After our tour of the Golden Triangle, Charlie’s appendectomy, Veronica’s sickness, and ML’s exhaustion, we finally took the train to Rudrapur (a dustier version of Barstow and Bakersfield put together) for one night before driving to the Good Shepard Agricultural Mission just outside the little town of Banbasa near the Nepal border. The Good Shepard Agricultural Mission (GSAM) is an orphanage started in 1948 by Rev. Maxton Strong and his wife Shirley. Their story is an epic saga which I’ll summarize eventually, but which can be read about on their website, and perhaps in a new book by John Marshall.

In fact, we are here because of John Marshall’s book “Wide Open World” which documents his family’s six month adventures at six different volunteer sites. The one that seemed to resonate the most for him and his family was GSAM, so we too volunteered last year for the month of March 2016. And much to our happy amazement John is here too, as he’s been for several months having adopted this place and become a part of the family.

These pix show the grounds, some of the kids, John Marshall, the school, the workshop, etc…