We had a fantastic monsoon thunderstorm during the night, and then awoke to the amazing gift of blue sky and a beautiful view of the Annapurnas. How majestic is the Lord our God, and how marvellous his works! We were in awe, and cameras were clicking. The clouds were continually moving so the view changed quickly, disappearing, and reappearing. How blessed we are. Especially when we came with the realistic expectation that we would probably not see the mountains because of the season of our visit.

After a lovely breakfast of homemade cereal and toast with mixed berry jam or Nepali honey, we met up with Debbie Dornan, one of the admin team from the Tansen Mission Hospital who took us on a tour of the hospital precinct. Tansen Mission Hospital has been here for 60 years and is doing a great work, caring for the community and proclaiming Jesus. The hospital motto is “We Serve; Jesus Heals”. We toured the wards, including outpatients, emergency, surgical, orthopaedic, maternity, dental clinic, x-ray, MRI, echo, lab, saw the admin section, maintenance, chapel, meeting rooms, training rooms, talked with some expats about their work, as well as meeting up with people who are here short term as volunteers. The need here is so great. We met Andy, a surgeon from the UK here this time for 2 weeks, filling a much needed gap over the monsoon period. He is sad that he’s unable to stay longer, as he has done previously, and there is a serious need for a surgeon here in August. Please pray.

Lunch was a generous serve of rice, dahl, spiced cabbage, spiced potato, followed up with bananas.

The afternoon was such a blessing as we had the company of a young Nepali Christian, Arjun, who took us on a walking tour across the hillside of Tansen, visiting a Psychiatric Clinic associated with the hospital, a Tansen Church [one of 7 in the town ], walking down to the bazaar, seeing the palace of the previous king of this part of Nepal prior to unification, now used as a government building, and also the first Mission Hospital building now used as a school.

Raju, our driver, then came down to the bazaar, as the walk back up the hill would have been arduous for all of us in the humidity.

A truly wonderful day!

As we come to our final night in Tansen, we have much to give thanks for, and we look forward to Pokhara!