Dan & Becky Parnell - Link Missionaries (Nepal)

Dear friends,
Welcome to our first official newsletter. BMS World Mission will be sending out these newsletters once every few months so that you can keep up to date with what we are doing. It also means that those who would like to pray for us know what to pray for.

We finished a term at BMS’ International Mission Centre in Birmingham just before Christmas. This was a time of training and preparation for our time in Nepal.  We really valued the time, particularly the opportunity to take a break from normal life and lead a more relaxing few months. It gave us time to prepare practically, spiritually and emotionally for being overseas. We enjoyed living in a community with others making similar preparations.We made some good friends, many of whom are now heading all over the world to fulfil many different roles with BMS. This includes another couple, Jon and Nic White, who are with us in Kathmandu.They will be working with the United Mission to Nepal.
 
We are currently settling into life in Kathmandu. We started language training on the 14 January.We will spend our first eight weeks doing language and orientation
at Kathmandu International Study Centre (KISC).This involves four days a week of language study and one day a week of orientation, learning about the practicalities of life and the culture of Nepal. During this time we will spend one week living with a Nepali family, so that we can practise our language and also get to know more about the Nepali way of life and culture.This will obviously be quite a challenge in many ways but it is also a great opportunity which we are really looking forward to.

For those of you who don’t know much about what we will be doing, here are the details. We will be teaching at KISC, a school that was set up primarily for the children of mission workers, although it does have other children too. The school follows the British curriculum, but has a wide variety of nationalities represented by the pupils, with the majority being American and South Korean.

Over the Christmas break the school moved from its old premises to a new site relatively close by.The new building is much bigger than the old one, but it has very little in the way of grounds, which is providing some issues at the minute; particularly for PE.

The school has both primary and secondary sections as well as a teacher training facility which works with local Nepali teachers.We shall be teaching in the secondary section once our language and orientation has finished in March. We hope to be teaching our own subjects (ICT for Daniel and geography for Becky). However we imagine we will be teaching a bit of some other subjects too, if and when needed.

During our time in Nepal we plan to get involved in a local Nepali church.We will need some grasp of the language for this, but also hope that it will help our language develop. We are currently staying in the school’s hostel accommodation until we find a flat of our own. We hope to find somewhere quickly so that we can get settled in and start to feel at home.

Nepal has been undergoing a turbulent time politically over the last few years. In 2006 several political groups set up an interim government with plans for elections in 2007. However the Maoist group pulled out of the coalition in October because of disagreements about the future of the monarchy. Over the Christmas period it was announced that the monarchy would be abolished which has meant the Maoists have agreed to be part of democratic elections in spring 2008. Hopefully these will run smoothly and the unrest in many rural areas will settle down.

While we are away we will use our blog to update you on what we are doing, as well as these newsletters.We would also really appreciate news from you in the UK so that we can keep up to date on what is going on with you.We apologise if we are not always able to reply personally but would value hearing from you.

For those who would like to pray:

Give thanks for:
Safe arrival
Our term at IMC in preparation
KISC’s new site

To pray for
Language and orientation programme
Finding a flat to live in
Developing friendships with Nepalis and other ex-pats
KISC as it settles into its new site
The political situation in Nepal