rangi-changi!

at the top of the hillside village of Bagnas

"Rangi-changi" is one of those phrases in the Nepali language that seems to perfectly describe its meaning through the way it sounds as it rolls off your tongue. In English, it means "colorful." Aside from becoming one of our favorite things to say ("bango-tingo" describing a winding/curvy road, is a close second), we felt the term would be fitting to sum up the miscellaneous nature of this blog post.

As I'm sure you can all imagine from the photos and posts thus far, God has been growing us, stretching us, and teaching us countless lessons in our time here. One of which, and perhaps the most valuable, has come from our time in the hospital. Because we are both in the medical field, we are professionally trained to quantify information, obtain objective measures, and document tangible results. When a patient comes in, we obtain information, create a problem list, consider all possible causes of said problems, determine the most likely candidate for the problems, discern the course of treatment to resolve said problems, and finally, re-assess to see if what you did actually helped resolve the problems. 

In the mission field, we're finding how tempting it is to approach ministry in much the same way we approach our professions. The danger there is we identify "the problems" (i.e. what are the needs), think of all the ways we can help fill the need, attempt to implement the necessary changes, and then in the end, want to quantify "the results." Where in all of those steps did we recognize that only God is sovereign, and only God can provide the result He has already planned for? And where do we leave room to trust in His results and His timing, and be okay with the knowledge that we may not see "the end result" of His works?

Probably one of the biggest blessings of combining our professional skills with ministry work is that we see "our work" in a much different light. Instead of being focused on productivity and patient outcomes, we realize that every patient and family we interact with is purely an opportunity to love people the way God loved us first. As Christians, we find our strength and desire to love people because God first loved us. He loved us so much that He sent His Son, Jesus Christ, to suffer His wrath and judgement for all of our sins in our place. Then, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ, we are given all the grace and mercy of a relationship with the Father through the Son so that we may live new lives with eternal promise. In light of the Gospel and such a sacrificial love on our behalf, we clearly see now that the very least we can do is in fact the very best we can do for these patients and their families. And that is to demonstrate God's love through the way we love them. 

"that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith -- that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with the fullness of God."

~ Ephesians 3:16-19 ~

We praise God for revealing His truth in such a powerful and tangible way. And it is our prayer to continue to seek the good of others through the way we love them wherever God has us in this great world of His. We thank you all for loving us and demonstrating the blessing of being loved by others. Through your white board messages, your emails, your blog comments, your Facebook comments/messages, your care packages, and your prayers, God truly is using each of you in a unique way to sustain and encourage us so we may be the part of the Body of Christ that serves the patient population of Tansen Mission Hospital with love. Your love and prayers may feel like the least you can do, but we've seen and experienced quite clearly that it truly is the best you can do on behalf of others!

And now for some more photos! Warning: towards the end of the photos, there are a few "creepy crawly critters" we've encountered thus far, so if you're squeamish, please disregard the last few photos. Enjoy! 

The Physio Department (back row, left to right): Niraj, Rajendra, Simon Wetzig (Dr. Graham's son from Australia visited for two weeks for vacation/volunteering); (front row, left to right): Paras, Pratima, Kim

this was the little guy both of us had the blessing to know for a couple of weeks; Tom worked with the family to put on some weight (he is in fact 11 months old), and Kim worked with the family to get him caught up on his gross motor skills; after a lot of prayer and care, he left the hospital a little bit heavier and a lot more active!

he is such a cute little peanut and a joy to play with

with a lot of prayer and support from Dr. Joan (Jame Shu's sister), Tom now feels quite comfortable in pediatrics

what else would you do on a Saturday afternoon?

take the goats out for a walk of course!

the big hill on the right is Shrinagar Hill, and hospital compound where we live and work is just where the trees end on the left side of the hill

a rare blessing to see the HIMALAYAS this time of year! this is Annapurna viewed from Shrinagar Hill... don't worry, once we get all of Tom's photos uploaded, there will be more magnificent views of these majestic mountains to share

part of the Himalayan range we can see from Shrinagar: Annapurna I is the big peak on the left, then the sharply pointed one just to the right of center is Machhapuchre (from another angle, it's split in two and looks like a fish-tail), and finally to the far right is Annapurna II

okay, here's the warm and fuzzy "buffer" photo before we get into the creepy crawly stuff... proceed with caution!

the tarantula who visited our bathroom at Annex 4; fearing it would make a huge mess if he squashed it, Tom was able to use a fly swatter and his newly honed salu (court hockey) skills to usher the hairy thing out the front door

Abishek learned there are definite disadvantages to being a resident in a Nepalese hospital. One of the missionary docs took this photo one night in the Emergency Department when a patient came in with a snake bite injury AND the snake that did it! 

fortunately, this snake did not match any of the venomous  reference specimens in the ED, and the patient went home with no further issues