Don't Do Drugs

            I’ve had an interesting last few days. About two nights ago I woke up with a fiery itching on my head. My first thought was that I had gotten lice from the kids.. I figured it would happen eventually. This itch was not a tiny little annoyance but it burned and kept me awake for good majority of the night. By the time I actually got up and looked in the mirror I saw the remainder of what looked to be a rash or some sort of bug bite. It was mostly gone by the time we were suppose to go down to breakfast so I let it leave my mind until later when I was talking to Shati. My leg started itching so I started telling her about how my head had kept me up most of the night because of how much it itched. She talked to me about it some and then we found out that the group that had gone south had returned so we all went running over there to greet them when I noticed that my leg that had simply been itching now felt like it was on fire. Suddenly I knew why my leg was itching so badly.
             I grabbed Kerri and ran to the clinic and as soon as I got to a place where I could pull off my pants and look at my legs I realized that I had enormous hives all down my legs. These weren’t tiny hives at all. There was one on my knee the size of soft ball. Apparently I am allergic to something but I don’t know what it is. Kerri gave me some Bangla medication for it but she sadly didn’t have any non-drowsy. Knowing my reaction to that sort of medicine I knew that the rest of my day was shot because I would be in the state of zombie for the next 12 hours or so. Sure enough I almost fell asleep at the supper table and I had to walk all the way across campus up four flights of stairs to my bedroom. I got so bad that I couldn’t finish changing into my pajamas. I was literally stuck on my bed looking at Heather’s bed falling asleep. I somehow finished getting dressed and attempted to send a few email’s (sorry, if I have sent you an email recently that didn’t make sense.. it was the meds). I finally passed out hugging my computer while mumbling to my roommates who were laughing hysterically at me.
             At some point I woke up to Kakoli screaming at my roommates, “LET ME IN, I WANT TO SEE MY MOTHER.” I stood up quickly to get my baby girl when I realized that I didn’t have the energy to keep myself standing there and I fell down. Thank goodness no one was there to see that. I fumbled my way back to the bed where I laid there and waited what seemed like an eternity for someone to walk past so I could tell them to let Kakoli in. Finally Marissa came in to use our bathroom and I asked her to send Kakoli in. Before I knew it Kakoli and Metali were at my side trying to make me feel better. I was practically falling asleep the whole time. Finally it was time for them to go but I asked if I could pray with the two girls. Each of us said an individual prayer out loud while we all held hand. It is amazing how God sends people to you even when you are in such an odd state of being. I will never forget that little prayer that we had together.
             I finally fell asleep without being disturbed for a good 11 hours and woke up feeling like I had been hit by a truck. I felt better by the time Sabbath school was over and I was able to hang out with the kids all day. God is good.

Happy Sabbath America. 

Monkeys and The Land of Sliding Kangaroos

The thought of leaving seems impossible. When I think of going home my mind cannot even fathom how I will cope with the loss of my kids. I feel like I will be a parent who is ripped away from their child… never to see them again. I know that that sounds very dramatic but after spending everyday with them for the last few months I cannot help but feel love for them. What hurts more is thinking of how it will hurt the kids when I leave. God has really taught me how to love here. I’ll try to explain/share just a piece of the love that embraces this campus.
  The new missionaries are here and it has been quite humorous to watch their overwhelmed faces as the little girls attack their hair and use them as a jungle gym. The look of panic on their faces is a mirror image of what I was like when I first arrived. In all honesty, saying goodnight to the older girls could be compared to climbing into a cage of monkeys who have neither fear of humans nor any consideration of your comfort zones. My girls sometimes overwhelm me but I’ve just learned to say goodnight and go to the boys room (boys are so much easier)!
  In my head I refer to the boys room as the “Land of the Sliding Kangaroos.” All of the boys have kangaroos (aka footy pajamas). The adorable part about that is that there aren’t enough boy kangaroos to go around so a few of the boys run around in bright pink girly kangaroos and don’t even think twice about it. They are hyper like the girls but all their energies are focused on running as fast as they can and then sliding across the concrete floor. Joseph ran up to me one day and with excitement written all over his face he said, “Look Chantel, sliding kangaroos!” Of course the best part of saying goodnight to the boys is I get a million kisses on my cheeks, forehead, nose, chin, and the occasional sneaker on the lips. We aren’t supposed to really kiss them on the lips but if they sneak one in I just exclaim, “OH NO, you got me!” This reaction has caused all of them to try and kiss me on the lips.
  When I’m not getting goodnight kisses I am being told how much I am loved. The boys will come up and say, “Chantel, I love you…12, 96, 45, 2000, 50, 34.” It doesn’t really make much sense but they are just throwing out big numbers that in their brain means that they love you A LOT! They have become more creative about saying I love you. They have decided to say something that they think is amazing. For example: “I love you candy.” You should have heard all of the things that they use. I just tell them, “I love you pie,” for those of you who know me well you know that that is the most I can love someone hahah.
  I was trying to imagine what it would be like to be home and to finally have some alone time. For a while I was really looking forward to being alone for the first time in half a year but now I have a feeling that I will just cry. What would it be like to not always be holding a child’s hand or kissing the cheeks of all my kids? What will I do when I can no longer visit the Land of Sliding Kangaroos or have 7 monkeys on top of me at the same time? 
  When I was having a hard time at the beginning of my stay I felt like God told me I was here to learn about his Love. Now that I have learned a fraction of what that Love is like, how can I just get on a plane and never look back? These are the things that have been running around in my brain as I see that I only have 2 months left here. I suppose this is another point in my life where I have to rest in the comfort of Proverbs 3:5.

“Trust in the Lord with all your heart, lean not on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him and he will make your paths straight.”

I’m not understanding..
but I’m trusting. 

...But I Love You Anyway

School is back in full swing and with all the extra work that I have been trying to accomplish I have lost all of my energy. There are a lot of exciting things that have been happening the last few days. Mr. Waid had his 83rd birthday yesterday and the whole campus was so excited. I was running everywhere helping Tuli decorate, bake, and doing anything else that she wanted me to do. The Bengali people really know how to have birthday party and I am a tad bit sad that my birthday is in June when I wont be here.
  My class is full of timid but very smart kids. I only have one kid who I fear because of his random emotional outbreaks.. Johnny. Today Tuli was telling him that he did so well on his math paper and he literally started sobbing because he didn’t want her to read his paper.. it will be interesting dealing with him for the next 2 months.
  We are getting 2 new missionary girls tonight and a family is coming here for a few weeks. I think there is another lady that is coming here for some reason that is probably important. I’m excited and slightly nervous about having more American’s around here. I’m not use to pale faces with the exception of the few people that have been here the whole time. I have a feeling that I will be like the Bengali people in town that awkwardly stare at white people as they walk by.. I might just stare at the missionaries the next few days haha.
  God has been teaching me a lot lately. It is funny how sometimes we can just be walking along and He’ll just kind of hit us over the head with a huge problem that we have had in our lives but have acted as if it doesn’t exist. Yesterday I was informed that a friend of mine that is a student missionary was going to stay another 10 months at her orphanage so that she could be with her kids. Rather than being super excited for her I was a little overwhelmed at the thought that I wasn’t as good as she was Although I love my kids I am super excited about going to American in 2 months and I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t change that. All of a sudden I began to wonder why I wasn’t the “super missionary” that I always hear about in stories at church. I expressed my feelings to Lauren and she just said, “you’ve got to stop comparing yourself to other people.” Rather than trying to deny that statement or feel bad about it I instantly knew that what she had said was something that was painfully true.
  It is funny how I didn’t even realize it until she said that but I know that it will now have a profound impact on my life. I compare myself to everyone in probably everyway whether good or bad. I think it is a problem that most people in the human race fight against. We all want to be good or better than the person next to us. I forget that every person isn’t the same and God made us to be different.. it is actually a beautiful thing. So, God has been humbling me lately and it is making my experience in Bangladesh even more special because of the growth that has taken place.
  Last night I sat on the roof feeling rather humble about my state of existence. I have finally acknowledged that I am not perfect and that it is impossible for me to keep pretending that I am never wrong. While contemplating all of this I felt like God was saying, “…but I love you anyway.” The truth is that we can’t be perfect while on this earth and everyday we are learning and growing (if we choose to do so). Even though the human heart is deceitfully wicked (Jeremiah 17:9) God loves us anyway.
 

I am continually learning more about myself and my God on this trip. I love it!

Nepal Adventure (part 2)

Thamel has a lot of motorcycles. The roads are very narrow yet cars, people, bikes, and motorcycles squeeze past each other and somehow I never saw anyone get hurt. Lauren, Heather, and I found out that we could rent bikes for a day and we were absolutely thrilled. We found a bike hire place and got three mountain bikes and just started peddling. We dogged the people and cars like we had been living in a third world country for three months (wait a minute.. we have)! We had no real directions and so we eventually stopped by this temple looking thing to figure out the game plan. In the middle of our struggles an old man came up to us. He pointed in three different directions and told us what lay in each direction. We decided that we would go in the direction that led toward the monkey temple. Unsure if we were taking the right roads we just kept peddling and dodging until we eventually could see the large hill in the distant that had the beautiful stupa nestled on top.
           We finally reached the base of the hill and found a way to lock our three bikes up with two little bike locks and made our way to the staircase. The monkey temple is actually called the Swayambhuanth but because I don’t know how to pronounce that (and neither do all the tourists) it is just called the monkey temple. The name makes sense once you begin the long journey up the staircase. I can not tell you how excited I was to just be going up a hill. Bangladesh is the flattest place I have ever been to and I love hiking.
            Along the way up the stairs there were all sorts of little shops and even the little street kids playing. They were absolutely hilarious. There was about three of them who had found plastic bottles that they were using to put under their bums as they slid down the concrete sides by the stairs. I have a soft spot for the street children and I try to spoil them every chance I get. I even try to spoil the beggar kids. Most of them don’t really want to beg but they have just been forced to do it. Money doesn’t mean much to them (all of it goes to whoever is forcing them to beg) so I try to sneak out a cookie to them. You should see how their faces light up when they realize that they finally get a treat of their own.
           When we reached the top of the monkey temple we could see the whole Kathmandu valley and the mountain range that lay on the other side. Although the place was for Buddhist I focused on all the wonderful things that God had done. He had made the mountain range that lay in the distance, He made the people who walked around and marveled at the stupa that was pathetic compared to the things that God himself had made.
            After we rode our bike rides we decided that it was time for dinner. In all honesty the food was one of my favorite parts about Nepal. It was about $2 to go to a nice restaurant and get ethnic Nepalese, Indian, Thai, Tibetan, or even American food. Every night we would get a plate of Momo’s and some other type of curry or Nepalese Dhal (it is completely different than Bengali Dahl and I might like it more than the Bengali Dhal).  Momo’s are these Tibetan dumplings that can either be filled with veggies or meat. They had a sauce that went with them called pickle, it didn’t taste anything like American pickle but it was really spicy. I could write all day about the amazing food that we ate or my favorite restaurant in the world but I don’t want to upset my hungry readers.
             The rest of our trip was absolutely amazing as well. On Sabbath we went for a walking tour of the places surrounding the Thamel district. We celebrated the New Year dancing around on the balcony with the expensive sparkling apple juice that we had bought on the corner market. New Years was very loud because there was about 5 live bands playing at the pubs that are scattered throughout Thamel. We went down to Chitwan National Park and went on a Safari while riding an elephant. I got really sick while on a 5-hour bus ride but thankfully after praying about it I got better and was able to enjoy OR2k (favorite restaurant) that night. Overall it was so nice to experience Nepal and have time to be a tourist that got to go out to eat every night. However, I am so glad that I am back in Bangla Hope. There is no place like Bangla Hope!
 
I posted more pictures:
http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.2393352084597.122212.1574787470&type=1&l=9e86cdbdbe

Sorry I always post the pictures on my facebook. The Internet is so horrible here and it is easier for me to post them on my facebook rather than my blog. 

Nepal Adventure (part 1)

 My mom asked me if I would feel guilty when she found out I was going to spend 7 days of in Nepal. I assumed that I wouldn’t because I was just so excited to be around a place that was clean and semi Americanized (I was thinking of Thamel’s tourist district not the rest of Nepal).  Although I never felt “guilt” necessarily I realized that my way of thinking of people has changed quite drastically. I now cannot help but feel for the people that are around me because I have become aware of the hardships that people face in life.
             We arrived at the home of Santu and Grace around midnight last Wednesday after our plane had been delayed 8 hours. We were exhausted and so was Santu because he had waited 4 hours at the airport for us and he hadn’t eaten since breakfast. His lovely wife Grace dragged herself out of bed so that she could be a polite hostess and make us food. Although we weren’t hungry and the only thing that we wanted to do was sleep we kindly accepted the dhal bhat that she put before us. Santu kept apologizing because we had to sleep on the floor. They had no other place for us to sleep. We woke up to Santu telling us that it was time for us to freshen up and get out to the kitchen for breakfast. It became painfully obvious that this couple was making a lot of sacrifices to have us stay with them.  They were very poor and had a rough time paying $20 a month to rent a room. We decided that it would be best if we found other arrangements for us despite their hospitality. After they fed us another meal of rice and dhal Santu got us a cab that would take us into the heart of Thamel. I appreciated the hospitality of Grace and Santu. They were some of the nicest Christian people that I have ever met and I’m pretty sure I have never felt such gratitude toward a person in my life. (I will write more about them in another post).
             The first thing we did in Thamel was look for a hotel. It was so easy to find. We simply walked down the street a little ways, turned down this ally, walked up a million flights of stairs, and arrived at Hotel Patala. It was 5 dollars a night (can’t beat that)! We quickly threw our stuff in the room and started roaming around Thamel. Thamel is a city where all the trekkers and tourist come to spend their time. There are rows of shops that line the street level and are full of all kinds of fascinating things. The buildings are all very tall and on every level there is a different type of store. One building could contain a bar, hotel, jewelry shop, coffee shop, and a travel agent office. We literally spent days wandering around Thamel and still hadn’t seen everything. The first day was amazing and we simply just enjoyed the beauty of being tourists (by the way, one of the weirdest things was seeing white people again. Heather, Lauren, and I were flipping out). 
             The next day we woke up and decided to move to another hotel. Hotel Patal had a lot of cockroaches and the windows didn’t close all the way making the room unbearably cold. It was then that we found the hotel that we would stay at the rest of the time (besides when we went to Chitwan) it was called Hotel Nana.. we love Hotel Nana. An old man sat at the front desk and he was always so happy to see us he told us to “always remember Hotel Nana” when we left. How can you forget a cheap $5 a night hotel? The ally way beside our hotel had a spa on the lower level and they had a lovely package deal. So we spent about $15 to have a massage (not as lovely as it sounds). I was in the middle of getting my foot rubbed when I stopped enjoying my “tourist time” and I started thinking. I was laying on my stomach so I really couldn’t see the lady who was giving me the massage and I began to wonder what her life was like. She probably lived outside of Thamel where poverty was just as evident as it was in Bangladesh. Then I started thinking of all the shopkeepers that we had spent time with the day before. All of them were trying to rip us off but we thought it was fun to haggle with them. They were all very nice and friendly but I had already forgotten that I was in an extremely poor part of the country. Hardly any of them believe in Jesus (Santu had previously told me that there are only 9,000 SDA’s in Nepal). I suppose that is were the “guilt” started to leak in.
             It honestly didn’t make me not enjoy my time as a tourist in Nepal but it opened my eyes to what was really happening around me. Instead of being the tourist that came and didn’t pay attention to the poor children running around the streets I decided to befriend them. There was this one kid who was climbing into this temple area because there was money on the ground. He was struggling to get through the gate and his pants were falling down most of the time. When he finally managed to get in he jumped and ended up landing on his bum instead of his feet. He made me laugh so hard that I decided that I should tip him. I dug in my bag for some loose coins and handed them to him. I’m pretty sure it made his day. There was another kid that I met and attempted to communicate with. He said something that sounded like the word “chocolate” (in these countries chocolate just refers to the general term of candy). I asked him if he wanted Chocolate and he smiled back at me. We skipped across this beautiful courtyard where the fertility temple was and I handed him some money. He went and bought two pieces of candy and brought back the change. I couldn’t help but smile because most kids just beg for stuff and they aren’t considerate enough to bring back anything extra.  
             Instead of just feeling guilty I decided to embrace being a tourist in Nepal. I enjoyed the food, spas, elephant rides, sights, and chocolate (that we probably ate to much of) but I didn’t forget that the people of Nepal are suffering and need help. Being in Nepal made me want to help the people there and show them who Jesus Christ is. I want to go back someday and help the people of Nepal. They are really deserving people.

(this is just a part of my adventures in Nepal. Lauren, Heather, and I did so much and I probably can’t include it all but I will post a few more blogs about Nepal over the next few days. Nepal is a very cheap and wonderful place and I suggest that everyone go there if the opportunity presents itself!) 

Who Has the Heart? (The Last Three Months)

         My purpose for being here started out with a selfish motive. Even when I think about the first 3 months here I call them “my adventure.” Everything was always about my experience in Bangladesh.  Right before I left for Nepal God smacked me on the head with this overwhelming love for the kids. It started when I was going to Bob and Kerri’s house to get something and I heard my name being yelled from the girl’s room. Instead of continuing to do the many things that I had planned I decided to bum around with a few of the older girls. Later that night I sat in their room and attempted to color while I had 3 girls sitting on my lap and one pulling at my hair trying to braid. I just wanted to stay in that moment and enjoy it forever (despite how much my head hurt from them pulling). I didn’t care about always having an exciting adventure. I was finally content with the simplicity of wasting time with my kids. Not even a week in Nepal sounded better than that.
             The morning that we took off for Nepal we were outside loading the van in the dark (it was around 6 am). While we were busy getting ready I began to hear Joni across the campus, “Chantel, don’t go!” How I wished I could stay with her. Before we left we had about 15 kids with no jackets on determined to stay outside until we had left. They had woken up early just to be with us for a few precious minutes. 
             As we drove away my mind wandered to what it would be like when I left for good. That will be so difficult! The feelings and emotions that I felt made me determined that the last three months would not be like the first. The next three months are all going to be wasting time with the kids.
             Kakoli and Tisha have started calling me “mother.” It doesn’t mean that I am the only “mother” that they have (they also call Shati and the other caregivers their mom). What it means is that I have become a woman in their life that they love more deeply than I can even comprehend. As a result of the kind of love they show me, I can’t help but love them more than I thought possible. I think about holding them and kissing their cheeks and it brings me great joy.
             My favorite quote is found in the book Steps to Christ when Mrs. White is talking to Christian people about their relationship with Jesus. She asks them, “Who has the heart? With whom are our thoughts? Of whom do we love to converse? Who has our warmest affections and our best energies? If we are Christ’s, our thoughts are with him and our sweetest thoughts are of Him. All we have and are is consecrated to Him. We long to bear His image, breathe his spirit, do his will, and please Him in all things” (page 57).  If Christ has our heart it results in this selfless love pouring out to other people. When I read that quote I can think of many things that have had my heart in the past. None of them were good things that brought me joy. Now, I choose for God to have my heart and as a result the  weirdest thing has happened. I can say that not only Jesus has my heart but the children at Bangla Hope do to. They have my hearts, thoughts, warmest affections, and my best energies. The last three months are all about them!  

(As you can tell I have arrived back from Nepal safely. I will be writing a blog soon so that you can know about some of the adventures that I had while I was gone. I wrote this blog entry while I was away from the kids. Last night I was finally reunited with them and it was the most joyful moment I’ve had in a while. My love for them grows everyday).