So much to do, so little time

4/18/2010

Some of you have had trouble getting onto our blog... this is an overview and since much of this is sensitive I cannot post it on the blog! We need your urgent prayers for Nepal... especially the next 3 days and beyond! It is a volatile time. Many are taking a huge stand for their faith this next three days! They need you to stand in the gap for them! Please get your kneepads on and read the following!

Mr. D… just returned to Seattle after 3 months here in Nepal. Most of his work was down in the terrai/ plains where he was assisting the leper community we adopted last year. Last year he helped them dig an irrigation well by hand it took four and a half months and dug down 100 feet before water shot up 90 feet and so that is all going well. He will be posting a report very soon now that he is home in Seattle and internet is more accessible. He also helped them build a fellowship building and we saw that under roof just before we left last May. This year he helped those same 72 families start new seed farms and kitchen gardens and about 8 families qualified for our new animal husbandry initiative... sort of a microloan concept but with the added stipulation they share their first female offspring and the education and the gospel with a family poorer than they are in their immediate community or the next village. He thinks it is going well and is pleased with the progress.

We are both trying to work with a few leaders here in the hills in Dadeldhura to begin the first radio broadcast in the local dialect to carry the "Message". It will be called Kushi Ko Kura or "Happy News". Your intersession for getting this off the ground would be greatly appreciated! We have about a month's worth of programming together... then the key man doing most of the recording and technical stuff took off for a few weeks! He got back last night so we hope to get a little more programming under our belts and then dive in! I'm praying we can get it launched before I leave end of May.

I am trying to co-ordinate a music competition for xian songs in the local dialect. We are inviting all the local fellowships that speak this dialect to participate and hope to have a day about a month from now, where all songs/poems will be recorded and judged and all rights for broadcasting them on our FM station slot will be reserved. Prizes for the top 3 songs will be given and a great time of sharing and fun and snacks etc will complete the day. Please lift this concern up as well. It will fill in a lot of gaps around our messages!

I continue to work with a few local women that started in our trainings and microloan programs last year. Two of the women are paraplegics and have been producing a great bounty of knitted products which we try to market in Kathmandu and the U.S. We would love a few more steady accounts to market these items!

I am also training a new lady to run her own bakery. It will be the first of its kind in all far western Nepal. They are hoping to turn it into the first xian coffee shop/ bakery in far west (Starbucks?) The building is ready for a roof (they are having trouble affording it, but we trust the Lord to provide). We collected enough to help them with a microloan for an industrial oven to get started. I am also ordering a small fridge for the Dare to Care apartment that they will use for the bakery till they can afford their own. We will let them use all the pots, pans, spatulas, etc. S…. and I have been having baking lessons twice a week and then testing recipes with locally available ingredients. It must be sustainable to survive!

Ms. S…… has agreed to teach the microloan concept and business management to others for their own small businesses as she repays the loan for the oven from her profits. Two days ago she announced too many in the neighborhood she was making yeast bread and they could place orders a day in advance and begin purchasing. She has sold 5 loaves in the last 2 days. She will do a pizza fest on Saturday and invite 12 or more to come and taste her products. She also plans to take her products to the four local hotels and convince them they should order for their guests! She seems highly motivated ... rare here in Nepal!

The roads have been Bhund (closed) for the last 3 days so my fridge remains to be delivered.

The roads opened again this evening so many are traveling tonight. Several million believers from 75 Jzilla's (districts) are in route to Kathmandu for a huge showing. The Maoists are in charge of designing the new Nepali Constitution and believers want a voice so they are meeting for a 3 day rally in the heart of Katmandu to make their presence known and to ask for representation in the new constitution! This is huge! Please intercede for their safety, not only in travel, but during the rally with the high visibility from a hostile leadership in command.

Two nights ago at the start of the Bhund, I was walking back from the bazaar at dusk and was met on the road by about 100 M's running, shouting, and carrying flaming torches. It was a little frightening! But He is faithful and I am safe. I heard they set a few tires on fire to start their Bhund and let the community know they mean business!

We regularly claim Psalm 91 here! Please claim it with us and for us!

Hope this fills you in a little. So much to do! So little time!
Till all have heard!

We (Dare to Care) have 2 different women's ministries.

2/7/10

1)         5 women in outer Kathmandu who have been trying to support their families making bricks...just like in Pharaoh are time... with mud and straw. Funny it just doesn't cut it and they cannot make ends meet. A believer named Y.., has taken it upon herself to teach these women how to bead and I have encouraged them with new designs and a US market to improve on what they had already started so they are pumped with what they can now accomplish for the sake of their families. All 5 have now become believers and are eager to share their faith with others!

2)         Way out in far western Nepal, over 30 hours of bad road on the bus and 4 mountain ranges in from the plains, is the main area of my focus. I teach income generation skills primarily to widows and single mothers. This translates into teaching knitting, crocheting, beading and sewing to as many as 40 different women. We have selected 5 women in the past to offer microloans and try to teach them how to start their own little business. Two of these women are paraplegic castaways that have been at the hospital for 12/20 years and to date cannot support themselves. They lay in waterbeds and knit or crochet on their stomachs! We are trying to show them how to have their own small businesses but they keep eating all the profits!
Another woman in our micro-loan program (age 46?) has had 24 children in her life... only 1 is still alive! All the others have died! Can you imagine???

Last year two new women believed in Christ as their Savior and we are trying to encourage them and disciple these new ones in their walk with the Lord in an antagonistic community.

On this trip I intend to help my landlady, start her own microloan business. She dreams of starting her own bakery and Christian coffee house. The local church would support her and help her evangelize there and she is bold for the Lord! We just raised enough to help her buy an industrial oven and are trying to gather enough to help her get a small refrigerator. We have $110 out of the $300 needed for that! So she is excited and ready to start.

We picked her as she has good money management skills, is a quick learner and a natural teacher. She will be an excellent role model for working out the concepts of the microloans and teaching others how to apply them practically. She is highly motivated to share Christ and can be one who networks many others together. She also has a pulse on the homeless, the truly impoverished and guides me to the ones who are really needy, not just those who have their hands out!

We know she will play the new gospel recordings for the radio program in her cafe and will boldly proclaim where few have dared before! God has put a few pivotal people in our path to work His mission and she is definitely one of them!

Pray for us all as we use every class, connection and opportunity to share the Love of Christ with these precious women.

We have found that if you give a man a fish you feed him for a day. If you teach a man to fish you feed him for a lifetime, but if you teach a woman how to fish she will teach her whole village to be well fed for life!

I'd also like to work with the leper women in the community where D… is working with the agriculture and animal husbandry projects/ seed farms. Pray for an opportunity to encourage them as well! It is a 5 hour rough road trip to that village in the foothills of the Himalayas.

Please pray for our other projects too, the brand new radio ministry designed to reach women and children in the far west in their very own dialect, the orphanage run in Kathmandu with 19 adorable but needy children in it, and for encouragement of 13 college youth to be the best they can be and grow in the Lord. These youth are the future of Nepal and worthy of any way we can invest in them!

Thanks for letting me share and for lifting us up before the throne of grace. It is an awesome responsibility and privilege to be "on the mission" in this remote area of the Himalayas.
Warmly,
Dawn

Open Doors for Ministry

Thank you for your continuing partnership in reaching out to the people of Nepal. God has uniquely blessed DTC with many opportunities for ministry, and He is continuing to open doors for other areas of impact.

As the Lord leads you, please continue to remember these projects in prayer.

· The Western Nepal Radio Ministry: The Church in Daneldhura plan on having the first Broadcast in the Spring of 2010. This will be the first Gospel Message to be broadcast in the Dotiali language, and the first time millions of people will hear the Good News in their own dialect. Please pray that they will understand that they are loved and that they matter to God! We need $1200 for start up costs and then $500/month to keep it going. We are very excited about this opportunity. Pray for God’s Guidance.

· The Agricultural Training and Seed Garden Projects: The gardens are entering their second season now, and making them into a self-supporting concern is the current focus. We are collecting funds for seeds ($50 for a community of 40 families), and small hand tools ($10 - $20 each) and diesel to run the irrigation pump when necessary. It is a blessing to now have the irrigation well working that you prayed for last trip. We are very grateful for that completed project thanks to your gifts and prayers!

· The Micro Business Projects: The balance for the Bazaar Funds is being funneled back into the projects where the women who made these sweaters/ hats/ necklaces etc. Pray for each woman that has made these items and for their families that their faith might be strengthened.

· The Western Nepal Widow Evangelism Project: Response to the Gospel and the start of a Discipleship program.

· The Leper Community Animal Husbandry Project: Dave has started this effort when he returned on 12/30/2009. The goal is to provide a breeding pair of baby goats ($75 each), piglets ($25 each) or chickens ($15 each) and to teach their owners how to care for them. The first healthy female offspring is to be donated to a neighbor who doesn't know Jesus. They are to not only share the animal but also the gospel of Christ and His love. Pray that we will find test families to qualify and comply ( i.e. not cook the chicken for dinner before it lays eggs and produces offspring!)

To keep up with Dawn’s journeys and other D2C news, search for “Dare to Care” on FaceBook and/or Twitter

Sneaky Sneaky

I snuck past the Bhundh early in the morning on Wednesday in Chitwan and made it to Kathmandu without incident about noon the same day! It was kind of a gutsy thing to do but several of the staff sat the Cancer Hospital were very specific about how it could be done and if you get up really early before the tribal people manning the bhund show up to guard their road block of burning tires or big rocks you can sometimes sneak past and get through!
For those of you not really clear about all these Bhundhs I've been writing about Sorry... a bhundh is a road block where all motorized traffic is prohibited from moving past a given point. They block traffic and sometimes shut down the bazzar too. Sometimes bicycles and those on foot are permitted to pass. These are often political strikes or just a group protesting a cause or even the death of someone in an accident in the past! It is a way for the common people to obtain a voice and exhert some control over the government as there is only one road out of K-du going west and it is this East - West Highway. All economic trade comes and goes through India and Nepal on this road so it is pretty effective to dominate it. It cripples Kathmandu after about a week as they run out of fuel and food past that!

There remains 5 -6 locations across this highway where the Tharu people ( a tribal group) are making the bhundhs so even if I flew out to Dhangadi ( the last airstrip west) and tried to get trough there they have blocked the road going up the mountain and i'd get stuck in blistering hot Dhangadi so I've called Dave and strategized and we have agreed I'd do best to sit tight here in K-du tilll they reopen the roads. At least it is not so hot here! I do have the downside of paying about $25/day for hotel and food though so pray it will get resolved soon! Also we have the compounded challenge of 12- 16 hours without power here so I'd betted dash this off not knowing just when the "load shedding" starts today!

I do so appreciate all your prayers and hope to see many of you in about a month as Dave and I return to Seattle!
He is still working on the well... they are going deeper but still no water.. the manager of the project himself fell in to the well ( 20 feet) and got banged up really good but no broken bones! so that has delayed progress! If it is not one thing it is another!

Infestation

I thought since I'm all but confined to the city of Kathmandu I'd catch you up on a few loose details from the last few weeks.

I tried to get to Jawlekhel, the other end of city I normally stay at today, but got part way down the road and the taxi ran into a "jamm" which means a traffic block. ( to be differentiated by a bhundh by the fact that it is expected to clear in due time as it is just traffic or a vehicular cause versus an intentional blocking of the road for an indefinite period!) We found a back alley after inching along a few blocks and he took it, only to find another jamm just ahead! After about an hour of being stuck in the jam and only inching a few blocks he discovered by climbing out of the taxi and up on the roof, that indeed it was a Bhundh and we were going no where fast! Up ahead there were clouds of black smoke and evidently several roads were obstructed with burning tires as protesters were/are rallying against the Moaistgovernment decision to sack the current chief of army staff against the wishes of many other political parties. So we retreated and returned to my hotel in Thamel! It is never ending frustration.

I had a lemon soda and decided to make "lemonade" out of my afternoon!

I had chowmein for lunch with chicken momos ( Tibetan dumplings) which put me in a much better mood! I then took a bunch of the muffler /hat sets my students have crocheted and took them store to store till I got 2 stores to agree to buy them and market them here! (not bad for 6 contacts and an an hours work!) One store bought 10 sets out right and the other agreed to take 10 of my remaining 15 in 2 days after things settle here politically... all shop keepers are afraid things may get nasty and they all close their stores and wait it out till tempers die down and things are quiet and they can freely do business without worrying about protesters throwing rocks at their shops or vandalizing them! So looks like we could have to really lay low here in addition to dealing with the Bhundhs all over the nation!

So that is the climate here at present... I'm in no immediate danger as long as I stay away from main roads and if all the shops close down we will hibernate indoors and I'll read a book or something!

I want to update you on the Chitwan experience... I was there at the Cancer Hospital for 8 days waiting for Daya Madam, the head honcho, to come from K-du and receive me, show me around and interview me for her idea of combining Natural Therapies with current Cancer protocols and offering Alternatives to the many with Cancer that cannot afford Surgery, Chemo and Radiation all of which they do at this center. However with the Bhundh starting the day I arrived, she never did! So after 8 days ( by which point I was getting very bored and terribly wilted from the heat!) I decided to move on. A good move it turns out! I was able to connect with Daya Madam here in K-du and invite her for pizza ( not bad considering the Nepali take on the dish!). We had a lovely evening and found we are very compatible on many issues with a similar heart for poor Nepali people and she promised to go back to Chitwan and "talk me up" to her board and chief of staff there and really wants me to not only come and teach them Natural Healing there, but help them develop a rural prevention program where we would do educational programs village to village and offer free pap smears and follow up to women. (Cervical Cancer is the #1 cancer here followed by colo-rectal then breast and lung Ca.)
So we will see if she follows through!

While in Chitwan I met Ganga, the 13 year old girl with the huge facial and temporal tumor... I made her Neem/ Garlic oil after much trouble finding olive oil there ( primarily cause we couldn't get to the big bazaar till the 7th day!) and I delivered it to her the night before I left and taught Manju(the nurse and my hostess) how to make it... indeed we made a huge batch together that last night. I hope to call Manju tonight and see what kind of success Ganga is having with the oil. I also gave half of our first batch to another woman with spinal cancer that had not had good post op care and has a host of deep bed sores so she is trying the remedy too! I'm eager to hear of their progress!

I wrote about the bedbugs not minding all the garlic I ate while the mosquitoes responded well to the preventive approach. The roaches were a whole 'nother story!!!!! I teased Manju that they were her "friends"! She was working night shift one night, and I was watching American Idol followed by Lost ( believe it or not!) when a 3 inch roach scurried under my feet and another flew across the room. I could hear a few more scuttling in the kitchen and I just lost it! I got up from the couch and whooped and holler'd a little and found a box of "medicine" for roaches I had purchased for NRS 25 (about 30 cents) that day ... it was some kind of chalk... you draw 2 -3 parallel lines around the base of the cabinets, drains or walls and "watch what happens" read the box... in 3-4 hours you will see evidence of success! holy cow... they weren't kidding! I drew chalk lines every where in the kitchen, living room, bathroom, dining room and went back to watching "Lost" trying to ignore the sound effects!

An hour later one scurried to within 4 inches of my feet and flipped over... I whacked it with my slipper x5 thinking for sure this 4 inch creature must be dead... an hour later it was gone!!!! and I didn't know where!
Some time later I dared to get up and discovered the first casualty being carried by an army of tiny ( almost microscopic) ants clear across the dining room! There were up to 6 of its comrades doing the backstroke between the parallel lines I had drawn! Amazing! I tiptoed around them all not sure which were totally dead you know! ( if you watch Princess Bride you know there are degrees of being almost dead and other kinds of dead!) Besides I wanted Manju to see her friends one last time and have the opportunity to grieve appropriately!
She came home the next morning and could barely contain herself... there is a primal squeal that self emits from females in the presence of extra large roaches and she was not exempt! She promptly got a broom and swept them all up... I shared I once knew how to make cockroach stew... she declined and decided all the ants were then my friends! So it went !

Well the power just went here in the cybercafe so I have 3 minutes of battery power to get this sent so ....sionara!!!!! more later eh?
Wishing you all an infestation free day!