About 15 women have completed basic medical training in a health project run by Ringa Pachuau, a BMS World Mission worker in Nepal.
While Colin Sedgwick, a Baptist minister from London, was on his sabbatical there, they gathered at Itahari Baptist Church to receive their certificates and 'Pastor Colin' was asked to hand out the cases of medical equipment they had earned.
Here's an extract from Colin's journal:
"All the visitors are given a rosette - I saw them lovingly made yesterday. It's clear much effort and time have gone into preparing for the event. Slightly embarrassingly for me I find myself near to tears as I do the presentation - not like hard-as-nails me at all!
Somehow it is extraordinarily moving to see these women, who purely by the accident of birth, are denied virtually any opportunity of gaining qualifications or skills, receiving the reward of many months' work and study.
After I hand them their cases, they line up at the front and each is given a candle. These are lit, candle-to-candle, and all the electric lights turned out - symbolising, I take it, the aim of spreading health. It is a very moving scene, set off in the candlelight by the beautifully coloured saris the women are wearing.
You won't find Itahari on any tourist map: it's not that kind of place. But I wouldn't have missed it for anything. I have seen and learned things, which hopefully will deepen me for the rest of my life. I have met some wonderful people.
And I have seen a church functioning, both in the usual things like worship and prayer and also in the kind of service which makes a drip-by-drip impact on the lives of ordinary people.
I'm left with no doubt that, in this hot and sticky corner of Nepal, Jesus is alive and living in his Church. The Church has a future here.
All I know is that it's hard to imagine a more stimulating and rewarding time, for which I thank God and all those who made it possible".
Rev Colin Sedgwick is the minister of Lindsay Park Baptist Church, Kenton, north west London and did part of his sabbatical with BMS in Nepal in April 2007.
Click the links on the right to download the 'Sabbatical stories', the four-part series about Colin's trip that featured in the Baptist Times newspaper (www.baptisttimes.co.uk) in February/March 2008.
Click here for information about what BMS can offer to ministers on their sabbaticals.