Greetings from Darjeeling in the north of India. I have been on outreach for a month now and the first leg of the Nepalindian adventure finished a few days ago. I have been having the most amazing experience of my life so far. Since my last blog so much has happened and I wil do my best to include all in this update. My last week in YWAM Perth was very busy to say the least. I had the most amazing Christmas dinner which lead to a food coma lasting for hours after. Well worth it though as it was a feast of food worthy to be eaten by a king. We then sweated all the food out on Boxing Day playing beach rugby. The following day I could hardly move my body due to a combination of getting smashed in rugby and by the waves. This was our last week of teaching also and the subject for the week was Authority and Submission. This was great preparation for outreach with submission being an attitude of the heart really standing out to me. As good a week as this was I struggled with the heat a lot as it was close to 40c most days and this is no temperature for an Irish man to be crushing around in. I could not wait for the cool temperatures of the Nepalese winter. I flew out of Perth a few minutes after New Year's Eve. One of the least exciting New Years I have experienced but what was to come would be more exciting than any of these. It was only my friend Hayden and I on this flight as we bought our flights later than the others in the class. This turned out to be an awesome blessing as our flight journey to Kathmandu was shorter than the rest of our class and we had a 12 hour stop over in Hong Kong. Hong Kong was a sweet little trip during which one of our class mates best friend gave us a tour of the city as he is from Hong Kong. I have never seen so many sky scrapers in my life especially in such limited space. A cool city for sure but not a place I felt attracted to live in both physically and spiritually. We eventually arrived in Kathmandu around 10pm on the 1st of January.
Driving around Kathmandu the following day I really felt Gods heart for Nepal and I immediately fell in love with the country. Driving in Nepal is nothing short of crazy. Everyone honks their horns constantly as this is how they communicate with each other, no such thing as indicating here. There is literally no rules on the roads and you want to have serious skill and confidence to drive these roads without crashing every few minutes. I can't count the amount of times we have nearly crashed or taken out pedestrians. I was in Kathmandu three days before I got hit with a bit of food poisoning. We were on our way back from Thamel on a bus when I started feeling sick. I eventually fainted on the bus and my friends had to carry me off as I was having a minor fit which has not happened for a few years. I awoke on the side of the road to discover that I had crapped my pants which left a nice brown stain down my right leg. To make this worse we jumped on another bus as were still too far from our hostel and on this bus I vomited all down my left leg. Welcome to Nepal! We walked the rest of the way home and any shame I may of had quickly evaporated.

Thankfully I recovered from this nasty episode after a days rest. We spent four days in Kathmandu before taking a wild eight hour bus and truck drive to our first village to be visited in the Chitwan Hills. Yes I did say truck! Including all the locals there was forty of us piled into the back of a truck with all our bags that that took us up a hectic rubble road into Chitwan hills. Overall we spent two weeks hiking from village to village in the Chitwan hills. We had two guides and translators who are part of the YWAM Nepal church planting team in Nepal. They love evangelism and had previously planted a number of churches in this area. At every opportunity we shared the gospel with people and also shared many of our testimonies. We had the opportunity do a number of powerful dramas in the schools also which lead to many kids receiving Jesus to be their best friend and saviour. All the villages had access to clean water so we have not had the opportunity yet to build water filters for people. But we did get the opportunity to bless many people with sunglasses and regular glasses ask we were taught how to test people's eyes before we left Perth. Through prayer we saw a number of people healed in this area also. One old man received around 90% of his hearing back after my friends and I prayed for him which brought him incredible joy which lead to us all laughing together and shouting Hallelujah. He was not even Christian himself but after this powerful witness himself and his family who watched this miracle unfold in amazement were committed to seeking out Jesus.

There is so many more amazing stories I could share from our hiking adventure but they will take too long. I'll do my best to summarise the rest of this part of my outreach. Our accommodation was very varied sleeping in churches, tents, barns and locals houses. I had my first experience in squatty toilets and after a few weeks of being in Nepal I found myself wiping with water and my left hand. I was one of the last to try out this new method and was quite shocked to find it pretty efficient and don't worry I wash thoroughly afterwords every time. The hiking itself was awesome and a bit challenging at times and the views were breath taking. We lived off of two meals of rice, dal and veggies a day and we got very spoilt when we got chicken and pork in two different villages. In both of these circumstances we bought the animals and had them killed only a few hours before we ate them so they were incredible fresh and tasted amazing.


I'm after running out of time to keep writing this update but I should have you all filled on the many more amazing experiences I have had in my next chance to finish this blog. Were just about to leave for a crusade into the villages in the surrounding mountains of Darjeeling. We will be running a youth camp their for the next five days. Please keep us in your prayers and thank you for all your prayers so far. Blessings of peace and love.