They are vacating the hospital this week:(

Thanks for your prayers!
The hospital staff are in emotional turmoil not knowing where to go or what to do re: jobs. They are only seeing "emergencies" but a bus accident in Baitadi occurred today and all the staff were called in to handle it, then at the last minute all patients were diverted to the Gov district hospital here!
This week so many are confronted with moving... all hospital property has to be vacated by May 14th so the scramble for alternate living spaces and packing boxes seems to have consumed the majority of staff.
Just had a didi/ bhini ( women's) meeting here at my flat tonight. 8 ladies came to sing and pray and discuss the future and the ladies came up with the idea for a momo shop! ( momos are Tibetan steamed dumplings)
I am encouraging them to brainstorm for other options as well as only a couple were interested in actually doing it. At least we gave them permission to do some creative thinking!
Keep praying for us!
Almost ready to pour the cement roof.. Brick walls will be complete tomorrow and have to setup for a few days till dry, before they pour the beams and roof. We have been scrambling to collect enout wood beams and bamboo poles to hold it up. Also ordered a tipper truck of crushed gravel today and 2 more truck loads of 2 different kinds of sand!
Tomorrow is a holiday..."labor day" does this mean my Mistris ( workman) will not show?
To be seen!
Today the WYAM team showed up to help and dug out a huge amount of dirt from the back mountainside to back fill behind the retaining wall for level one and prepare the level surface for the cement roof that will extend 12 feet beyond the roof of level one. We will also build another 9 foot high retaining wall against the mountainside for level 2. It is imperative to complete this before the monsoons in a month or so to try to keep more landslides from happening! The team made huge progress and I am sooooooo grateful for their help. What a blessing! We did break a shovel and a pick ax handle in the process today!
Tomorrow they will assist us in painting the other porch room of the bakery. Such fun to have energetic youth with positive attitudes and willing hearts to share the burden here!
Pray for the one Korean girl on the team that fell down in the 12 inch crack between the wall and the side of the mountain and scraped her elbow up good! She was a very good sport and let me clean it up with soap and water and smear neosporin and a bandaid but it might smart tonight! Pray she can sleep.
The Sweedish Drs have left and the US family of 3 from N Mexico have replaced them.
I have played tour guide with trips to Dumara/ Pokara and the local bazaar and have been designated as their personal shopping assistant. I've been keeping them busy and entertained as they had high expectations of being able to work productively in the now closed hospital! That ain't happenening so we are trying to keep them occupied and busy. I tried to get them just to trash their expectations but some are not so good at doing that on command. So I am keeping busy keeping them busy? hummmm what is wrong with this picture? but like I said, the hospital staff are mostly all preoccupied with their own business!
Diane is now on antibiotics... coughed mosty of last night but says she felt some better today. She is a Master gardener and planted some flower seeds we brought,from the US, today in the bakery garden... I think it did her soul good! She smiled a lot more today!
Well I am beat... possibly have a little residual heat stroke from yesterday's long hike in the sun/ heat! Forgot the sunscreen on my arms and burnt like a lobster! Dehydration got the best of me though I worked on prevention... truly I did!
Today we had no water which complicated things! We got a little tonight though! We went down to the guest house and begged showers there which was a true blessing!
Well the 20 dogs in the village seem to be winding up now... six sleep all day on my 2 foot wide balcony and don't even move if you kick them to try to get around them. We keep trying to wake them during the day so they might sleep at night! But it is a dog's day around here and we are likely not going to change them in the remaining 4 weeks we are here! I hear a chicken too... not a good sound for 11 pm... hope it is not some dogs dinner! I hear a whole mess of them (dogs that is!) running and panting up the hill alternating with the barking! Oh JOY!
SO will tuck myself in for the night and chat at you later!
Keep those prayers acomin'! They are our backbone!
Dawn Didi

What a blessing this place has been to so many throughout the years.

Just acouple of the staff that are now trying to figure out what to do next

Many families rely on the care they receive from the staff and the many volunteers that serve that work here everyday

This little one will miss this place

Equipment like this is vanishing

Hanging on to the cliff!

Hi Y'all,
It has been a full week... lots of ups and downs! We are acclamating to the steep decent between our apartment and the bakery immediately below on the hill and though we still need to "hang on" to the cliff/dirt as we come and go we are becoming more nimble and confident and are not so short of breath coming up! Not quite as agile as the local goats yet though!

Speaking of goats... saw a mama goat yesterday in the bazaar... she had issues! She had udders full of milk and a broken leg and someone had put on a plaster cast and she was limping down the hill in a most pitiful way! Limping seems to be the order of the week in many ways!

Our project is sure limping along. The bricks came last Saturday and the next 2 days a mason came and laid up bricks for 2 days to his shoulder level. His wife mixed up the cement mortar and it seemed like things were progressing! Those days and every day since we have beeen promised that 3 more masons would arrive including the head contractor and that "work would go quickly now!" However day after day no one has come and the work has come to a screeching halt again. I was told it was partly cause we needed wood planks to serve as scaffolding so they could reach the higher rows of brick laying. SO we ran around for a few days gathering KOT ( planks) and found 5 we can buy from a friend but that is clearly no longer the hold up !
I just have to be content to let this all move in God's timing and trust HE will complete it on schedule! It is the balance between "yo Nepal ho" and God's masterful agenda.

Another limp in the community get-along is the great and sad turn of events that has led to the closure of the local hospital that my Dad/ Mom pioneered 45 years ago. He started one 8 KM's away in Pokara in 1968 and after many years was asked to start one in Dadeldhura, the district center. He was with TEAM so it has been called TEAM Hospital ever since and though they tried to turn it over to a national NGO 5 years ago and change the name accordingly everyone knows it as TEAM Hospital. Local community and politicians have been very unhappy with the new management and have basically forced the NGO out and it is offically being turned over to the government as of May 14th. However everything has come to a screeching halt there as well and yesterday staff were told to see emergencies only! Staff are told they have 20 days to pack and be out of their housing. The gov and NGO leaders have inventoried all the supplies and everything is supposed to be turned over to the gov. Everyone knows the gov staff will be swooping in and claiming every last item and taking them to their own homes and by the time of the official tiurnover, one will be hard pressed to find a single piece of equipment left on the campus! In fact much of it has already walked. Some of it may have been our own staff thinking "why let those gov staff have these diapers... we should disperse them to our own staff and community with kids!" Etc. We watched a bus pull up yesterday and load it full of equipment and later saw it in the bazaar again... No one was givning any answers to questions so one can only surmise!
It is a very corrupt system and so sad to watch!

Our staff are being led to believe the hospital will be transfered to Bajang 2 hours away by bus but I am told there are currently no buildings or infastructure built there. They will have to start from scratch and now there will clearly be no supplies or equipment saved to take there so it appears to at best a" long range goal" and at worst a lot of empty promises to the staff. They are all very discouraged and fustrated and sad. Many did not plan ahead or head the writing on the wall (though some of us saw this coming several years ago) and have no plan "B" and no skills to take elsewhere. In typical Nepali fashion, they live day to day and are saying "now what will we do? How will I finish putting my son through college? How will I pay my rent? how will I eat?"

I did get to share with a large group of staff in their devotions yesterday and encourage them. I shared that 2 ways we KNOW for sure God is with us, is we can look back and see when HE was with us in the past and was faithful time and time again. Since HE NEVER changes we can be sure HE will be with us in the future regardless how bleak. And secondly we have HIS promises! I challeneged them to get a jourrnal and keep a record as they search their Bibles for comfort in this time of trial, to record every promise they read of in the word and refer to that often as well as record all their blessings and proof that God has had their backs in the past!
Tuesday I took 2 Sweedish surgeons and Diane, to Baitadi for a road trip... 90KMs. It was a lot of fun! Some of the highlights were we happened to see 3 wedding parties, 2 of which entertained us for the sake of our cameras, the cow that was eating the sock, our yummy picnic of tuna salad sandwiches and fresh bagels, and the scenic drive in a private taxi!
We visited the district hospital and within 5 minutes the surgeons were pressed into setting fractures on 2 impoverished patients ( ages 10 and 15) and plastering them! They btried to refer them to a hospital in India 45 KMs away but they were too poor to afford to go. The gov hospital had lidocaine but no plaster so the families were sent to run to the "medical" store and return with 4 rolls of plaster and some cotton each and so clinic was conducted on the doctors Chuti ( vacation time!). They also advised on 2 other cases as well before I hurried them out lest they spend their whole afternoon seeing patients.

All in all it was a pleasurable day and eating american Hershy bars and drinking hot Earl Grey tea from a thermos I had brought at the top of a ridge pit stop topped off our excursion. They seemed to appreciate the personal "tour guide explanations"!

Yesterday I took 3 new US foreigners, the 2 Sweedish Drs, and Diane on a local tour through the bazaaar and to buy fabric for local dress. We took them straight to the local tailor to have it all sewn up too. Now they all know where to buy toilet paper so are equipped for another few weeks in Dadeldhura! Perhaps I have a new career opportunity as a tour guide here!
Wel,l better take my drip shower ( hot but no water pressure!) and get down to the bakery to see if Sundari needs help making lunch for all these Bideshis! ( foreigners). There seem to be quite a bunch of us each meal now!
Thanks for your continued prayers!
Diane is off to get some antibiotics at Megh's "Medical". This cold has gone on quite long enough! Several Bideshis and locals all have the same symptoms! Pray for her healing.
I am feeling great! Just impatient on the project issues!

Your nickle's worth of advice today: if you decide to eat socks... make sure you know which side of the laundry they are from!

Blessings,
Dawn Didi

Marching uphill!

The bricks arrived today !!!! Hooray! I was trying not to get discouraged cause it took 6 days to get them here when they kept saying " tomorrow, tomorrow".  But Yo Nepal ho! (it explains how nothing is ever on our western time table or matches our western expectations!)

The truck came just before church and we watched the crew grab 4 at a time and literally thow them off the truck into a pile on the property so  it will be interesting to see how many are actually usable vs broken!

This should mean the contractor and his crew will show up tomorrow and begin construction of the walls! Local concencus is- it should take about a week to get the walls up, another week for the "beams" and another for the roof! Then comes the plumbing, electric and windows and doors! Oh and we forgot about the septic tank... that too! I forgot to budget for that!

I am saying" why me Lord? I really know nothing about construction!" But HE knows what HE is doing... I am just the willing laison. He did provide the hospital maintanace man who is willing to do the plumbing on his day off when the time comes! I am very grateful because plumbers who know what they are doing are very rare out here and Tirtha does know what he is doing!

Diane and I enlisted the help of our landlords teen boys today to paint the inside of the main room of the bakery. We ran out of paint just before we finished the edging... so another trip to the Berger paint store tomorrow! It is looking considerably cleaner and brighter!

The dogs kept us awake most of last night with their barking right outside our windows. Diane got up at 3 AM and got a bucket of water and went outside to douse them but they were up a level, barking, and I don't think she hit her target. Sundari, the landlady, also doused them but to little avail! They are growling now again but it is so much better tonight...so far!

Pray for Diane... she has a bad cold ( not one I gave her! mind you!) she has spent much of her day steaming her face and blowing her nose, poor thing! Pray for total and rapid healing!

Well I am spent after little sleep last night and a lot on my plate today. I am sure wishing Dr Davis was here to fix me up with my shoulder! (Should not have tried to paint the ceiling in the bakery today! I let the teens do most of it...but had to train them the correct way to do it so they didn't splatter paint every where! It is a novelty for them to paint with a roller - a concept and tools I brought from the US!)

Will have to get an appointment with him pronto upon our return in June! He is amazing! Dr Davis, the Craniopath, that is!

Monday I am planing to take 2 Swedish Dr.s and Diane on a day trip to Baitadi about 130 KM away. We will go deeper into the mountains to the Indian border and "see what we can see". Hopefully all the snow ranges will be visible!

Well must lay this weary body horizontal and as I am not much good at typing in that position, this is all for now. Besides it is midnight here.

Drat those beastly dogs... they are barking and growling again... sounds like at least 3 just outside my window! Hopefully they are actually protecting us from something we can't see and not just responding to some far away jackal!

Pray for peace in Dadeldhura the rest of the night!!!!!

Thanks for your prayers!

Dawn Didi

 

 

The guide said RUN!!

Diane and I are currently at Bardia National Forest Preserve. Today we survived an hour of riding just behind the head of an elephant and being charged by a rhino! The guide said RUN we didn't know where to run ... all we saw was the heard of elephants just across the river but we obediently ran in any ole direction... turns out we had disturbed a rhino in the river right below us and it saw us and started coming after us!

We came home by a different route to skirt the possible route it went. 5 rhinos are reportedly living in that area. The guides refused to take us to the main watering hole where at least 3 can be seen most anytime. Their reason " you have to be able to run!" Boy did they size us up huh!

We have also survived flat tires on the wheel chair all the way through 4 airports, Kathmandu traffic and pollution,15 hours on the bus over the Gawdawful roads Nepal has to offer, a rat in the dining room tonight and I am just about over a bad cold/ sore throat and hot trots in the last 24 hours! 

Prem took all our luggage and the wheelchair on the direct bus with him and just learned he made it safely to Dadeldhura but they charged him 3000 rupees for the luggage! He was appallled!

Tomorrow we hope to make it to Dhangadi and buy the doors, windows, toilet, bricks and sinks and arrange for it all to get hauled up the last 5 hours of bad roads, 6 ranges deep into Dadeldhura where the building project is going on.

Thanks for your prayers!

Sunday is the Nepali New Year so we may not get up the hill till Monday!

It is bloomin' hot here in the plains!

Gotta send this before the power dies again!

Love Dawn and Diane

Arrived safely in K-du

We arrived safely in Kathmandu last Friday shortly after noon! It was a great trip cause we got through all the lines in airports so quickly with Diane in the wheelchair God provided for Digri our paraplegic woman! Even immigration in K-du airport was expeditious!
Saturday was a whirlwind of activity making phone calls and buying supplies to take out west.
We are safe and have already experienced a day of bhund ( block where eve3rything is closed) and 3 days of mad shopping and connecting with key people.
Prem and Prakash just arrived and have located our glass blocks... a huge answer to our prayers!
So have to dash now and go pay for them ... so more later!
Thanks for all your prayers and please keep them coming.
Blessings,
Dawn Didi

Raise the roof in 3 days!

Hello my friends, Ever feel like you are in a whirlwind or maybe the tornado like Dorothy of Wizard of Oz? I am imagining what that might actually be like and have determined that as fast as life is coming at me these days... and as dizzy as I feel, I must be in some kind of spinning vortex!
Or is that my head cold speaking?
I really cannot afford to be sick just now!
I have been taking Colloidal Silver but think I better be more aggresive today and add "bug juice" to the mix as well. I didn't want to reek of garlic in the Easter service today so obstained! That stuff is so powerful just the odor is enough to cure what ails ya! Sure works for viruses though!
I don't care about what the people on the flight think about me smelling like a garlic clove! I'll never see them again! But Diane may renounce me before we even hit LA!
My dining room is a disaster! Piles everywhere of stuff to go in the 3 suitcases also stacked in the room! But most everything has been purchased or donated and just needs to go into the cases in some kind of orderly fashion!
That wont happen till Tuesday night! Today after I get off my last 12 hour shift at Hospice for awhile, I have mechanics to yell at ( hypothetically as the trouble they claimed to have fixed is worse than ever!), a computer to pick up that has been rehabed by a friend, calls to make to all my utilities and credit card companies and finally some sleep. When I wake up I will ( joyfully) go see my kids in West Seattle and go out for Thai food ( our way of celebrating Easter and saying fare thee well!).
When I get back on the ferry, I need to go finish the painting job I took on. I am mostly done with the whole house but then there remains this one room where the wall paper removal is just so time consuming... I swear they used rubber cement 50 years ago when they put it up!
Sleep what is sleep! Tuesday is hair cut, Pack and a trip to Kent to see my craniopath! He will free my Right arm that aches so much from scraping popcorn ceilings and painting above my head.
Then comes D day... Wednesday! I am not scheduling anything. The biblical addage " each day has enough trouble of it's own" has proven especially true for days of exit. The less expectations the better. So I am grateful my friends can come get us about 2 :30 PM and whisk us away to the airport for our flight to LA. We have about 3 hours to kill before boarding for Seoul, Korea. 3 more hours there before boarding for Kathmandu and about 23 flight hours from leaving Seatac we expect to arrive in K-du.
Good thing I can sleep on a plane eh?
Thanks to the many of you that have prayed and contributed to the adventure yet to be!
We are waiting for our waterbed heaters to arrive Tuesday, Lowes gave me half off on the faucets we needed and we are waiting for a couple pledges for a door and a big window. We have funds for all the bricks we should need! And $830 has come in through the events of last weekend ( thank you to the wonderful angels in Allyn!) out of the $3000 needed for the roof.
If you havent been blessed yet to be a part of this crazy mission, could you please prayerfully open your hearts and piggy banks... I know 3 days is enough for God to bring in the remainder through His people who know this is HIS important work.
My bad... in previous emails I failed to mention an address you could use to send in your donation. My mother pointed this out! Thanks MOM!
I forget not everyone knows or goes to our web site where there is an address posted for snail mail. it is : Dare to Care
435 N Alfred St
Elgin Ill, 60123

On the web site: www.DaretoCareInc.com there is a paypal link to use a credit card if you so choose.
Thanks for your generousity and changing the lives of these lovely women with your love and gifts! We who take so much for granted, can really make an impact here!
Well toodles for now. I will try to write next from the airport enroute! Keep those prayers coming!
Dawn Didi and Diane Didi ( she will have to get used to being called that!.. it means big sister!)