Releasing little Baby Girl Tamang

Today was baby girl's one-month birthday.  Until today we had not even seen her  in person in order not to complicate any possible future adoption.  Since we got the final "no" yesterday, however, we decided to go meet her today and to pray over her as a family and to release her to the Lord.  She is so cute!  She has her own little crib in one corner of a nurse's station where she has been living this past month.  When we came in she was sleeping.  She awoke at the end of our little family prayer, yawned, and then just concentrated her eyes on us before returning to sleep.  It was a sweet family time of praying for her.  But hard as well.  I (Dave) hadn't realized how attached I had become to this little life I had never met.  We cannot have her, but we can continue to pray for her.  As we reported last post, the current bureaucracy makes her unadoptable (even to a Nepali family) at this point so she is likely to moved soon to an orphanage and live her life there until some change occurs in the law.  Please join us in praying for her care and salvation.  There is a wonderful Christian children's home (orphanage) nearby where she will likely go until she  is able to be adopted (if that ever happens) only by a Nepali family (if one can be found).

Please join us in praying and releasing Little Baby Girl Tamang!

Dave (for the Beines)

Praying over "baby girl" Tamang

"No"

Hello Faithful Partners,

I woke up this morning feeling a little discouraged...Nick continues to struggle with stomach pain, although the diarrhea has lessened and his appetite has increased.  His tests at the hospital only showed pus in his stool, but without identifiable cause.  We'll try a couple more tests, and we'll continue to wait.  Nick was due to have a friend visit from Kathmandu today, but a strike has closed the road and that is postponed.  We've had about 16 hours without electricity and I didn't plan well (this wasn't expected) and I am concerned that we may lose all of our food in the refrigerator and freezer (I really shouldn't have it so well stocked in this season).  And finally today we got the answer from the lawyer regarding guardianship/adoption of the abandoned baby girl who remains at the hospital: "No."  Adoption will not be possible for us for this girl. 

My neighbor invited me to join her at the local healthcare worker spiritual conference going on just a 20-minute walk from our home.  I just knew that I needed to go and worship the LORD and I knew that doing so corporately would encourage me.  There are hundreds of God's children from all over South Asia coming to our town to be encouraged in their service to the LORD through healthcare.  And it was a wonderful blessing.  I had some good tears, again, as we sang some songs that are very dear to me.  I was blessed by the message out of Exodus about the midwives, Shiphrah and Puah, who followed God's edict, instead of the governmental edict of the time, and spared the Hebrew babies.  And I was inspired to pray the prayer written in the conference handout:  "Lord, please give me three wounds: 1) the wound of contrition, that I might come to repentance for my own sins, 2) the wound of compassion (the kind of love that comes with pain, and continues to love), and 3) the wound of hunger, for the Lord Almighty, for His Word, and for His ways.  Finally, I was encouraged to remember that God's greatest works have been accomplished through human weakness and in what seemed like the darkest times.  The absolutely darkest time was when the Father turned his face away from his Son, Jesus Christ.  And it is in that moment that He accomplished His greatest act: that of saving a whole family of children from all over the earth. 

So, I go forward to work today feeling weak to accomplish anything good, but inspired to cry out to God to accomplish His will.  I hope you will do the same.  I hope that your worship of God will not stop at the altar with the meeting of your own needs, but will continue on to the point of contrition, compassion and hunger for God.  And then may we rejoice together in all that God accomplishes through hearts fully surrendered to Him, no matter the cost.  Our time of suffering is short; let us embrace it boldly.  Our time of rejoicing in His presence will be FOREVER!

Serving Him in Tansen, Nepal,

Kimberly, for the Beines

Tears today...

Well, the Beines have had a day of tears today.  It started at 3am with Nick having profuse watery diarrhea again.  Then when we were all up (between 6 and 7am) we began to listen to music that reminded us of my mom, as this is the 2-year anniversary of her leaving us (better put: her birthday in heaven)(It's April 19th here).  Well within about 15 minutes, we were all gathered in the living room crying together as we remembered "grandma."  As I cried, I realized that all the little painful things that I have bound up in my heart needed that soothing cleansing of a good cry.  All of a sudden I was crying because I cannot make my son well, and because I cannot give a home to an orphan whom I've grown to love (through daily prayer, without even having seen her), and then the tears came for all of the injustice in the world and all the ways that we fall short of holiness which leads to so much pain on this journey we call life.  In the end, the tears were also for joy...for the joy of relationship with five "men" whom God has given me as companions for this part of the journey...and mostly for the joy which awaits us in heaven (which is surely far beyond my wildest imagination).

God loves the Chepang of Nepal...and many are coming to know it!

It's Been A While...

Hi all:

We have had several of you write asking how we are doing having lost our teacher, with the hope of adoptions, domestic violence happening to our house helper, etc. Well, life has been so hectic of late that we just haven’t had the time to update you all (or are too tired to do so when we finally have the time). Finally, a brief moment…

To be honest we have really struggled to adjust to life without a teacher these past two weeks. Daily living alone takes a great deal of time here in Nepal and add to that our jobs and now to that the need to take up extra responsibilities of teaching. As a result we have both had to scale way back with our various vocational involvements and with our language lessons (which are so important to our long-term work here) in order to keep the schooling going for the kids. This has been a difficult decision for us as we both feel like we came here for more than just living in Nepal and schooling our kids. We feel like we were called here to contribute to the wider Chepang ministry, Tansen Mission Hospital, Palpa Community Health Department, and the wider missionary community. And yet our kid’s education is also an imperative (which is why we felt it necessary to recruit a teacher to come with us). So, we have striven (not very successfully at times) over these past two weeks to do it all.

After learning our teacher would not be returning to Nepal a few days ago we got a message from some missionary friends that their oldest son might be willing to come to finish out the term with us. Although not a teacher by training, he is a recent college graduate, and the oldest of nine kids (so has lots of experience with “helping” younger kids), and the curriculum we are using does not require a trained teacher, just significant time. So, Ryan will be boarding a plane in less than ten hours to begin his four day journey to join us. Please pray for Ryan’s travels that will take him through Thailand and Kathmandu, which have both been experiencing political tensions as of late. And pray for us, that we will have the stamina to finish out the school week this week. And if anyone wants to help with Ryan's travel/living expenses (which were unexpected) please write us and we will let you know how to do that.

On the guardianship/adoption front we haven’t heard a peep. It would take a real miracle, however. As the days tick on it seems less and less likely that, even if it is possible (and it currently seems impossible for a foreigner to legally gain guardianship of this little girl), that we will actually have the time required to finalize all of the needed paperwork before our required departure date. And in the meantime she sits in the hospital, unadoptable even to Nepalis because she was abandoned without the necessary parental release paperwork. Barring a miracle it could take months or even years (in the absence of this signed parental release) for her case to make its way through the convoluted, bureaucratic Nepali legal system. And that must happen first in order to make her adoptable TO ANYONE!

In regards to the domestic violence suffered by our house help, we have been pleased to see the Nepali church come to her aid and to see her, through this difficult situation, returning to more regular Christian fellowship. It has been exciting to see her allowing the Nepali church be the body of Christ in ministering to her needs. The battle is not over, but pray for her and for her estranged and backslidden husband, and for their two adult children; that God would work in the lives of each person involved to draw them all to himself. Pray for true repentance and a return to the Lord for the backslidden husband, for a stronger relationship with her Lord for the wife who sometimes seems satisfied with nominal Christianity and for true relationship with the Lord for the children who don’t seem very mature in faith. And pray for the Nepali church as they strive to be the body of Christ to her and to meet her daily physical and emotional needs.

Okay, I have just been called to adminster a speling test :), so gotta go.

Now you know how to pray!

Dave (for all the abiding Beines)

Push Back the Darkness

I cannot explain it...we take it as a pure gift. Our circumstances have not changed at all, and yet, this morning it felt as if God breathed a little wind into our sails. We finished our devotion time with a commitment to put on the armor of God, link arms with one another, and push back against the darkness. We do not intend to be enveloped by it. We were able to face the day with more courage and more strength. Thank you, Father! Someone recently said to me that when we encounter great disappointment, it is always good to wait at least three days to see what kind of resurrection God might bring. We serve a God of new beginnings and amazing restoration. Just tonight we were reminded by some friends of His power to restore marriage relationships; He is amazing!

On the baby girl front, we spoke with a lawyer today who is checking out all the possibilities for this little one. Apparently she cannot be adopted by anyone until she gets an identity card. Getting such a card requires BOTH of her parents to show up at their district administrator's office. Efforts are being made to encourage this to happen. It is rumored that the whereabouts of both parents is known. We continue to pray that this precious little one will find a home. If ours can be it, we rejoice; if another, we still rejoice...we really hope that she can soon have parents committed to caring for her.

Waiting on God, the One who knows everything, who directs a grand production with a fantastic finale...can't wait to see the next scene, the Beines in Nepal

Tears today...

Well, today was a day of tears in the Beine family...some shed by those not wanting to take correction, some shed by those not understanding the school lesson, some shed as a release in a time of so much change, some shed by mom who suddenly found our chaos hilarious (it was about this time when the didi asked what was going on around here...why were the kids crying?). And then there are the deeper tears...the baby girl remains in the hospital, without a family; we remain in our home longing to be her family. The mountain between us seems like Everest, and our hearts wonder why it is so. This life is certainly full of injustice. My role model is Christ who saw injustice throughout his life, and suffered it particularly in his final days before his crucifixion, and remained steadfast in what he was called to do. He entrusted himself to the One who knows better than we possibly can. We wait on the One who knows...
the Beines in Nepal

DARKNESS…

Today is the Friday when we remember our LORD’s crucifixion. We read about it as a family today, and although we are fully aware of the darkness of it all, we had hope in our hearts this morning because we also know “the rest of the story.” Then the day began in earnest…and now we know a bit more of the darkness of this world.

First, we decided to start school a little later so that Dave and I could pursue the question of guardianship of the baby girl abandoned at the hospital. So, Nick took the opportunity to have a morning stroll on the mountain. When he returned, he reported that some local kids threw rocks at him. He wasn’t hit, so this was a minor thing, but my mama’s heart doesn’t like to hear such things.

Then our didi showed up at our house this morning with a black eye, broken lip and puffy face. You see, her husband, who left her for another woman visited her and left that wretched gift on her body. I asked her why she didn’t report it to the police, and she told me that the police have no concern for domestic issues. My heart is really hurting now.

Finally, we received the news that the local governmental representative where we live is not willing to help us get guardianship of the abandoned baby, which makes our chances of bringing her into our home pretty close to nil. We made a request that the social worker, at the hospital, place her with a local Christian family, but he informed us that the families wanting a child are not Christians. My heart aches even more. They say that the only hope for us to give a home to this baby is to know somebody in the American Embassy who would pull strings for us. I do not think they understand that we don’t function under that model where knowing someone gets you what you want.

At this point, we all feel a bit numb. It isn’t nearly the darkness that our Jesus faced for us, but it is a little taste. So, how do we respond to this darkness? Is it ours simply to suffer in the darkness of this world, or is there a resurrection coming in each of these situations? We have no answer. The only thing we can do today is make every effort to get our didi under care (we have made an appointment with the counseling department at the hospital; we do not know if she will agree to go) and continue to love her as best we can.

Thank you for walking with us…please pray for light!