Nepal is a country of many layers. Tiny streets with tiny arches for tiny people to go through, but once you enter, another dimension opens and you can see there is still much more to discover. An alley isn’t just an alley, it’s suddenly an open-air mall four levels high, with pedestrian bridges overhead. This describes the tourist area of Thamel, where we became regulars since our hotel was right on the perimeter.
Many months ago, when we were still in the planning stages for our mission with Equipping Saints for Ministry (ES4M), all the details effortlessly came together, from a divine connection through our Acts 29 Church Network pastor at our home church, Transit Church in Northern Virginia, to the timing for our mission. The director of ES4M, Mike Heitland, many times commented on how the stars had aligned for our partnership. That is, until a few days before our arrival date when a Turkish Airlines plane crashed on the Kathmandu runway sending the airport into a spiral of chaos (see previous blog post).
When we finally got there, we were a full two days behind our working schedule and the team of six didn’t fully arrive until four days past their schedule. This might not sound like much of a delay until you consider we only had 10 days to begin with and two videos to film and produce, not to mention a spur-of-the-moment task of capturing specific footage to be used in a video narrated by Tim Keller for The Gospel Coalition (TGC). Apart from us, ES4M was now forced to cram a week’s worth of training into a two-and-a-half day course. It seems impossible, but with God, all things are possible (Matthew 19:26). Even with the late start — not to mention Jordan getting a 24-hour stomach bug and the team taking a two-day culture trip out of our working time — God graced us with ample time to produce our two promised videos for ES4M and TGC in the least amount of time we’ve had so far. When it finally came time to edit, we felt God’s hand leading the project. Creativity was abundant, and before we knew it, we had produced two completely different videos that complimented each other perfectly. We hope you enjoy them as much as we enjoyed making them.
We had just said our final goodbyes to the Kachhap family, which included them presenting us glitter-covered farewell cards and friendship bracelets. Anmol and Rev. Sunil dropped us off at the airport and waved goodbye as we entered the terminal making it through the initial security before we were informed by the ticketing counter that the Kathmandu airport was closed, and had been for three days. We then had to make a quick decision — should we fly the first leg to Delhi and stay the night there and hope that the next day the Kathmandu airport would be reopened, or should we stick with what we knew and recheck-in to our same, comfortable room despite the lack of internet strength? Though going to Delhi would have potentially meant us being able to see the Taj Mahal the next day before our 7pm flight to Kathmandu, our unpreparedness and inability to research where to go led us to making the “responsible” decision. Now stranded at the airport with no phone or access to internet, we hopped on a rickshaw and headed back to our familiar hotel, which welcomed us back into the same room. Another night came and went in Jharkhand state and we repeated the steps the next day, this time successfully getting boarding passes all the way through our final destination, as the Kathmandu airport was finally reopened.
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When we left Back2Back in Hyderabad, we didn’t know how any experience would compare to that one, but when the entire Kachhap family met us at the airport in Jharkhand State with huge flower arrangements in hand, we realized we were in for another great Indian adventure.
It’s quite apparent to us now, having spent close to a month in India in two completely different areas, that Indians are extremely welcoming. Everywhere we go, there is always a swagath grand, which, if you remember, was the name of our hotel in Hyderabad (South India), but it wasn’t until here in Jharkhand State (East India) that we came to find out that it meant “grand welcome.”
Our second mission was serving with the Kachhap family — Christian missionaries and Indian natives. Their entire family is involved in ministry, stemming from the patriarch of the family, Reverend Sunil Kachhap, pastor and founder of their family’s Indian nonprofit Springs of Living Water. Reverend Sunil and his sweet wife, Mary, have three children, two of which we had the pleasure of meeting. The one we spent the most time with, is their son Anmol, who speaks great English and is the voice in the video we filmed and produced. While we were here, Anmol’s Nepalese wife, Sarah, who was eight months pregnant at the time, went into labor and had a beautiful baby girl! We went to the hospital and got to hold the seven-pound miracle of life who still goes unnamed — they were certain she was going to be a boy! The entire Kachhap family, from the pastor-dad to his children’s children are all committed followers to Jesus Christ and have dedicated their lives to ministry in India. Their work is far-reaching and a wonderful testimony.
We are proud to share their story, and as always, we hope to come back to see them again.
Our first mission is complete and after our 10 days of service with Back2Back Ministries in Hyderabad, India, we already have a video to show for it! The video is embedded later on in this blog post so be sure to scroll down and watch it, or just click here to watch it on YouTube now, but we gained so much more than a video project. We deeply connected with the Back2Back staff and the children they serve. We had no idea how hard it would be to leave the 26 smiling orphans at the end of our 10-day stay. We grew to love each and every child, with different passions and stories, and we promised them that we’ll be back, which I am sure we will.
On our 16-hour flight to India, we had a lot of time on our hands — more time than others even — since our “lucky” seats were located in a small section of the plane that happened to have defective media systems (that little screen on the seat-back in front of you). What that meant for us, was that we were unable to pass the time by watching movies or listening to music stations like the happy passengers across the aisle. Another unfortunate byproduct of the broken media system was that the overhead lights would not turn on. This further limited our available options, since we couldn’t read, write or even locate our passports, at times. Furthermore, we wanted to push through our EST internal clocks, so even though we only had three hours of sleep the night before we left, we fought our desire to crash in an attempt to transition ourselves to India time. Constrained to our airplane seats in complete darkness, we resorted to listening to the only available entertainment on Cassie’s iPhone — a Tim Keller podcast downloaded right before boarding our flight, based on a recommendation by Cassie’s brother-in-law (thanks Brad!). What at first seemed like a serious inconvenience, we soon realized was a divine appointment.
You probably already know us, but we are Jordan and Cassie Timpy, a husband-and-wife professional photo and video team. We both have backgrounds in photojournalism and graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s world-renowned School of Journalism and Mass Communication. We are visual storytellers who have been working in the DC metro area, but we recently feel called to donate our skills for a greater purpose, and so we have decided to take a leap of faith this year.
We decided to do some location scouting around the Northern Virginia area for some fall portrait sessions we had scheduled and we stumbled upon a beautiful gem of a park in Annandale called Hidden Oaks Nature Center.
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Since we got married, we’ve started a tradition— we spend Labor Day weekend at Grandpa’s farm in Upstate New York.