September 1999

Dear Friends and Family,

We are still waiting for our residential visas for Nepal. We stayed in Nepal on tourist visas for five months last year and part of this year, but still no visa was issued. So we are in the States again. We still hope to get back, but elections and other factors have caused delays.

At present we are working at the Presbyterian Center in Louisville as "Missionaries in Residence." Scott is working in recruitment with his old boss from Habitat days in Americus. Melanie is filing in the Area offices and learning more about the work that goes on around the world. We now have the chance to see the work of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) as a whole. A few things have struck us as new. First, that it really does seem to be the people in the pews who are the real bosses. Public opinion has a lot of impact, even on how and where overseas work is done. This sounds good at first, but the effect is that it has shifted the "trigger" for becoming involved in
overseas mission from being needs-based to being more donor-driven. To put it in business terms, the emphasis has changed from viewing overseas churches as our primary "clients" to giving more priority for initiating overseas efforts to local churches, and even individuals, in this country.

Secondly, the effect of a free (800) phone line and e-mail connection has been to change the workload of some staff whose main job used to be communicating overseas to spending more of the day answering questions from the States.

Thirdly, and this we can only see as positive, a new and in-depth study is in process dealing with what "partnership" means for the churches around the world. How do we, as a comparatively rich, well-educated (in a scholastic sense), and powerful church enter into partnership with churches who are, in a worldly sense, much less resourced? It reminds me of the Latin American prayer, "To those who are hungry, give bread, to those who have bread, give a hunger for justice."

I think Scott and I have that "hunger for justice," particularly for Nepal. However, we also see this hunger in efforts of various churches here in downtown Louisville. Just as groups in Surkhet learned to pressure the government to provide teachers for their local schools, we have found that some Louisville churches have banded together and insisted that a new reading curriculum be introduced into elementary schools to improve reading skills and habits. This is a result of that "hunger for justice." It is hard to work for justice alone, but churches together can work for the rights of society’s marginalized anywhere in the world, even in America!

What we will do if we don"t get our visas is something we have not been able to think about yet. Right now we are here in an apartment 23 floors up, waiting to see what happens. We hope to be back in Nepal before the new millennium, at least that is our plan.

Our new mailing address is below. Our home phone is (502) 589-0763. Scott’s office is (502) 569-5299. Thank you so much for the support you are for us.

Together in Christ’s service,

Scott and Melanie Smith