their jackets indoors and out [in cement houses, it is often colder indoors than out].<\/p>\n

Looking down from one side I see men shoveling sand and dirt and stacking red bricks for a new house going up\u2026SO much construction in the city. Next to\"\"\u00a0them a family is living\/camping outside, cooking on a wood fire, with partial brick walls on two sides, and some aluminum roofing balanced on top. The day\u2019s laundry and mattresses are spread out on the tin roofing, drying in the bright sun.\u00a0 A few yards away from the campers sits a gorgeous bright-blue mansion with intricate white trim, beautiful clay-tiled gables, expansive glass windows, surrounded by a high cement, flower-covered wall. The housewife next door just finished hanging out her laundry on the rooftop clothesline. Everything is SO dusty here, though, I just wonder how clean the laundry will be by the time it dries. \u2639 We\u2019ve watched with interest a local house painter perched day after day on a precarious-looking bamboo ladder, balancing himself with a bare foot against the wall, painstakingly brushing on a bright lime-green with purple trim. [I\u2019ve never seen a whole house done with a small paintbrush.] Most houses have flat rooftops, and locals seem to always gravitate to the highest point to observe life below. I\u2019m thinking that perching on the highest point must be part of the psyche of people who live in a country with eight of the world\u2019s tallest mountains \u2026<\/p>\n

I sit here on the terrace waiting for the last of the morning mist to clear, hoping for a glimpse of the snow-peaked mountain ranges beyond these close ones\u2014and yes, maybe even a glimpse of that famous, 29,000-foot highest point on earth, only 100 miles from here. So now you know where we are: Kathmandu<\/strong>, the beautiful, bustling, enigmatic, sadly increasingly dusty and polluted city of contradictions: the capital\u00a0of Nepal. On a clear day you can see Mt. Everest. As I\u2019m sure you know, tourism \u2014 especially trekkers \u2014 is an important \u2018industry\u2019 in Nepal. In a country where childhood malnutrition rates are alarmingly high, access to good sanitation and healthcare is limited, only 5% of the rural population have electricity, \u00a0and half of the working-age population is unemployed, it\u2019s strange to see so many western-style cafes full of tourists, drinking lattes and checking the\"\"ir social media. You can buy or order-in almost any kind of food imaginable, from tacos and enchiladas to phad thai and hunan chicken and spaghetti carbonara and, of course, lots of things I don\u2019t know how to pronounce [although momos sound fun]. For lunch today we enjoyed the national dish, prepared and eaten every day in most Nepali households: dal bhat–lentil soup and curried vegetables over rice. Yum.<\/p>\n

The most lovely sight we\u2019ve seen is the brightly flickering lights of joyful believers who name their businesses \u2018Grace\u2019 and \u2018New Creation\u2019 and \u2018Bethesda\u2019 and \u2018New Life,\u2019\u00a0greet each other with \u2018jaimashe\u2019 [Jesus is victor], and gather in small worship houses on Saturday mornings [the official weekly \u2018day-off\u2019 in multi-cultural, multi-religioun Nepal] raising their beautiful voices in praise. Officially, only 1.42% of Nepali\u2019s claim Christianity as their religion. We are so challenged to pray even more for them as they desire to share the wonderful good news not only here in the city\u00a0but also out into the most remote places \u2014 a hugely complicated task in a politically unstable country with very \u2018iffy\u2019 infrastructure, where the beautiful mountains get more daunting the further west you go, and it can take weeks to travel from one end of the 500-mile-long country to the other. And that\u2019s not to mention the fact that the people speak more than 100 different languages.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s l\"\"ots of life and light here, but like the food options and trendy cafes, much of it is clustered here in the capital city. Please pray for the believers, and for the church world-wide, that we would be more intentional in finding ways to stand with them and encourage them in all they have to do beyond this mountain range.<\/p>\n

Love and thanks,<\/p>\n

Jill (for Larry too) Goring<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The wonders of Nepal. The breathtaking vistas of the Himalayas. No, I’ve never been, but Larry and Jill Goring were just over there to encourage the believers in Nepal. I want to let Jill tell you about their trip. From the third floor terrace of \u2018our\u2019 guest house I have a 360 degree view of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":685,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[112230],"class_list":{"0":"post-76","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-uncategorized","7":"tag-ethnos360","8":"entry"},"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/bruce-enemark\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/bruce-enemark\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/bruce-enemark\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/bruce-enemark\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/685"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/bruce-enemark\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=76"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/bruce-enemark\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/bruce-enemark\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=76"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/bruce-enemark\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=76"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/bruce-enemark\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=76"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}