Accusations and Healings, Pulling Teeth, the King's Coronation, 2 Deaths, and Cherry Pits

We also experienced some difficult accusations that cut to our core. From my journal:

Sita Ram has been trying to slander us here in the village--telling lies about us and telling people to not associate with us because we were Christians. The Lord will justify Himself without our help.

During this village stay, someone also started stealing things from our home--a picture off the wall, books, toilet paper, and then used crayons to write on our car. It hurt, but we prayed for that person or persons and forgave them. But healings also continued:

A few days ago we were called down to see Somol's daughter who was in a state of fear with a high fever. We told them that we had no medicine for this but would like to pray for her in Jesus' Name so we did. And the Lord healed her. That night another lady came and asked us to pray for her hand. We did, but it was not better. Today she came and asked me to pray again. Kunti was with us and explained about faith in Christ since she [the lady] thought at first we were "jankries"--witch doctors. So we prayed for her too.

We also had a wonderful visit from Dudley and Mona Henderson, missionaries with the Assemblies of God. Dudley was a dentist and he came to help our village people who needed dental work. Most of our Tharu friends had never seen a dentist and their teeth were in bad shape. Dudley spent most of the time pulling teeth. But they with their two kids also got in an elephant ride too!

Soon after this came a real time of isolation and loneliness. Our normal arrangement for mail was to have it sent down once a week from Kathmandu by plane. We would catch a ride into Bharatpur and eagerly wait for the RNAC plane to come with mail for us. Reading mail and news from home was a big event. But when the King's coronation came, this was a HUGE event for the country as seen in the photo. For three weeks we had no flights and no mail delivery. It looked like everything, including flights with our mail, were cancelled for the coronation celebration. Stores closed, all work stopped, and people stayed home.

When mail finally started to arrive after the coronation, the unexpected happened:

I received a letter from mom telling of my father's death. It hurt to tears. I had sent him a Living Bible for Christmas. My hope is that he read it and changed his bitterness and anger to hope and joy. Then another significant death happened.

A new baby of our friends who ran the local tea shop was quite sick. The baby had not nursed for several days and was dehydrated. We knew IVs were needed but there were none available. So yesterday we lost our first baby and our hearts were saddened. We had prayed and laid hands on the child, and soon thereafter it died. We were reminded of how God had recently spared Jonathan's life with IVs and could only surmise that the Lord wanted this little one with Him.

This village stay was full of challenges and some funny things too. The governor of Chitwan District and three of his friends came for dinner in our small village house. I made a cherry pie for dessert. I used a special and expensive can of cherries I had purchased in a shop in Kathmandu. What I didn't know was that the cherries still had the pits and lots of added sugar! We simply told our guests that this was how we ate cherry pie and to put the pits at the side of their plates. Can you see the pits in the cherry pie Ethan drew?