The Nelson Family Indonesia

Today will be my last day in Indonesia and Medan and my home for a month.

I depart today for Kuala Lumpur, where I will catch a flight early tomorrow morning for Nepal. This will be my first visit to Nepal. I never thought I’d see that country but, never say never I suppose. For what it’s worth I can’t get Al Stewart’s The Year of the Cat out of my head, even though I’m sure he had in mind someplace a bit more southerly and west of Nepal. Nepal meets that song’s ideas of exoticism. At least that’s what I imagine (minus mysterious women, of course!).

I’m going with one of our alliance missionaries – Rev. Dr. Michael Lockwood from the Lutheran Church of Australia. He’s been to Nepal several times in the past and has made LCMS OIM aware of a rapidly growing church body there. They’ve asked for teaching for their pastors since they don’t have seminaries or other ways of providing good training to church leaders.

We’ll be in Nepal for two weeks, flying in and out of Kathmandu but spending the remainder of our time in two smaller villages – one to the north and one to the south of the capitol city. Please pray for safe travel as to and from Nepal as well as in country. I’m supplied with Imodium and activated charcoal and a Lifestraw bottle as reports are it’s easy to pick up a stomach bug. Please pray for health for myself and Dr. Lockwood and that the Holy Spirit would use our time there teaching to be a blessing to God’s people present and future in that country and beyond.

Afterwards I have a stint in Kuala Lumpur before taking off for the Philippines again. I’ll meet up there with Deaconess Sandra Rhein and we’ll both journey from Manila to Baguio City to teach a one-week review course for deaconesses in the Lutheran Church of the Philippines.

All of which is to say my October newsletter may be delayed a bit but I’ll try to get it out while traveling, I just don’t know what Internet access will be like. I’ll post photos and updates here as I’m able, grateful for your prayers that carry me over sea and mountain!

In the meantime my daughter wings her way back to the United States, leaving behind the friends and life she’s created here in Medan in the last 21 months. She’s very sad to be leaving but also very determined. She returns to the US just shy of her 19th birthday. She’ll live with family for a time as she works one or more part-time jobs to save up money. She then intends to return to Southeast Asia in a year or so with enough money saved up to just about pay for her three-year course of study at The One, a prestigious digital art and design school in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, with an eye towards a job in film doing digital design and storyboarding. Prayers for her as she leaves and for our family as we deal with her departure are also appreciated. We’re so proud of her but of course we’ll miss her!