Three Weeks Left!

Hello! We have internet again!

Where do we start? There is so much to tell, right now we are in Pokhara, Jeff will be teaching Revelation in the SBS starting on Thanksgiving and on Friday as well! Next Monday I will be teaching Character and Nature of God to the DTS here for five days, these are our last teachings before we debrief and we are very nervous and excited. J The last five weeks have been amazing and we (especially me) have been growing more and more confident in our abilities as a teacher. Hopefully you have read our last update and so you know what happened the first three weeks of our arrival, if not it is on our blog @ jeffandbeckymissions.blogspot.com

One story that I did not get to share in the update is that while we were in Tarakset the church leader there told us with a huge smile on his face that he was so happy to hear what we were teaching. He had been a Christian for four years, and it was the first time that he had heard a lot of the things we were teaching in the seminar. Things like Character of God, Worship and Forgiveness, he was just so happy that his church had the opportunity to hear about these things and to grow as Christians.

The last two weeks were very hectic and amazing. We went to Jiri, a town that is popular to tourists who want to climb Mount Everest; in fact we went to a village that is on the trailhead to Everest, though we did not see it since it takes around 12 days from that trail to get to the base of Everest. We only went up for about 5 hours which was exhausting since we had to carry all of our stuff and illustrations for Bible overview are heavy when hiking for 5 hours. Anyway we made it up to the village the day before we were going to teach and ate an amazing dinner which included eggs and a tomato potato salsa! So delicious, I don’t think I mentioned before but Nepali’s eat an amazingly impressive amount of food. Their main meal is Dal Bhat which is rice (bhat) and lentil soup (dal), so the fact that they gave us eggs and tomatoes is a big deal and very generous of them. I can eat about an eighth of what they start off with which is about ½-¾ of a cup and both Jeff and I have gotten made fun of several times since coming here. J

We had three days with the people from the church including the day we got there, Jeff gave them an overview of what to expect for the next few days and taught them the importance of knowing the Bible. We had a total of six hours which is really not a lot of time to teach Bible Overview. We stuck to the basics of the redemptive plan throughout the Bible.

1. Character and Nature of God

2. Creation

3. The Fall of Man

4. The Redemptive Plan (which is in Genesis when God says that an offspring of the woman will bruise the head of Satan Gen. 3:15 indicating that He will send Jesus)

5. The Call of Abraham

6. The Law

7. The Eternal Kingdom (The promise made to David)

8. Jesus

9. The Holy Spirit

10. The Second Coming

While we were there a woman from the area came to the church to have her son and daughter prayed over, she had two other sons that had gotten sick (on separate occasions) and she took them to a witch doctor, they both died shortly after. So she decided to come and see if the Christians would pray for her children since she was afraid of seeing them die as well. One of our team members said that it sounded like spiritual oppression and possession. We prayed for them and while we didn’t see them be instantly healed, we also didn’t see them sick, she decided to believe in God and accepted Him in her life. It was so amazing to see that God is bringing people to Him and that sometimes all we have to do is be there to show people who it is that is seeking them.

We also got to meet the pastor who planted the church and learned that he had planted a total of 18 churches in the surrounding areas over a time period of 15 years, he must have been around 45-55 (very hard to tell since Nepali’s often look the same until they reach their 70’s J). He tried to visit every church around once a month and once a month they all get together to fellowship with one another. When they get together there is about 500-600 people! He was an amazing man of God who is passionate about God’s word going out to the people of Nepal and who was willing to do what it took to see it happen.

After the three days we went back to Jiri to teach another Bible overview seminar to the church there. Again seeing that there were so many people there that were hungry for God’s word in their lives. We actually had one woman on the first day that used to be a witch doctor, but had heard about Jesus and three weeks before she became a Christian!

Now here we are in Pokhara, trying to not let our anticipation of going to Taiwan and home get in the way of our next two weeks of teaching. We can’t wait to see you and tell you in person how amazing Nepal is and how you should think about coming here. J

Prayer points:

1. Health:

Jeff has been sick since we hiked up to the village in Jiri, first with some sort of weird flu thing and now with a lingering cough and aches, it might be bronchitis, he’s on antibiotics right now, please pray for his recovery as Revelation is coming up in two days

2. Focus:

For both of us to finish strong and not be distracted by anything that would hinder us in teaching, or that would lessen our teachings in anyway.

3. That our time in debrief would be good and relaxing and that we would be able to finally rest after so much teaching.

We love you all and are keeping you in our prayers,

Becky and Jeff

Update!

Hey all!
Below in brown is the update that we sent out, if you didn't get the e-mail please send us you e-mail address so that you can get it for the next time.
So I just wanted to give you all an update with what we have been doing for the past 1 1/2 months and what we will be doing in the future. The training time went incredibly fast and it was very sad the day we had to go, I know that I will see you guys again but for our Titus family we may never see some of them ever again. :( The training time was good and it gave me some confidence to teach even if I did not want to. God was working on my heart to be a teacher, not just to teach, if that makes sense, but I was still fighting Him on that one. :) The day after we got here in our team meeting I told everyone that I didn't want to be here and that I didn't want to be a teacher, but that God wanted me to stop doing what He called me to in action only, in essence I was being a Jew (yes so funny Marci, I actually realized the other day that I am not just a Bible nerd, but that I am a Bible geek too. A geek, as defined by Angelica, is someone who is technologically smart while a nerd is book smart... I digress). So they all prayed for me and that day I taught in the Bible college, it was scary but it was alright. The next day I taught again and so did Jeff, I was starting to like our class and the third day while I wasn't supposed to teach I was still going to go and evaluate the other teachers that were there from day one with me (Jeff and Jason, he's Canadian).Well, I got sick, and couldn't speak, we were going to the temple to see what their worship was like and I still went even though I thought it would be better to die since my head was super painful. It was impact-ful, and I stubbornly went to class anyway. It was great! After class Jeff and Jason stayed to play "football" (soccer) with the boys from class and me and Estela, also from class, went to watch, we had some great time of talking and getting to know each other. The next day at 6am we left to go to Pokhara with Jenn and Micah, the other married couple in our team. Jenn taught Mark in the SBS and Jeff taught Hebrews in between I led a Bible study for a local church. Then we went to Tarakset to teach the new believers in this village. We gave a three day seminar with beginner topics like Character of God, Repentance and forgiveness, Discipleship, Worship and Quiet times. They were amazing and so thankful to us. This is where we got our first taste of spicy dried goat meat, eating cooked sweet potatoes for snack and "first milk" which is basically your worst nightmare in food form. It is actually a delicacy and it is basically milk that has been boiled down to the "curds?" its like dried out cottage cheese that is bigger and tastes smokey and when you chew it, it squeaks in your mouth and if you try to swallow it whole it squeaks in your throat. They call it first milk because after a water buffalo has a baby (oh yeah, its water buffalo milk) they milk it before the baby has drank any, hence the first milk. Today we came back to Kathmandu, where we started out from, and we are waiting for the rest of our team to come back from the villages they have been teaching at. Our team is of 8 people which is like 4-6 people more than usual so we split up into two different teams. That is what we have been doing, and coming to the close of our third week in Nepal I find that God has given me a heart for these people, some of it may be the fact that everyone here thinks I am Nepali, or that I am considered to be tall here ;) but I have loved being here with these people and they have definitely found a way into my heart. Also I have really been putting my heart into my teachings since God confronted me about not aligning it with my actions and I have actually enjoyed teaching!:) God is always good. Up next we leave for Jiri to do more seminars, one team will stay in Jiri and the other will travel, on foot, to other villages and hold seminars, probably on Bible overview, we are there for two weeks. After that one team will go to Elim to teach in the DTS there and two people will go to Pokhara, one to teach Revelation to SBS and the other will teach in the DTS there and possibly two others will go to Darjeeling to teach the refugees. We're not sure how the teams will split up yet, but whenever

we have internet I will try to update you all. Here are some pictures!
The market Kathmandu from the rooftops



The "holy" river

Cremation for the poor

Rich cremation
Sorry this is all its letting me upload. :(

*DTS (Discipleship Training School, this is the first school that YWAM has everyone who wants to partner with them do, we did ours in England in 2007) SBS (School of Biblical Studies, this is the nine month program Jeff and I did last year where we learned how to study the Bible inductively and went through the whole Bible as well.) Titus (This is the "school" we are currently on, this takes SBS's and sends them to third world countries to teach the Bible to pastors, leaders and basically anyone who wants to learn) YWAM calls all of their programs, outreaches and training schools.