….plans to give you a hope and a future.”

Jeremiah 29:11


I find these words running through my mind, as we are making plans to return to Kathmandu to live and for Bucky to work in the HDCS office there. And so, almost a year to the day of arriving on Bucky’s birthday last February, on Thursday, February 10, we are moving from our little community in Besishahar and the Lamjung Community District Hospital, all under the shadow of the Lamjung Himal.

The process of leaving has begun. As a parting tribute to them, let me introduce you to some people with whom we relate: the people we will be missing when we leave Besishahar, the relationships we will be sad to end.

Our day starts with the arrival of the bread man, pushing his cart, and selling buns made daily and small loaves of bread. Every day before breakfast, I go downstairs to meet him with money for his bread.

After spending the first half of the morning with Yub Raj, the hospital director, in his office, Bucky has tea at Gupta’s shop and later goes to the stationery shop to get our daily newspaper.

Meanwhile, I can be seen buying eggs from the shop across the road from where we live; or buying fruit at Bishnu’s shop, and then sitting in the winter sun with his wife, Sarswati, to get warm.  With yet two more stationery shops across the corner from each other, I get photocopying done at one shop, and buy my phone recharge card at another.  I often spend time chatting with the local seamstress whose feet are moving a mile a minute as she sews on her trundle sewing machine.  Walking back to our apartment, I greet the moms who are holding their small children in their arms, and try to get their little ones to smile by calling myself their “white face grandmother.” Everyone who hears my words laughs with me!

We occasionally go to Gori’s shop for our Nepali lunch meal of rice, lentils, vegetable and chicken curry.

On Thursday mornings, 6 women come to our house for a Bible Study. A few are illiterate but come to enjoy the reading and discussion of the Bible Study.

Saturdays we go to the little Baptist church at which Bucky has preached several times and administers communion. This handful of Christians really enjoys singing and praising God during the prayer time.

Then after church, we often walk a bit farther up the hill to this new believer and sister-in-Christ’s shop. At her shop we can get more “western-type” food from Kathmandu, which the shops around our apartment don’t carry.

I wrote about the landlord’s family, (see Ashika, Aama and Surekala Journal) with whom we relate daily. Ashika, the 4 year-old daughter, continues to bring us joy as she confidently comes into our apartment to play “store” with our various containers of nuts and raisins, or making “bubble tea” with a tea strainer, soap and water.  (She got mumps this week, poor thing.)

And so with sadness in our hearts from leaving these friends, and many more unmentioned, we move forward believing God knows His plan for us. 

Our prayers will continue for the staff at the hospital, as it ministers as a light in this community; for the little church and the women from the Bible Study, as they grow in their faith; and for this new Christian sister as she begins her new life in God’s family.

May you rest in the confidence that God knows His plan for you, too.

Carole