Please Pray for the Timberlakes in Nepal

Dear friends,

The earthquake in Nepal last week has disturbed and saddened us all.  With many of our Bhutanese friends having been born or having lived for years in Nepal before coming to the United States, there is an especially deep connection for the Mission Adelante community to this tragedy.  In fact, in God's providence, Lauren Timberlake, our Bhutanese ESL director, and her family are in Nepal currently on a 10-week mission trip working with an emerging partner ministry called Beautiful Gate.

The Timberlakes are safe, but they have experienced the devastation of the earthquake first-hand and have become part of the relief effort in their own neighborhood in Kathmandu.  We have included a link to the Timberlakes' blog and the post they made just after the earthquake hit.  Please pray with us for our friends in Nepal and for the Timberlakes.

Many of you have asked if you can support the relief effort in Nepal through Mission Adelante.  If you would like to give financially, we would encourage you to do so through our partner ministry there called, The Beautiful Gate, a ministry that works with people with disabilities.  The Beautiful Gate Foundation is a 501(c)(3) organization.

written by Drew Timberlake
We had a 7.9 earthquake with epicenter 50 miles away. It was big enough here to knock us off our feet. Lauren, Ollie and I were upstairs, and Lois and Ezra were outside and started running up the stairs to find us when the tremors started. I ran to the stairwell and basically fell down the stairs to get to Lois and Ezra who were not able to stand.
I grabbed them ran outside and noticed a big dust cloud from a house that fell next to us. So I started yelling at Lauren and Ollie to get out of the house all the while trying to stay on our feet.
Everyone made it safely outside into an undeveloped plot of land in front of our house.
When the shaking finally ended (maybe 60 seconds or so) someone started yelling that people were stuck in a house that collapsed next door. I ran over there, and all I could see was a large pile of bricks and a few people climbing on them. A couple people were moving a few random bricks.
Then I saw a guy working very hard who was covered with dust… through broken communication I gathered he knew where the people were. So I started helping him… somehow his two little toddlers were stuck in the corner of the house. I got everyone off the top of the pile of bricks (so it wouldn’t collapse any further) and we were able to fish the kids out through a small little window which you can see in the pictures under the stairs. They were a little scratched up but other than that okay. One was maybe 1 year old and the other 2 or 3.
Other than that, our immediate neighbors are okay. One lady went into labor because of the trauma but they were able to get her to an ambulance. A couple other women fainted but are fine. We stayed outside with around 100 neighbors in the field for 3 hours and until most of the aftershocks subsided.
Bikash and all his family are okay. Church services were going on, which are located in an earthquake proof building that wad recently built. The worst thing that happened was a huge wall (1/4 mile at least) across the street fell down and took out cars and electrical poles. The police came and asked us to help look for reported bodies under the wall. We pulled up bricks for the better part of an hour but didn’t find any signs of anyone.
The members of the church (most are disabled and live in shoddy houses) were with them and safe. They actually just moved the church service outside and kept singing.
We’ve had many aftershocks that have been small. We walked to meet our friends at church around 3:30. Everyone here is fine. We will sleep here tonight on the floor.
There are many children staying here for medical treatment in katmandu. They are here with a parent, but the rest of their families live in villages all over Nepal. Pray they can talk to their families by phone–some have had trouble with jammed lines.
Tomorrow we will hear much more, and I will likely go with Bikash to see where we can help. Thank you for your prayers!