Before we head off to the mountains...

This will be our last blog post from Kathmandu. We're all currently sitting in the lounge area of our hotel fully packed for a trek up into the mountains. The past few days have been packed full and we've had very little time to update this. We're all doing well in terms of health and well being so hopefully that's a good start to the trekking part of our trip. Today we will be going to Rani Pawa (drive) and trek to Matra Gaun for a couple of hours. A 'loosener' trek according to Graydon. We'll be joined by some Nepali translators, a great cook and a few others. It'll be a fairly large group.

The view from Tim's hotel room

 

A Buddha statue at Swayambhu Stupa

All them stairs... 400+

Just monkeying around

Keeping watch over the city

Gold everywhere

The view from the top of Monkey Temple, prayer flags fluttering in the wind

Baby monkey - so many wrinkles

This 'monkey temple' (Swayambhu Stupa) is best known for its monkeys and the 400+ steps it takes to get up. The view from the top was breathtaking however. Amazing! 

We were fortunate to meet a lady who was selling paintings in her store next to the temple - she had some paintings with bible verses on them which caught our attention. She was a christian and it was incredible to see her witness so close to a Buddhist temple. 

Playing with our technology

At GRN playing the Good News in Nepali. Graydon is keen.

 We were privileged enough to join in the devotions at GRN Nepal. They have them everyday with some singing and they each take turns to teach something from God's Word. We then played around with the Saber players and the picture books to familiarise ourselves with them and the process of using them.

Puppet show at Teach. They develop teaching materials for Sunday schools in Nepal

Early Childhood Education Centre. 

The ECEC was an amazing organisation that worked with young pre school aged kids. They are trying to reform the Nepali education system which is based on rote learning to a system that encourages children to think critically and analyse concepts and grow in their self confidence. Colin and Kimjeng really enjoyed this organisation.

The view from Operation Mobilisation's office in Nepal - who wants to go on short term mission here?

OM is a large world wide organisation (best known for the ships such as Doulos) that have a base in Nepal. They run training courses for local Nepalis and do village evangelism and also some sustainability projects in the area.

The view from the other side of OM - did this seal the deal?

That white capped mountain that you can see in the middle (slightly to the right), we'll be climbing up that close (ish) to the top. It just looks so FAR away!