Leaving It All Out There: My Many Travels

It has been a while since I have updated this blog but if you keep reading you will see that I have been quite busy trekking about the country. My first trip took me, and three teammates, to three different cities whose populations are predominately the ppl group that several of the members of our team a focusing on. We spent 10 days traveling through some very beautiful, yet very dark areas. In each city we met some great people and even got to share some of the good news with one family. On my second trip I went with two teammates to a city south of us. We went partly for a mini vacation, but mostly to go shopping at Ikea for our new houses. Speaking of houses mine is close to finished now. It is now fully furnished and I am ordering curtains this weekend so pretty much all that is left is decorating, and my little brain is still working on ideas for that. But more about that in my next post, here are some pictures from my travels.

These first two are pics of the largest pile of mani stones in the world. Tibs. will carve a mantra/pr on the rocks and then bring them to holy places and pile them up as a way to gain merits in hopes of being reincarnated as something better in their next life.

More mani stones in a river

One day we hired a taxi to take us around to all the different sights in the area and on the way up a 14,000 ft. pass his car couldn’t handle it’s six passengers so some of us had to get out and hike part of the way up until he came back for us. It more than once literally took my breath away, but we got to take in some beautiful scenery and a few yak fights.

Another thing they will do to gain merit is hang pr flags from the high places around where they live

This is a pr flag designed by a friend from my company that has a pr to our Father on it. It is now tied among many other pr flags at about 13,000 ft. in one of the more remote regions of this country.

Pr flags on top of a mountain

One day after we hiked up a mountain these four local boys running up to the top. They were a lot of fun and were very eager to share their little sugar feast that they had brought along with us. And of course being as well trained as we all were we accepted what was put before us. So after consuming what at the time seemed like every sugary creation ever invented we were hyped up and ready for whatever adventures they brought on. Including...

wrestling

hunting hawks

and swimming in the frigidly cold river.

One day while exploring a monastery we met this nun. As soon as she saw us she called us up and wanted to take pictures with us and then took us into her home and served us tea.