Terribly Alone and Forgotten, Part One

Back in the pioneer years of our marriage, MBH deployed to a distant corner of Nepal to handle a design conflict on a school. I stayed that week in the centralized capital city. A mere seven days of Incommudicado separation and this selfish, twenty-something girl felt terribly alone and forgotten in Kathmandu.

7:45 a.m. MBH kissed me goodbye at the guesthouse. Across the valley to the Himalayas, cloudless skies arched azure over green rice terraces. As I hand washed laundry, the roar of twin propellers affirmed that my beloved was en route to the peaks just below the snowcaps.

We were married a mere six months when we left for mission service half a world away from family. We bonded overseas, inseparable 730 days straight through language school and our work in Butwal (boo-twall').

He said he’d miss me as he tried to calm the sobs out of me that night before he deployed. He believed that we’d live out the truth of our devotion to God above that to each other. Apart he felt we would discover the work God had for us individually.

While he soothed construction conflicts to the west, I worked through angst in Kathmandu. I washed buckets of laundry, helped around the guesthouse, attended meetings, and arranged delivery of goods to our village.

That week God grew my extended family “in Jesus.” Spying my red eyes,  British sister Joy told me she got headaches when she cried. So she took me to on a shopping trip where I bargained for a Tibetan dress.

With fellow expats, the Snyders, I experienced my first scooter ride on the narrow city lanes. Not quite like a James Bond run, but thrilling.

On a bus back from Nepali church, I asked how I could pray for my Dutch sister Rut. Her requests I wrote in my journal, a harbinger of work to come. . .

Finally, I learned more about a retired grandfather we encountered at a restaurant the week before, Dr. Robert L. Fleming. He founded the UMN, our multi-national, interdenominational United Mission to Nepal.

On a birding expedition into the jungles of Butwal Dr. Fleming and other westerners first entered Nepal. This Hindu kingdom of all altitudes had all varieties of birds. Avian enthusiast Dr. Fleming rode in on elephant to capture their beauties for his classic book, “Birds of Nepal.”  Just after WWII, the doctor met with the king who requested medical and technical aid for his peoples locked by geography in medieval poverty, disease, and illiteracy.

UMN built and staffed hospitals, clinics, schools, water projects, and hydroelectric plants. Despite laws that forbade proselytizing,  God revealed himself. At every project God birthed native Jesus believers and indigenous fellowships.

The Nepalese may have been isolated from modernity. In reality they, like I, were never terribly alone or forgotten. In the shadow of Everest they and I were truly beloved, cradled by the Mountain Maker’s hands and his believing family.