Wednesday, August 15, 2007
Where??
Not Poland. Not India. Nepal - a country that is a northern next door neighbor of India. The north has Himalayan mountains, including Mt. Everest (that's obviously not the Nepali name for it), while the southern parts are lowlands called Terai (where the flooding you saw on the news has been occurring lately). I will be working at a hospital called Anandaban about 15 kilometers south of the capital city of Kathmandu - which is inbetween the extremely high mountain areas and the lowland areas. If you want to see a map, click on the link below and then type in "Kathmandu, Nepal."
http://maps.google.com/
Anandaban Hospital also has a website which you can visit.
http://www.tlmnepal.org/
Here are some other blogs/articles that mention visits to Anandaban and show pictures.
http://nepaltrek.spaces.live.com/Blog/cns!F810AA012531CE!331.entry
http://www.leprosymission.org.uk/html/documents/JohnBarrattatAnandaban-edited.pdf
Friday, August 10, 2007
Kids etc.
Many of the people that will actually see this blog will be kids - or were kids -that I love from over years of children's ministry. Here are some of the pictures that I currently have saved on my computer. You don't like yours?? Maybe it means I need better ones BEFORE I LEAVE!!! Care to help me with that? If you do not see your picture, don't worry. I will be cleaning out my apartment soon and am sure to be going through some old ones - which can easily be scanned and posted as well. And no, I do not think this can technically be called "blackmail."
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Saturday, August 4, 2007
TLM and the London Interview
Thank you for all of your prayers and encouragement! The interview went very well, concluding with the question, "Did you know that you are an answer to prayer?" God had set every minute detail up in advance, and you were given the pleasure of knowing it. He is immeasurably good, yes?
This is what The Leprosy Mission (TLM) headquarters look like.
Side view from the front steps of the guest house.
I stayed within the guesthouse across the street. It is like a 3 story townhouse (most homes I saw in London look like a townhouse). TLM set it up like a minihotel with 5 guest rooms. There is a common living area, kitchen etc. with a couple of bathrooms. I will be staying there when I return for training.
There is a bus pickup point and a train station practically within sight just down the road.
Side view from the front steps of the guest house.
I stayed within the guesthouse across the street. It is like a 3 story townhouse (most homes I saw in London look like a townhouse). TLM set it up like a minihotel with 5 guest rooms. There is a common living area, kitchen etc. with a couple of bathrooms. I will be staying there when I return for training.
There is a bus pickup point and a train station practically within sight just down the road.
Train tracks in the center of the picture.
From the same point, looking back at the headquarters (center).
After this overpass, there is a lovely little path leading down to the train station. Blackberries were ripening along the fence.
The basement room I stayed in. I don't know that I care for the extra wide angle lens that came with the camera...
The kitchen. Look - a washer and dryer! Two other guests were also rooming in the guesthouse. Both were from India and had come for three years training in accounting and finance in order to return and work at the TLM headquarters in Dehli, India. I ate some excellent homemade curry and other Indian foods while there. Forget the utensils. Have you ever eaten rice with your hands? It was indeed "finger licking good." Hopefully, I will get to learn how to cook some of it when I return for training.
Upstairs common area.
Living area.
Basement bathroom. Notice the box to the right of the shower head? It heats the water. It must be turned on and off whenever the shower is used.
View out the kitchen window into the tiny back yard. Someone was trying to make it into an English garden.
These are two of the people that interviewed me. One spent decades as a nurse and health worker in Papua, New Guinea and Ethiopia and the other spent decades in Bangladesh as a doctor alongside her surgeon husband. The two other interview panel members connected by phonelink from Dehli, India and Sydney, Australia.
There were approximately 20 people working within the headquarters. Everyone was incredibly kind. My "accent" seemed particularly interesting to some, and one even asked me to "lay it on thick" while I was there so that she could learn it. There were people from many different nations working there. I loved it. I was able to attend their daily prayer meetings every morning. Employees take turns daily leading, choosing a song or hymn and then giving a short word, story or scripture. They then read the prayer point for the day from the TLM calendar and open the floor for prayer for anything else. You can well imagine that I liked it. This kind of thing happens at every Leprosy Mission site every day. :)
Friday, August 3, 2007
Can you guess what the blog title refers to?
Give me your best guess. It does have something to do with a particular Bible story. I'll come back in a few days and give another clue on this same post... if necessary. :)
Trip to London
My trip to London yielded many excellent photos as I dashed about trying to take in as much as I could in the short amount of time available for sightseeing (mostly Monday afternoon). I rode a double decker tour bus, the tube (underground), trains, and a narrated river boat. I rode the London Eye (world's largest observation wheel that can hold up to a total of 800 people at a time within its glass pods) and walked about central London, viewing the parliament buildings, Big Ben, St. Margaret's Chapel, Westminster Abbey and a brief walk in Piccadilly Square.
I tried the famous fish & chips, which also came with "mushy peas" (which were not very mushy). The box is half the size of the typical packages in the U.S (so the fish was a little larger than my hand). Everything there seems to cost twice as much as it does in the U.S. A bottle of brand name shampoo that you typically buy at Walmart for $2-3 will cost roughly $6 there. Was it like that during the days of Ebenezer Scrooge? Maybe he wasn't completely without reason. A typical lunch cost ~$16. That's about as cheap as you're going to find it.
Every site had centuries of history associated with it. London Bridge. St. Margaret's had people buried beneath the floor. You walk upon their epitaph. Inscriptions on the walls in memory to people from centuries before. There was a house one of Henry the 8th's wives designed for them to live in, but he did not allow her to live to see it finished. The street Mozart wrote such and such symphony. The French can ride an underground train under the channel between Britain and France; however when they arrive and first set foot in England, it is in a train terminal called Waterloo - the site where the British defeated the French in battle. St. Thomas Hospital had seven separate buildings (wards), each one accepted admits for each day of the week; but all the weekday buildings were bombed in WWII.
Westminster Abbey. 
The London drawbrige and a ship form WWII on the Thames river (pronounced "Tim's"). It takes 90 seconds to raise. It allows ships in, but they have to pay a toll to leave.
Lomdon Bridge. The original London Bridge was dismantled, moved and reassembled somewhere in Arizona. 
This is some ship that has sailed around the world, perhaps "The Hind". Sorry, there were so many details available and I could only take in so much so fast.
The Parliament Buildings with Big Ben (clock actually named after a short, bell shaped construction worker named Ben that helped to install it).
This is just to the left (upriver) of the parliament buildings. Whenever an official was convicted and condemned, he was escorted out of the building and down to this site on the river to take perhaps his last boat ride down the Thames to the infamous Tower of London.
The tower of London looks more like a castle.
I heard someone say that 2 million people live in London; however, on any given day, there are 8 million people in the city. You know why? International visitors - tourists or on business. Whenever I went out, I was not surrounded by British people with British accents; but rather, people from a multitude of nations. Customs at Heathrow airport had longer lines than any other I've seen, and Americans were a definite minority among the Asians, Middle Easterners, and Africans in the non-European Union line. Believe it or not, after walking about London for most of the day, I slept pretty good that night.
I tried the famous fish & chips, which also came with "mushy peas" (which were not very mushy). The box is half the size of the typical packages in the U.S (so the fish was a little larger than my hand). Everything there seems to cost twice as much as it does in the U.S. A bottle of brand name shampoo that you typically buy at Walmart for $2-3 will cost roughly $6 there. Was it like that during the days of Ebenezer Scrooge? Maybe he wasn't completely without reason. A typical lunch cost ~$16. That's about as cheap as you're going to find it.
Every site had centuries of history associated with it. London Bridge. St. Margaret's had people buried beneath the floor. You walk upon their epitaph. Inscriptions on the walls in memory to people from centuries before. There was a house one of Henry the 8th's wives designed for them to live in, but he did not allow her to live to see it finished. The street Mozart wrote such and such symphony. The French can ride an underground train under the channel between Britain and France; however when they arrive and first set foot in England, it is in a train terminal called Waterloo - the site where the British defeated the French in battle. St. Thomas Hospital had seven separate buildings (wards), each one accepted admits for each day of the week; but all the weekday buildings were bombed in WWII.
Westminster Abbey.
The London drawbrige and a ship form WWII on the Thames river (pronounced "Tim's"). It takes 90 seconds to raise. It allows ships in, but they have to pay a toll to leave.
Lomdon Bridge. The original London Bridge was dismantled, moved and reassembled somewhere in Arizona.
This is some ship that has sailed around the world, perhaps "The Hind". Sorry, there were so many details available and I could only take in so much so fast.
The Parliament Buildings with Big Ben (clock actually named after a short, bell shaped construction worker named Ben that helped to install it).
This is just to the left (upriver) of the parliament buildings. Whenever an official was convicted and condemned, he was escorted out of the building and down to this site on the river to take perhaps his last boat ride down the Thames to the infamous Tower of London.
The tower of London looks more like a castle.
I did not get to see much of Buckingham Palace. Apparently it is considered a major occurrence for one of the bus tour guides to spot royalty over the walls from the double decker bus (he said another operator had seen the princes playing tennis but he had never been able to catch sight of them on a tour).
One of the gates leading to Buckingham Palace.
There are old buildings and churches everywhere.
I heard someone say that 2 million people live in London; however, on any given day, there are 8 million people in the city. You know why? International visitors - tourists or on business. Whenever I went out, I was not surrounded by British people with British accents; but rather, people from a multitude of nations. Customs at Heathrow airport had longer lines than any other I've seen, and Americans were a definite minority among the Asians, Middle Easterners, and Africans in the non-European Union line. Believe it or not, after walking about London for most of the day, I slept pretty good that night.
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