It’s almost thirty years since Joy Ransom first boarded a plane to Nepal to teach with BMS. Now, God’s called her back. She flies on Tuesday 28 August, arrives in Tansen (her new home) on Friday 31 and begins teaching on Monday 3 September – talk about hitting the ground running! The next two weeks are going to be an absolute whirlwind for Joy and she would love it if you would pray for her.

But how rude of us… first you better get acquainted.

In 1989 I went to teach missionaries’ children in a very remote place called Okhaldhunga, in the east of Nepal. There was a hospital there, a community health project, a forestry project and non-formal education. I taught the children of the missionaries who were working there.

I was there for five years, and at that time Okhaldhunga was very remote and the nearest road was six days’ walk away. We used to travel by plane, which only went twice a week, and in the monsoon it often didn’t fly at all because it was too cloudy. So it felt quite isolated. But there was a good community there as well.

It always felt like a lot of thought to leave, because you had to walk to the airstrip and that was about five hours away. So it wasn’t like you could just nip home again if the plane didn’t come. And in the monsoon it did feel quite cut-off. We had no radio, no telephone and no computer in those days, so it felt very different.

I went back to Nepal with BMS as a volunteer in 2015, and I had the chance to go back to Okhaldhunga to visit. That’s the first time I’d been back in 20 years. Now they’ve built a road and you can actually get there by jeep or bus. It’s changed the place. It was lovely to be back there.

Yes, through letters. But we only got mail when the planes came. Quite often I’d be in school with the tutorial group and we’d hear the plane overhead, and the children got very excited and so did I, because we’d think ‘oh yay, the plane’s come today, we might get mail from home.’ But some letters took three months to get to us.

It was monsoon time and I needed to leave the project because it was the holidays and I’d just been in the village for such a long time. So a friend of mine, Florence (who was in her 60s), and I decided that we would walk out. There were no planes, because it was the middle of the monsoon. So we set out with a porter.

The first few days were fine, but then when we got further south the rivers were huge, and we ended up walking through flooded rivers really, full of grit and sand. Florence nearly got washed away – and the porter literally saved her life by helping her. Reaching out to her, holding her up, and then taking her across the river.

When we eventually got to the road, we still had a 12-hour bus journey to get to Kathmandu.

When I left in 1996 I felt that God had still got a work for me to do in Nepal. I had just adopted my daughter Bethany, and she was six months old when we came to the UK. I thought maybe she and I would live in the UK for a few years, and then when she was old enough, we would go back. But that didn’t happen. And although I kept asking God, ‘is it time to go back?’, it wasn’t.

But then three years ago, Bethany was at university and so I applied to go as a volunteer. I thought I’d go for a year just to see what it’s like, because, having been there 20 years ago, I knew the country would have changed, but also I would have changed. So I thought it would be a good chance to see if there’s still a role for somebody like me, and if that was really what God wanted me to do.

I built up relationships in the community and found that my Nepali language came back, and I felt very comfortable in Nepali church. So I felt like that was confirmation that I should explore the possibility of going back longer term. And maybe God did have a plan for me in Nepal.

For the first year I am going back to Tansen, to the same place and same role that I had three years ago. The teacher who took over from me has to go back to the US for a year, so they have a need for a teacher.

After that year, I am hopefully going to work with KISC EQUIP [the Kathmandu International Study Centre’s Education Quality Improvement Programme] doing some teacher training or mentoring of teachers in local Nepali schools in Lamjung, with Simon and Wendy Hall.

This year I also have to complete my Master’s degree, because to get a visa in Nepal you need to have a Master’s. That’s what I’ve been working on this last year, but I still have the dissertation to write in Tansen.

Yes. I love Nepal. I love the people.

Meeting people again. The people that I made friends with last time. I used to walk every day along the same path from my house to where I worked at the school and there were lots of people who sat along the path, and we would chat every day. That was really nice.

Apart from family… I’ll miss having a bath.

Yes! I believe that mission is a partnership, and although I get the opportunity to go to Nepal and hopefully have some skills and experiences that mean I can be useful there, it’s not just me going off on my own. It’s definitely the Church who are supporting me and sending me. We’re doing this together. And if I can pray for people here and they can pray for me then hopefully everything will be more effective.

Family photographs and mosquito repellent!

Please pray that in the next few weeks I get to know the children quickly, and their families. Pray too that I can support them and find out what their needs are. I feel the role of teaching the children of missionaries involves supporting the families too, because often parents feel guilty about taking their children away from their family and culture and peer support.

Pray also that I can make a good start on the study for my Master’s dissertation, that I can choose a really good subject. And that with the internet and the time difference, I can still catch up with my tutor back here in Scotland.

Settling in basically and making a good start.