Life in Tansen... a quick glimpse!

Thank you to ALL who have faithfully visited this blog and for leaving us such warm and encouraging comments! We've only been in Tansen for 2 weeks now, but God has truly blessed us in that time.  Once you know what to look for and how to appreciate it, it's amazing just how many blessings He brings into each moment of every day. We praise Him for His sovereign plan and continue to pray that we may humbly, obediently, and joyfully walk in the footsteps He has laid before us!

To give you an idea of what our lives may look like while we are out here, we'll tell you a bit about our schedules and then of course, show you some photos! But first, here are a few things to keep in mind about daily life out here:
- The Nepali work week starts on Sunday, and it is a 6 day work week. Saturday is their only "weekend" day off, so that is the day we will be worshipping in a church service.
- The Nepali calendar is rather different than ours. For example, today is May 1st 2011 on our calendar, but out here, today is in fact January 20-something 2068. Needless to say, it gets a bit confusing when reading charts in the hospital as they are dated by the Nepali calendar, versus keeping track of birthdays and anniversaries of our friends and family back home on the more universal calendar.
- The language still seems just as foreign to us as it was a month ago. But the people are very gracious and patient in trying to understand what we are attempting to convey. We have learned there are some important distinctions to be made between very similar-sounding words. For example, the word for chicken is "kukhuraa" but the word for dog is "kukkur."So when buying chicken meat to eat, it is very important to ask for "kukhuraako maasu" (meat of chicken) and NOT "kukkurko maasu" (dog meat)! Fortunately, they don't eat or sell dog meat, but they would look at us quite funny and think we are from some strange country in which we do eat dog meat.

Tom is working in the hospital 5 days a week. The "bideshi" (foreign) missionaries are granted the understanding that where we come from, we do not work 6 days per week. So he will have Saturdays off plus one other day during the week that changes from week to week. The morning devotional and "hand-over" meeting before rounds begins at 7:45am, then they round on the wards. The afternoons are committed to staffing the various outpatient clinics. Then the work day should end around 5:15pm. But as with most places in the world, they never really finish the work day on time.

Kim is working in the "Physio Department" on Tuesdays and Fridays from 9am to 5pm. Sunday afternoons she will be spending a couple of hours with the 3rd Year Nursing students in fellowship, to help them with their English, and to practice her Nepali. Monday afternoons she will be serving in the Children's Library for a few hours. It is an after-school program for the local children to come do their homework, learn English, learn music, and have a safe and supervised place to play. It is run by one amazing Christian Korean woman, Sonya, and her two Nepali staff members. Some days they have up to 70 children, so having more hands on deck is rather helpful for them! Thursdays will be devoted to taking care of the home. As the daily chores of cooking, cleaning, shopping, and laundry take MUCH longer without cars, washing machines, dishwashers, and microwaves, Kim is most grateful to have some time during the week to take care of the home and to make sure Tom gets to eat after a long day in the hospital!

We will be moving into a larger "apartment" later today in which there is a kitchen with a counter top gas burner on which we can boil our own water, a large toaster oven of sorts in which you can bake bread, and an actual table at which we can sit to eat our meals. There is even a wall-mounted water purifier that we can use for drinking water (if the electricity is on). It will be quite a blessing to have a kitchen sink so that we don't have to wash our dishes, our laundry, and ourselves all in one tiny bathroom!

Now on to the photos... Enjoy!