The Mission Trek to Langtang-2017- Road to Recovery
By Stephen Lee  Aug 18-26 2017

The country of Nepal borders the mystical land of Tibet.  Stories of the Yeti,  Tibetan Lamas, and brave mountaineers,  swirl into your mind when you step foot into these pathways and trails that marked past  history and  intrigue.
尼泊爾的邊界，西藏的神秘淨土，雪人的傳說，西藏喇嘛，勇敢的登 山家，這些在你踏上過去歷史和傳說的道路同時如影隨行的進入你的腦海。

The cultures and lifestyles of both  the Nepalese and Tibetans have blended through the generations,  being neighbors  and traders for several hundreds of years.
尼泊爾人和西藏人在過去幾百年來穿越世代，比鄰而居，以及相互貿 易的原因，使得他們的文化及生活方式都融合在一起。

Our team of three, Scott Clinton (missionary to China), Joe Lai (native to Taiwan and photographer) , and myself , with our Nepalese guide , Cable, and our porter, Binod, left Kathmandu on a early Friday afternoon on Aug 18th to venture you to the region of Langtang
我們這個團隊總共有三個人，史考特 柯林頓（主要負責中國的傳教士），喬 賴（本土台灣人及攝影師），我本人，還有尼泊爾籍的嚮導 凱波，以及我們的腳夫 畢諾。在8/18禮拜五的下午離開了加德滿都帶著大家前往藍塘探險。

Our  arduous 7- hour jeep ride into the town of Syaphru Besi .  It is only 117km  by jeep to our starting point  but it is the longest 117km that we've ever seen.
我們坐了7個小時的吉普車前往Syaphrubesi。到我們健 行的起點只需要開117公里，但卻是我們所見過最長的117公里。

From here  we  began our 30 km walk,  taking a total of 49 hours of trekking in 7 days , climbing  from 1160 meters to  3870 meters.  Whew… I lost between 3-4 kilos on this trip!
從這裡我們開始了30公里的健行，7天內總共要走49公里，從1160-3870km。呼～ 在這段旅程中我迷路了3-4公里！

In 2015, the village of Langtang was completely destroyed by an avalanche that flattened the entire homes and tea houses from the earthquakes of 2015.
在2015年，藍塘村莊被地震所引起的雪崩掩蓋了所有的住家和茶屋。

Hundreds died and were unaccountable for.  Bodies forever buried beneath the rubble.
數以百計的村民死亡，並且沒有人為這件事負責。屍體永遠被埋在瓦礫堆之下。

Our attempts to go there  was to bring  some donated clothing and Bibles  to those who were still suffering and in need. But more importantly  to bring comfort and healing  to those who would receive it .
我們的目的就是將捐贈的衣服和聖經帶給那些仍在受苦受難以及需要 的人們。但更重要的是將安慰和醫治帶給那些會接受的人。

Overall we saw 40-50 people healed , 30 of them coming to receive Christ, and distributed over 500 tracts and 11 Bibles were given away and clothes being donated to the needy.
這一趟旅程的收穫就是有40-50個人被治癒，30個人接受耶穌，發出了500份福音單張，送出11本聖經，以及將衣服捐贈給需要的人。
Nepal Avalanche Carried Half the Force of an Atomic Bomb
By Ellen Barry, NY Times, Dec. 18, 2015

NEW DELHI–The avalanche that buried the popular hiking village of Langtang in Nepal this past spring struck with about half the force of an atomic bomb, according to a study published this week in the journal Science.

A strong earthquake on April 25 touched off the avalanche, sending stone, earth and snow cascading down onto the village, which was crowded with backpackers, guides and their families. About 350 people were killed, many of them foreign tourists.
The impact was equivalent to the detonation of 7.6 kilotons of TNT, the study estimated; the bomb dropped on Hiroshima in 1945 was equivalent to about 16 kilotons.

Some survivors of the disaster in Langtang have described seeing boulders the size of cars demolishing buildings or being borne aloft by a torrent of wind and snow. When the cloud settled, only one structure in the village remained standing, a house that had been tucked into the mountainside under a rocky overhang.

International search teams sifted through the debris for weeks afterward, looking for bodies or other remains, but nearly 100 people are still listed as missing.

The new study, the work of 64 scientists, concludes that a mass of ice and snow six and a half feet thick fell off a cliff and “became airborne,” plummeting more than 3,000 feet to the ground below at a final speed of about 200 feet per second.

The air blasts that accompanied the avalanche exceeded 200 miles an hour, as powerful as the deadliest tornadoes on record–enough to blow stone houses from their foundations. Among the forensic evidence available to scientists was a small forest that had been flattened by the blast of air as far as 1,300 feet up the opposite slope of the valley, according to Jeffrey S. Kargel, a glaciologist at the University of Arizona who was the lead author of the study.

“Their limbs were removed, their leaves were removed, their branches were removed–in many cases, the bark was removed,” Mr. Kargel said. “It really resembles the Hiroshima blast zone, and no wonder–the energy is of the same magnitude. It’s really horrifying.”

The study’s principal conclusion is that over all, the damage from the earthquake could have been much worse than it was. Despite the quake’s great strength–its magnitude was 7.8–it caused fewer landslides than some experts had expected, and it did not cause any of Nepal’s glacial lakes to burst out and sweep away bridges and villages with torrents of debris-filled water.

This may have been because the quake shook the ground at a low frequency, producing “comparatively gentle swaying, not the rapid ratcheting that the high frequency causes,” Mr. Kargel said.

Joseph M. Shea, a contributing author of the study, said he had often done field work in the Langtang Valley before the quake, and that he had been powerfully affected by the data about the destruction there.

“It must have been a massive wind,” said Mr. Shea, a glacier hydrologist at the International Center for Integrated Mountain Development in Kathmandu, the Nepalese capital. “It would have been horrifying for the people there. The wind would have been the first thing that basically hit them.”
This is one of many stories and testimonies that we recorded .
下面是我們錄下的其中許多故事和見證之一。
His name is Pasang, who was a Tibetan monk  from the age of 10.   He left the  monastery a few years ago and having met us,  he gladly received Jesus after being healed of a shoulder problem.
他的名字叫帕山，從10歲就是一名僧侶。幾年前他離開了修道院並且遇到了我們。在他的肩膀問題被醫治後他很開心的接受了耶穌。
More importantly,  we saw the healing of his troubled heart, and being set free from  condemnation and the confusion that beset him.  Having not lived up to the expectations of his family and friends serving as a monk a lot weighed on his shoulders.
更重要的是，我們看到他憂慮的心被醫治，並且從譴責與困惑之中被釋放。因為沒有活出他家人與朋友希望他成為一名僧侶的期待對他來說是個很大的壓力。
His family survived the 2015 earthquake but scores of his friends and other members of the community died.
他的家人在2015年的地震存活下來，但其他朋友和社區成員就沒那麼幸運了。