Jyoti’s Birth Family

God Makes the Seemingly Impossible, Possible ~ Now for more the evidence that God can do more than we can ask or imagine!

Tuesday December 27, 2011

Today I was to meet my sister Khusbu. I wondered if she would look like me as my brothers do. I knew she lived with her husband of two years and therefore with his family as is Nepali custom. Taking a taxi (with the same driver who drove us to Dhading village - I kind of wondered what he thought about the whole situation of me finding my family) across town having to ask directions once, we drove around the Swayambhunath temple. Eventually we called my sister’s sister-in-law to ask for directions and she located our taxi, since she was in that area to buy the traditional ceremonial honoring welcome scarf. After squishing into our already crowded taxi with me, Mom and Dad, our translator and her daughter, she directed us towards her house. Through some back roads and alleys, we finally arrived to the place where my sister lives. They live in a basic two room place on a flat roof, accessed by huge steep concrete steps. My sister lives there with her husband, his sister and his mother.

When I got out of the taxi, I stood facing the car for a second, collecting myself before meeting my siblings. All of a sudden my sister came running up to me so fast she almost knocked me over! She was wailing, almost like somebody had died, her face with tears of emotion falling down her cheeks. She clung to me like I was going to disappear. Finally after quite a period of time, the younger of our two brothers reminded our sister that she should lead me up to their room.

Meeting my sister Khusbu

I could tell that everyone had tried their best to come well-dressed. Both my brothers had suit jackets on handmade by them, and their wives were also dressed very nicely in the traditional kurta which are short dresses and matching pants. My sister also dressed nicely and was wearing her wedding jewelry, and therefore I could see they had taken extra measures for our meeting.

My sister wanted to give a “tika” (a Hindu blessing of a spot placed on the forehead between the eyes) to me as a welcome, but I declined telling her I was a Christian and did not want to receive the Hindu tika mark.

L to R: My siblings: Kisan, Khusbu, me, and Visan

All my siblings and their spouses/children, my parents & me

Having met my brothers' wives, and sons (each had one) we found out that they were also Christians! Praise God! I was SO blessed, to know that they believed in Jesus as their Lord and Savior. My sister, however, did not, but I urged my brothers to continue to be a witness to her. My sister’s husband, knew some English, so my sister had dictated to him a note for me, of things she had been feeling, and things she wanted to say but couldn’t because of the language barrier. This was really touching to me, the effort they had made to reach out to me, even though we spoke different languages, and came from different cultures. My siblings then showed me pictures of their weddings, family gatherings, my brothers' children when they were little. A few more of my “mamas” (uncles) were there and to understand who was who, Dad tried to formulate a family tree. 

Relatives

 We then took many photos of every possible combination, one of my brothers had a camera, we had ours, and everybody else used their cell phones. My brothers and sister do not have internet accounts set up, but this meeting may encourage them to set up email and Skype accounts so we can stay connected. They do have cell phones which have very inexpensive rates for calls internationally (at least compared to our costs for calling from the US). We hope to stay in contact, and this will be an incentive for me to upgrade my Nepali language skills.

 Again, we learned that my brothers had not had any contact with our sister for the past  20 years, so finding them provided an opportunity for us all to meet, all planned creatively by God to reconcile a family. My sister prepared a nice dal bhat meal for us, and was pretty surprised that we couldn’t drink the water (due to untreated tap water) and gave us soda instead. My 3 year old nephew kept eating the chips off of my plate, for which I was extremely thankful because I was wondering how I’d eat it all! Then my siblings presented me with many family photos for me to keep, and again my birth father called while we were there and apologized for not being able to be there. I’m sure there must be some difficult emotions that he is experiencing over past actions, but that too is something that God is reconciling. My family, as I may have described, is from a so called low caste of tailors, but seems to be exploring and starting enterprises that provide a reasonable income. They wanted me to stay with them a couple days, which would’ve been “interesting”, but with the language and cultural barrier would have been tremendously difficult. It was of course difficult to leave, but on our way they led us to a building where an uncle had a factory in three small rooms that produced over-the-shoulder cloth purses for export to Europe. They wanted to give me one to remember them by. It was quite special to have a bag made by some of my birth-relatives, and what made it more fun was how my brother sewed on a button that had been missing right then and there. When I use that bag I will always think of the special time that I was able to have met my birth siblings and extended family.

The bag my siblings chose for me