"share your food with the hungry and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter—"

What a privilege it was to serve the people of Nepal today.  Another flight was taken into the mountains with rice.  This time we flew to a to a remote village in Gorkha called Nyak not far from the Tibetan boarder.  This Buddhist village at almost 7500 foot elevation (Denver is 5280) was suggested by a local pastor as a group needing aid.  The people normally walk on what could loosely be called a trail in a treacherous route down the mountain to the river below.  After seven days walking they can reach a very small town where they can buy items they need or catch a bus into Kathmandu.  A landslide has closed off the walking trail so even that option is no longer open.  The 6000 lb of rice delivered by helicopter today will help them until the trail can be uncovered, probably not until October or November.

We weren't sure if we'd even be able to land when we reached there but the villagers had prepared a small helipad about 10 x 20 feet with a 1000 ft precipice on one side. But that was sufficient.  It took seven trips by helicopter to bring the rice into Nyak thanks to our friends at Mission Aviation Fellowship who are giving us a 90% discount on the flights.

We also gave a ride up the mountains to a young mother and her baby who had not been able to return home since the landslide and gave a ride down to three high school students who had been cut off from coming back to their boarding school.   There is a building for an elementary school in the village but no teacher.

Situations like this exist all over Nepal.  This beautiful land is so rugged much of it is inaccessible.  Programs like ours are meeting the immediate need of the people for food during this time of crisis, but we will also be here long term.  We will be working with communities like Nyak to bring the services everyone should have access to like education and health care as well as helping individual families to create a safe environment for their children where basic needs are met.  We will be caring for children without parents to look after them in family settings and advocating for the rights of women and children.

These are exactly the actives we are told to do in Isaiah 58:6.7

“Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen:
to loose the chains of injustice
    and untie the cords of the yoke,
to set the oppressed free
    and break every yoke?
⁷ Is it not to share your food with the hungry
    and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter—
when you see the naked, to clothe them,
    and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood?"

Rice Flight

After two days of heavy rain, we had good weather today for flying and took rice by helicopter to the town of Jagart in the Gorkha district.  This area was the epicenter of the earthquake on April 25, 2015.  The remote area is barely accessible in the best of times and is now cut off except by helicopter.  The area is made up of very rocky steep mountains where people live literally on the side of a cliff.  We have made several trips to this area taking 6000 lbs of rice each time.  The helicopter must fly back and forth two or three times to get all the rice delivered.  The helicopter is taken as far as possible but even at this people hike for four or five hours to reach the meeting point.  The villages further into the mountains do not have a flat place for the helicopter to land so Jagart is as far as we can go.  Each time we are met with shouting and dancing villagers.  Local pastors are on hand to help with distribution.  Even the Nepali military men stationed near the boarder with China (Tibet) have by thankful for our rice as they have not received any other assistance themselves.  We have been receiving a 90% discount from  Mission Aviation Fellowship for the flights.  This discount will only be available for two more weeks so we will try and get in two more shipments before the fee is raised. Thank you for you generosity which has made this possible!

New Hope Nepal Board

Wow!  How exciting to see our new board come together for their first meeting!  We have a wonderful group of six men and one woman committed to leading.  The board was kept busy for two days being introduced to their new responsibilities, discussing the client population and activities of the organization, reviewing the bi-laws suggested by our lawyer, and working through some decisions about exactly what category of agency we will be registered as.  The agency is currently in the legal process of being registered as a Nepali non-governmental organization (NGO) which we hope will be complete in early 2016.  In the meantime we will continue to bring relief, start the pilot family strengthening and foster care programs, and gather information for community development projects.  

Our working mission statement is:

New Hope Nepal promotes child protection, seeking to preventing trafficking and child abandonment through the empowerment of families and communities.   Our programs focus on the goals of strengthening families, caring for vulnerable children in a family setting, developing sustainable livelihoods, supporting education, encouraging good health, and advocating for those without a voice.

New Hope Nepal Board of Directors

 From left to right:

Januka Adhikari, Mahadev Baniya, Dinish Sunar, Purna Bahadur, Nukal Tamang, Chandra Surya Thapa, Indra Bahadar Sunar

Food Relief Taken to Villagers

July third was
spent delivering food stuffs to a remote area of Nepal in the Ramechhap District.  Because of landslides blocking the road, we were only able to go to a town shortly over the border of this district to meet the people needing assistance.  Each village sent several representatives to bring back the supplies of rice, lentils, salt and cooking oil.  These folks walked anywhere from one to eight hours to reach the drop-off location.  Not a simple stroll either but a hike over 2, 3, or 4 mountains at altitudes of up to 12,000 feet!  That made our drive of 17 hours round-trip seem like a walk in the park.  Sadly, all of these villagers have damaged or destroyed homes.  The rock and mud structures, with no foundation, crumbled under the power of the moving earth.  One village,  the one we slept in on our first trip to Nepal, was completely covered by a landslide and is no longer inhabitable at all.  It's 34 households are currently living in tents on a small bit of land provided by the government, but hope to buy a piece of land together large enough for everyone to build a small home on.

Metal roofing was also delivered by tractor to a school which lost it's roof in the earthquake (the May 12 aftershock of over 7 on the Richter scale was centered in this district).  The roofs are traditionally made of slate so they did not hold up well in the earthquake and are difficult to rebuild.  This metal roofing will allow school to resume soon. 

July trip to Nepal

We are very excited to be able to travel to Nepal tomorrow and help those in need. Calvary Chapel, Greer, SC, Haitian Wesleyan Church in Mauldin, SC, and Christ Our Hope Bible Church, Spokane, WA, as well as caring individuals, have raised $13,000, much of which we are using to fly shipments of rice by helicopter to mountain villages where homes have been destroyed and roads cut off by landslides from the earthquake. This rice will help people survive through the monsoon season until fall when they can harvest the next crop. 

We will also be starting our Family Strengthening Program by visiting individual families to assess their immediate needs and help them make goals for the future and starting our Foster Care Program with the first few foster families coming on board. Some of the funds raised will go to meet the immediate needs of these families helping to lesson the risk of child abandonment and trafficking. We'll be training local staff to continue monitoring these families and adding more over the next months.

Lastly, We will meet with the board members of and lawyer to move forward with the formal registration of New Hope Nepal as a Nepali non-profit.
We would appreciate your prayers for Rebecca as she travels for over 24 hours to get there and again on July 13 and 14 when she returns, as well as for the next two weeks to be fruitful.

Relief Efforts

Children Rescue Mission delivered 6000 lbs of rice in May by helicopter to a remote village in Gorkah. Many people in Nepal had just enough rice to survive until the next harvest before the earthquake. Now that life giving store is gone. Thanks to caring people here in the US, New Hope Nepal has raised funds for another large shipment of rice and the cost of helicopter transportation. If you would like to support the relief effort, donations can be made on our website.

Would you sponsor one of these needs for Ramechhamp district in the mountains?

1) 350 blankets at $5 each

2) 20 Solar power flash lights at $15 each

3) 30 hygiene kits, $10 each

4) 150 tarps for $2 each

5) 100 water purification kits at $50 each

6) 40 large tents for churches, each tent cost $50 

Earthquake News

At 11:58 on April 25, 2015 a massive 7.8 m earthquake shook Nepal.  In the days following, over 150 aftershocks were recorded, some measuring over 6 m.  These earthquakes have brought death and destruction to the capital of Kathmandu as well as the districts of Gorkha, Ramechhamp, Sindupalchok, Nuwakot, Dhaging, and Dolakha. 

According to a UN report, 255,954 homes have been destroyed and another 213,441 damaged, almost 1 million children are without education, and 3.5 million people are in need of food assistance in Nepal. Seed is also desperately needed as the planting season is upon them and if the opportunity is missed many more will go hungry.

In the Ramechhamp district: Out of 583 houses in the villages, 392 are completely destroyed and 191 are partially damaged. Many domestic animals were killed and much food was completely destroyed along with the houses. People in this area lived day to day with the bare minimum of food even before this tragedy. Churches and schools have also been damaged to the point of being unsafe.  Perhaps the saddest thing is that one of the villages is completely destroyed because of a massive landslide.