The first time Sita visited our little home in Nepal, I asked her if she wanted a cup of chiya. “Tikchha,” she replied. By then, I’d already done about a month of language training, so I knew that she had said, “Okay.” But I mistakenly assumed that she meant, “No thank you, I’m okay.” Some […]
Last year I was in Melbourne helping to prepare candidates for cross-cultural ministry. The leader of the session asked everyone to get into groups and write down a list of personal characteristics that they would expect from someone serving cross-culturally. And moments later there was butcher’s paper all around the room covered with words like; adaptable, […]
Prior to our trip to Northern Iraq some time ago, an acquaintance asked us whether we were going to be involved in word or deed. He wanted to know whether we planned to engage local people in true gospel ‘word-based’ ministry or whether we were just going to do some nice (and necessary) physio training, […]
Anyone who has spent time learning a local language might be tempted to respond to that question with a smile and just three words, ‘with great difficulty.’ But that’s a fairly negative way to begin this column and not always true either. There are so many days when language learning feels like ‘wonder and delight’… […]
Aid and relief responses to the Nepali earthquake disaster are ongoing. Interserve Partner Rowan has been working in aid assistance and delivering relief supplies in Kathmandu and regional areas. He shares with us: At one place the houses had all been destroyed completely, and a seven-year-old boy had been killed in one of the houses. People are […]
One wet afternoon in Nepal we had a visit from an English missionary friend. He sat down in our living room and sighed. “This morning,” he said, “I was in Nepali church and the offering was taken up. As I passed the bag along, I couldn’t help noticing that the amount I placed within it […]
Nepal has experienced a second earthquake. It struck about 12.35pm Nepali time and had a magnitude of 7.3. All Interserve, INF and UMN staff are confirmed safe. The epicentre of the earthquake was approximately 50 miles east of Kathmandu. It was not as severe as the earthquake of April 25 but there has still been many […]
During our first three-year term in Nepal, we would go to the mailbox weekly, usually on a Wednesday. That great place of anticipation was situated on the opposite end of the Pokhara Valley, past swollen rivers and an overcrowded hospital and beyond the three straggling bazaars, so it would usually take us at least an […]
‘Saving Muslim women’ has been one of the justifications behind military, economic and social interventions in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Egypt, Tunisia, Pakistan and many other countries where women live under Islam. In May 2014, while I was on an extended retreat, God spoke to me from Exodus 3 about women who live in Islamic contexts: […]
We have received the following update from Naomi Reed, former Interserve Partner based in Nepal. “At the beginning of the week, we felt torn. We were pre-booked to fly to Singapore for the World Physio Congress and an Interserve event. But our hearts were in Nepal. We wondered what we were doing. But […]
