From 15,000 to.....the Muhan House

We finally sent out an email about what we are going to get to be a part of in Nepal. It has all the information and in lieu of writing it all again, I posted it here :-). Thanks for taking the time to read it, and we'd love to tell you more! Let us know if you want to be involved.

Hello Family and Friends,

We are so excited to finally be writing this email to you all to tell you about what God is doing in Nepal and how we are going to be involved, and how you can too!

So let's get right to it. Almost 10 months ago, now, we sat on the front lawn of our friends' property in Nepal where we lived for 2 1/2 months, and God really impressed upon us an idea. Now at first, we thought this idea was a new concept that God specifically given to us, but it turns out that He had been planning this for quite some time now and was about to make us part of His plan.
Before we unveil the plan, let’s start at the beginning… and that is 15,000. What's the deal with 15,000? 15,000 is the number of Nepali girls that are sold into the sex-trade EVERY YEAR! That's 1,250 girls every month, 41 girls a day, and 3 girls every 2 hours that are uprooted from their homes in mountain villages and taken away from a life they will never know again, to be sold into the ever-increasing sex-trade across the border into India and beyond.

Now, as appalling and horrific as that "sounds," it was even more horrifying to see this issue in person. As we spent 10 weeks in Nepal, we visited the mountain villages where unsuspecting girls live their lives, we drove on the roads which the brokers use to transport them across the borders, and we met and spent time with young girls that have lived through this trauma.

Our friends in Nepal have already taken in four amazing girls that were at one point sold, or about to be sold, across the border into India. These four girls have been living with them for two years, experiencing what love is really like and beginning to heal with Jesus' touch. We were blessed to be able to get to know these girls and spend time with them and hear their traumatic and sad, yet redeeming stories.

We learned all about different groups and organizations that are going into India or patrolling the border to rescue girls. It is AMAZING that there are organizations that are slowly being able to do this, but for several very complicated reasons that are difficult to understand for us, the girls are not welcomed back into their own homes and families, and therefore, have very few places to go once they are rescued! Also, the age at which the girls are being "sold" is becoming younger and younger; there are 8 and 9 year old girls being trafficked across the border! When these young girls are rescued, there are very few organizations that have the capacity to sustain long-term care for these young girls.

That hit us hard! Harder than anything we saw as we traveled and we really felt this was what God wanted us to become involved in. We continuously prayed as we were overseas that God would show us what He wanted us to do. We were open to moving somewhere and living overseas if that seemed best and what He wanted, but this is what He placed on our hearts. This also became more real when our friend in Nepal got news that five more girls were rescued from brothels in India or from the border and needed a place to live now. With limited resources, our friend faithfully trusted God and took them in, but here is the issue......

There is no HOME for these girls. They are temporarily staying in a renovated piece of our friends' property that we were able to help build (with amazing support from you guys!), but this living situation is not sustainable and can only house up to 9 girls.

So, back to the idea! These girls need a home! Let’s help build them a home. After praying about it a lot we brought up this idea with our friends in Nepal and the EPI staff and to our amazement this was something they have been thinking and praying about as well! At this point our idea became a little more tangible and we became EPI staff with this as one of our first projects. With God's help, we are going to help our friends in Nepal build a HOME for girls that have been rescued from sexual abuse and sexual exploitation. We hope to use our God given gifts, Justin's project management skills and budgeting; and Krista's counseling skills and heart to help these young victims.

What will this look like?

1) We will be doing what we can to raise awareness and funds so that we can raise enough money to build the actual house and then keep it up and running for years to come, with the ability to house 16-20 girls.

2) Krista will be putting together and implementing a counseling training curriculum to use with the staff of the house as she works with them to figure out the best way to help the girls fully heal.

3) We will not be moving to Nepal. We feel very strongly that God wants us to do all of this from the States (at least for now) and therefore, we will be living here and periodically taking trips to Nepal throughout the year. In fact, we’ll be taking a team back to Nepal this March! Want to come? The EPI partners (our friends in Nepal) are absolutely incredible and are fully capable of managing the project from the ground.

4) MUHAN HOUSE - this is the name of the future home to 16-20 girls rescued from the sex-trade. "Muhan" in Nepali literally means "source." It usually refers to the source of a river, and implied in its meaning is a source that never runs dry. In conjunction with our Nepali partners we came up with this name because we believe that Jesus is the true source of life and healing. Like the source of a river, He never runs dry and is the living water (John. 4:14) that satisfies every need and truly brings life back into dead situations.

What can you do?

1) Ask us questions. We have so much more information, but this email is already long enough and in lieu of writing a novel, please ask us questions that you might have about this and we would be more than happy to try our best to answer you.

2) Pray!! Please cover this whole project in prayer. Satan would like nothing more than to sabotage a place where girls will come to know Jesus and heal from this unbelievable trauma.

3) Stay connected through our Facebook page and eventually our website. Click HERE to go to the Face Book page,

Make sure to click on LIKE once you get to the page, and you can stay posted on the latest and greatest and learn more about the issue of sex-trafficking in Nepal.

3) Come and See! Join us on a trip to Nepal! We have our first one in March and then we will be going on a yearly basis (maybe more). Stay connected and find out when we'll be going and come with us!! If your are interested in going this March, let us know!

4) Give. The estimated cost of the house at this point is $150,000. In Nepal, land and building supplies are very expensive, but we are trusting God will come up with this figure. In addition, we are trusting that He will provide the funds to keep the house running and the girls supported indefinitely. To give to this project, go on the EPI website (www.eagleprojects.com), click on donations and put Muhan House in the options line.

What a great way to make this Christmas different!!

We look forward to partnering with you on this project! And please feel free to come to us with questions, concerns, thoughts, or anything!

In Him,

Krista and Justin

What we were doing last Halloween?

Today, November 1st, I'm working on putting together a computer file of all the counseling/training hours I compiled during our year abroad. In doing that, I opened the computer file that contains the daily journal that we kept while we were traveling. Yep, that's right, we kept a DAILY journal to remember everything we did this past year. At times it got a little annoying and cumbersome, but now that we're back, it's AWESOME! Especially now as I'm trying to remember how long I trained there and what we did then, etc.

Anyway, as I was working this morning, I came upon our journal entry of last October 31st. It's weird to think that one year ago, we were in Zimbabwe doing this on Halloween. This is the exact journal entry that we wrote that night (I added the pics to the blog post for proof :-))....

Saturday October 31st:

Today, the plan was to leave at 10 to head straight to an African Wedding! At this point we are not sure who the couple is, but we are excited to see how it all works. We got all dressed up, Justin in a tie and khakis, and Krista in a nice skirt and blouse. We had a super breakfast of eggs and bread and coffee (yay!); and met some visitors that had come in for the wedding and had arrived at 3am that morning. 10 am came and went; and we found out that the guests didn’t know where to go so we needed to wait for them. The wedding organizer was a little frustrated since she was hoping to get there as soon as possible. It was interesting to see a local get a little anxious about time since we seem to feel it all the time. Finally at about 11 we were off to the wedding, but gas first, and then the wedding. We walked right in and it was hard to tell at first if we wereat the ceremony or the reception. Nearly everyone was sitting down in rows, but people were cheering and talking; and there was a large crowd at the front around the Bride and Groom. Some seats were found for us at the front… it’s good to be with such honored guests like Lucia and the visitors. Turns out they are the pastor and his wife from the Groom’s church in South Africa, and the newly married couple will return to that church. So yeah, being associated with the big dogs gets you good seats. The large crowd at the front consisted of the Bride and Groom, a whole entourage of camera-men and videographers, a lot of bridesmaids and groomsmen, all sitting down behind the camera crew, and then behind them another set of bridesmaids and groom-children – just a younger and smaller version of the typical wedding party… probably all around 10 years old. There was a bunch going on in Shona, so we were pretty lost. Then they kissed… well that part is the familiar. And they did a receiving line of everyone in the place (which was quite a few, maybe 150 to 200), again, pretty familiar, we could see this happening in the states.
So we’re thinking we are probably about done, but nobody seemed to be getting ready to leave. Oh, there is more… they cut the cake, at the ceremony, a little different, but cool. Then they presented bigger pieces of cake to family members and respected people in their lives (Lucia got a big piece), and they gave out bite sized pieces to everyone there. It was delicious.

The AMAZING cake (even with Fall Harvest colors)! Check out the Africa Hut!

Other stuff happened and then the toasts and speeches started. About 4 or 5 from each side of the family… then Lucia got up there and talked for a little while (she is always a crowd pleaser) and introduced the couple that had gotten there that morning, and they went to the front and gave a little sermon and advice to the lucky couple. At least that part we could understand since they spoke in English and someone translated,

not sure what they spoke in SA, but the common language was English. And at some point relatively soon after that they all danced their way out of the ceremony hall… the little one’s first, then the “regular” bridesmaids and groomsmen and then the happy couple. And we were done. At this point it was probably about 1 ish, and the wedding technically started at 9 – Yeah, 4 hours for the “Ceremony”. We then followed the whole wedding party to where they were going to take pictures; Lucia wanted a picture with the Married couple. And apparently somebody wanted us to have a picture with them as well, because before w

e knew it we were standing next to the newlyweds and everyone was snapped photos of us as well.

See, I wasn't lying. They really had us take a photo with the Bride and Groom!

Then back to the hall for some lunch and the reception. We hung around outside for a while after lunch, bought some ice cream, talked to a few of the people there we knew (we talked about the big church service we were going to go to on Sunday), hung out some more, and then finally we went in. They were at the gift receiving stage… not sure what was going on while we were outside, maybe just gift giving, I hear it can take a while. People come up family by family, or person by person, and give a gift, and the emcee announces to everyone what they gave. Crazy huh? I wonder what would happen if we did that in America? And then churches give and the emcee announces that too!… so we went up with Lucia and everyone from Eternal Word Ministries and we even gave a little donation (as “Eternal Word America”). Then we finally headed out… it’s about 4 or 5 pm at this point....but the party probably kept on going.

The End

There you have it. What we were doing last year on Halloween. Wow, it seems almost surreal that a year ago we were doing that when yesterday we were here in Colorado, mountain biked with friends, went to church, ran some errands, and handed out candy to neighborhood kidos. And now that we've been back for a month now, I'm realizing that God is found in both the extravagant and romantic as well as the mundane.

Back Home! What's Next?

Disclaimer: This post is very similar to an email we just sent out. Just thought it was worthy enough to make the blog as well, as we hit the two week mark of being back in America!

So you've probably heard these clichés before:
Time flies...
It seems like just yesterday...
You'll be back before you know it...

Time does indeed fly, and it seems like just yesterday we were packing up our house, selling a car and getting ready for our year overseas, and as we have been back for two weeks now, we are definitely back before we knew it! We used to think these clichés were silly, not anymore!
It has been a while since most of you have heard from us (sorry for that, "we were out of the country"...we still love saying that:-)) so here is a quick recap of our "year overseas" which we generally broke into two parts:

Part 1:

The first half of our year was what we considered our intentional ministry and humanitarian portion of the year as we partnered with the non-profit organization, EPI (Eagle Projects Int) and visited 3 of their overseas partners in Harare, Zimbabwe; Kisii, Kenya; and Kathmandu, Nepal. We were also very blessed to be able to visit some of our friends laboring for Christ in Nalchik, Russia.

And for an even quicker version of our first 6 months, check out this video we made!!! Click HERE to launch the YouTube video.

Part 2:

The second half of our year included our not-so-intentional ministry and humanitarian portion of the year, or we could call it our sightseeing portion. :-) We visited some beautiful countryside and met up with some great friends and even family as we explored Ireland, Scotland, England, France, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Belgium, Italy, Switzerland, Austria, Czech Republic, and Germany. We even had the pleasure to spend some time with an EPI partner in Cesena, Italy. For a look at some photo albums from Europe, click HERE.

But first check out this video we made of our 4 months in Europe, click HERE!! (It's hard to choose 106 photos out of 12,000, but we did our best)

And now for another cliché...

The real world...

What are we going to do next, as we are now back in the real world? Justin's day job will be back at EnCana as he is lucky enough to be able to get his job back and has already started working. Krista is trying to narrow down a long list of possible options for her time which could include working towards a counseling practice, volunteering in some capacity, and taking a few more Seminary classes. And for the rest of our time we are excited to share with you two recent developments that will allow us to continue traveling and working overseas!

We have recently become official staff with EPI! We are now working with EPI in Special Project Development. This will allow us to continue to travel and visit EPI's great partners to see how their ministry is developing and what their needs are. Check out our profile HERE.

One of our first opportunities with EPI is managing a project with our EPI partners in Nepal. We are very excited to continue our relationship with the awesome couple that is working in Nepal (you have probably heard us talking about them) and the need that we are hoping to help with, which is very close to our hearts. They are doing some amazing work with young girls that have been rescued from the sex trafficking industry and we have a way we think we can help, with your help as well, of course. But as this email is already long enough, we will be sending another email with more details! So stay tuned.

We feel very blessed to have had this opportunity, and we are super excited about the future! Thank you so much for your support, prayers and well wishes!

In Him,
Justin and Krista

All Good Things Must Come to an End

One of several amazing sunsets in Cinque Terre

Now, obviously this is a common saying, but to be honest, I don't like it. And part of me doesn't believe it (or more accurately, doesn't want to believe it), but like all age-old sayings, there is some truth to it. Change is inevitable, and a necessary part of life. It is change that helps is grow and become the people that God created us to be. So even something that seemed so good at the time, must end and other things must take it's place. Just like a beautiful sunset turns into peaceful night.

Our four months in Europe were absolutely amazing! We had such a great time with each other and loved seeing the in's and out's of God's creation. It was so GOOD. But in this case, obviously not sustainable, unless someone wants to give us millions :-). Therefore, this GOOD thing had to come to an end. We will forever cherish this time we had together (literally 24/7) and will remember all the amazing things we got the opportunity to do.

To wrap up our four months in Europe, we spent a week in Cinque Terre, Italy.

The adorable town of Vernazza in Cinque Terre, Italy (home for 3 nights)

This was one place that several people told us we HAD to see if we went to Europe. So with that in mind, we scheduled a whole week here at the end of our trip, sort of like a grand finale. And it did not dissapoint. Cinque Terre, or "five lands" is a grouping of five towns on the Italian Riviera. Cars are not allowed in the towns, so the only way to get from town to town is by train, boat, or foot. In addition, there is a National Park so there are lots of hiking trails connecting the towns and going all over the beautiful cliffs, hills, and vineyards. And finally, what makes it even cooler, it's in Italy, so you have Italian food and gelato!!

Hiking above the town of Monterosso

We had a great time hiking from town to town and above the towns through the vineyards. Our only recommendation if you plan on going to Cinque Terre in the future - prepare yourself for crowds and book in advance. We luckily had booked a month in advance, but even that was difficult, and while we were there, we did have to strategically find places where the crowds would not be. It is no longer a "hidden gem" if you will, but nonetheless, it is still gorgeous, fun, and definitely worth going to.

To take a better look at this BEAUTIFUL place click HERE! We took lots of photos and hopefully the captions show up as well.

Where is the Pope?

So if I asked you about Church in Italy, what would come to your mind first? The Pope? A large, Catholic Church with organs and choirs? Or would you first think of The Da Vinci Code? I bet the last thing you would think of is a small,evangelical church next to a Kebab Restaurant with a few guitars and a Brazilian man at the pulpit preaching on God's unconditional love! That is the exact church we got to experience in Cesena, Italy with Pastor Fabiano Nicodemo a few weekends ago. We knew about this church from our work with EPI (Eagle Projects International) who have been working with Fabiano for over 20 years. When Phil Eyster (EPI Pres.) heard we were going to be in Italy, he said we had to visit Cesena to meet this great man and his family, and to get some excellent Gelato... we did all that and more. Here are some of the highlights:

Meet Pastor Fabiano and his new English Club Poster. One of his outreach tools is to hold church sponsored English Clubs each week that can help locals practice conversational english, and occasionally hear about the love of God! We got to attend one of the meetings and meet some great people. They need some help, anyone out there speak english and want to visit Italy?

One night we enjoyed worship and teaching with the local college age Christians and after that some time to hang together and eat:

And a little Gelato after that (Gelato has already been consumed :-)

On Sunday we got to visit their church service:

And then play with the kids after that... it doesn't matter how old, or in what country, Justin usually gets beat at video games.

And of course, a little Gelato with the whole family at the famous La Cremeria!

After we reluctantly left our good friends in Cesena, we hoped on a train to the famous, beautiful and popular, Cinque Terre! Stay tuned for some pics and a chance encounter with some friends from Colorado... Who you ask? Well, you'll just have to catch the next blog (or stalk our Facebook page :-)!

Lugano and Venice!!

Left the mountains of Switzerland for the waters of Lake Lugano and the Adriatic Sea. Both places were absolutely beautiful, but don't take my word for it. Enjoy these pictures!

Click HERE to see pics from Lugano and Venice!

Week with the Parents!!

Well, the much anticipated week with my (Krista) mom and dad has come and gone. It was technically a little over a week and we jam packed all kinds of goodness into those 9 days.

We covered three countries and 11 cities. Luckily we had a car to whip around to all of these places quickly.....and it also gave the men a chance to drive on Germany's autobahn :-). They got up to speeds of 180km/hr!!

We started in Germany and went along the Rhine River to Bacharach, then on the Romantic Road to Rothenburg, and then in to the mountains and castle country to Garmisch. From Germany, we went in to Austria and explored Salzburg, then the Lake District around Salzburg in the town of Halstat, and finally in the Austrian Alps in Innsbruck. After Austria, we went to Switzerland to see Lucerne, the Alps in the Berner Oberland area, and finally Zurich.

It was tons of fun and a great way to celebrate my dad's 60th birthday. We experienced Spaghetti Ice together, rode an alpine slide overlooking the lakes in Austria, did a few awesome bike rides (even one with belting some Sound of Music songs :-)), and had some great dinners overlooking gorgeous lakes and rivers. I'm so glad they came over and braved traveling with us :-). After Zurich, they headed to Scotland and England for a few days, and Justin and I headed to southern Switzerland (Lugano) and then into Italy (Venice).

Click HERE to see some awesome pics of our week with my parents.

We now have less than two weeks left on this crazy adventure and we'll be in Italy for the rest of the time. Tomorrow we leave Venice to go spend four days with an Eagle Project's Partner in Cesena. And then we finish our trip up with 6 days in Cinque Terre!!