From

#Part One

#Everest

##Chapter One

Just outside of Namche Bazaar, Nepal

present day

Sunita was breathing hard.

Not good. The air up here made one light-headed. Nepal had eight of the world’s ten tallest mountain peaks, but right now, Sunita’s thoughts were a lot higher.

“Oh jesus!” she cried, as she kept moving along the narrow path. “Save me! Save me!”

Near breathless, she repeated it in her heart rather than out loud.

If the Maoist Army caught up with her, she could be executed for being an American spy. She should know. She used to be a Lance Corporal in the army. As for being an American spy, her only crime was to have been caught reading a Christian pamphlet that one of her fellow officers had given her.

It told the story of a man who had lived and then died … and then lived again. She had read it through several times. The little pamphlet had now been lost in flight. Which was a shame because she would have liked to know more.

At least there was one person she knew who could tell her more.

But her immediate objective was to survive.

“On, Jesus!” she cried. It was more of a whisper. “Save me!”

Joliet, Illinois

present day

“With awesome deeds you answer us with righteousness, God our salvation, the hope of all the ends of the earth and of the farthest seas.” Chris surveyed his congregation. The knew this scripture by heart. It was his signature scripture. “Who by his power formed the mountains and being armed with strength …”

There, now they could all relax. His sermon had included a reference to mountain. He continued reading Psalm 65, but even his own mind was wandering.

As a self-centred, outspoken 25-year-old, he had climbed Mount Everest.

Unfortunately, he wasn’t the first person to do so, and even though the achievement was commendable compared to what most people did in their lifetimes, he wasn’t exactly overwhelmed with offers from cereal companies to feature his face on their boxes of wheatie squares.

But a local church had approached him.

Would he be interested in sharing his experience with their youth group? No scripture references necessary. The youth pastor would have a few things to say about God and mountains and then Chris could go ahead and speak about Everest.

For lack of anything better to do, he had accepted.

That had been ten years ago. Since then, he had worked his way up from becoming a part-time assistant youth pastor, to a full-time assistant youth pastor, to a full-time youth pastor, and now, to a full-time assistant pastor.

And it was only a matter of time before he was the pastor.

Everyone thought of it as Chris’s church. He always made sure to include a scriptural reference to mountains, an admonition to scale seemingly impossible problems with perseverance, and a few anecdotes about his own climb (granted, he often had to adjust them slightly to suit the message). In fact, out on the signboard of the community church was a mountain peak beside its name. That had been added when he had built up the youth program from an apathetic twenty teenagers to an enthusiastic two hundred, or so.

But it had become increasingly challenging to handle the youth group. They were easily inspired. They wanted to climb mountains. The greatest difficulty for Chris was to take it from the abstract to the concrete. Climb what mountain? He had never come up with a good answer. He had found it easier to talk to the adults. The adults, he found, didn’t want to climb any mountains. Metaphorically, the seemed more inclined to seek out a bypass, to find the path of least exertion.

“The kid want to mission trip,” said Danny, comming into Chris’s office and sitting down. “All the big churches do it and we’ve got the youth for it.”

Chris nodded, only half-listening. He was scrolling through his emails.

Danny, the pastor, was an energetic man in his mid-fifties. He made no secret of the fact that his heart was with missions. In fact, that was why Chris was so sure that he would be the pastor in short time. Danny would probably turn into a full-time missionary in the near future. Chris wouldn’t be surprised if he was just using the kids as an excuse for a trip to Bolivia, or some other mission field that he would lead them to.

“We’re thinking of Nepal,” said Danny.

“Nepal?” Now Danny had Chris’s attention. “It’s not exactly friendly to the gospel.”

“That’s why the kids want to do it,” said Danny. “A group of them approached me and said they think it’s what God wants them to do.”

In his head, Chris disagreed. They had heard him speak more than once about his experience climbing Everest. Everest was in Nepal. It wasn’t God. It was just a natural outcome of being part of a church that made a mountain its logo.

“Well,” said Chris, his eyes straying back to his computer screen; despite that most of the emails were spam. “All the best to them. I take it Randy will lead them.”

Randy was the youth pastor, an enthusiastic man in his late twenties, recently married.

Danny shook his head.

“Susan just found out she’s pregnant.” Susan was Randy’s new wife. “He won’t be going anywhere for a while. Besides, the kids want you to lead it.” Chris’s eyes widened. Danny grinned. “I think some of them are hoping you’ll lead them on a little side trip up Everest.”

“That would be easier than a mission trip,” said Chris. “I don’t know much about the place. I mean, I spent more time in base camp than I did in Kathmandu, but I remember a lot of temples and prayer wheels and things. And guys going around in colourful robes and there were these poles people put up with scarves on them. One of the guides told me the were prayers and the wind blew the requests up to heaven. Or something like that. To be honest, I didn’t really pay attention.”

“I’ve been doing a little reading on the topic, ever since the kids came to me,” said Danny. “From what I understand, the real difficulty is the Maoist army that runs the country. They came to power in 2008 and promised to establish a democratic republic. The country is predominantly Hindu, but the prayer wheels that you saw would have been part of the failth of the country’s Buddhist minority, about 10%, as I recall. In any case, the Christians there face opposition from all sides.”

“Sounds fun,” said Chris grimly. “You avoid all that if you just go to climb the mountains.”

Danny nodded.

“I haven’t told the kis this, but evangelism there is seriously frowned on. If the indigenous people do it, they could be fined or imprisoned. If foreigners do it, it’s less severe, eviction from the country. But I think if some of the parents go online and start looking into it, they’ll never let their kids out sof the country.”

Chris was relieved.

This mission trip wouldn’t get off the ground.