Beauty in the Face of Hardship: Shanti’s Miracle in Nepal

LIVEdammit was created to celebrate and share tools of resilience—the practices and insights that help our writers move through trauma, loss, illness, mental health struggles, and the crushing weight of a world in chaos.

And then there are writers who, through faith, through will, through heart, brightly illuminate a path through obstacles that might sink others—and rising, they lift others with them.

Marianne Grosspietsch is one of these.

I first encountered Marianne six years ago, when she reached out to the Rev. Dr. Matthew Fox, whose Daily Meditations blog I manage. Her story of the Shanti Leprahilfe leprosy center, which she and her family and friends had founded in Kathmandu, Nepal to care for the “untouchable” poorest of the poor, has awed me from her first letter, which Matthew shared in a Daily Meditation in October 2020. She wrote:

My focus is to treasure hunt for the hidden talents in our patients and help them to become creative artists like painters, silversmiths, silk weavers, carpenters making children’s wooden toys, organic agriculturalists…rather than focus on their disease….They have to struggle for survival by begging. Therefore I am at their side to help them live in dignity: which is in beauty.

The patients—community members—are integrally involved in the operation and development of the community. She was faced

[by] so many stumbling stones by authorities… [by] my fear of the next earthquake—I survived the devastating last two unharmed—by the huge work load of rebuilding—we lost our village: school, hostel, homes… by raising all the funds to keep around 800 people going….

Rather than focusing attention on the patients’ struggle, she empowers them with a focus on their creativity and their voice in the larger issues of our world:

I want them to contribute to save our mother Earth by not wasting anything, by being creative in using scrap for useful items and also: not to think: ‘we are poor. We can’t do anything.’ Therefore I requested them to take part in the big Climate march: and they painted the most beautiful banners, took the children, went by foot or in wheelchairs. I was so very moved about their feeling as being normal citizens, demonstrating for the Future of all the world. After the march our school children were taken to our farm and planted 40 bigger fruit trees as a sign: we act!

Marianne wrote at intervals over the years to share the ongoing work and growth of the Shanti community: their survival through COVID, and her prayers for the 2020 election.

Fast-forward to 2025 and the upheavals of U.S. politics. In July 2025, Marianne wrote to Matthew:

When I heard last week that Mr. Trump‘s decision to abolish USAID entailed the incinerating of tons of emergency food, which had actually been intended to save starving children’s lives, my heart sank with despair.

But instead of collapsing into hopelessness, she doubled down on her long-held vision: to provide nutritious food for the starving children of Nepal by planting fruit trees.

In order to make sure that poor families will soon benefit from having fruit for their children, Shanti donates fruit trees above 5 feet in height to poor farmers‘ wives….The purpose of most tree plantations is normally that they should absorb CO2; retain the soil and thus avoid landslide; give shade and protection from the heat; hold water; and offer nesting places for birds that eat bugs.

[In 2024] Shanti distributed 7,600 trees, 90% of which survived. This year, 25,000 more have been ordered.

Later, in a private correspondence, I asked Marianne how she can continue, in the face of such obstacles. She responded:

My inner motor is the gratitude that I was born as a woman in the West, where I could get an education, where there is no discrimination because of my gender, where I never go hungry or cold ….I realize what a privilege it is to have drinking water  in the tap, to get medical care, eat healthy food, enjoy central heating…. being educated…

I did face hardships, who doesn’t. The most scary one was a murderous attack, when greedy people motivated more than one hundred of our co-workers by bribing them to kill us, by beating us to death with sticks and stones….Their idea was to take our centre away from the poor and to privatize it  for personal gain. (It is situated in the prime location close to the holiest temple).

Luckily, my son Heiko (only our elder son Puskal is adopted) saw the crowd running up to our office and we managed to barricade the doors until the military police came about one hour later(!) to rescue us. (The nearby police office had been bribed not to come)

We were worried about our bedridden patients in the clinic, who heard the turmoil and were scared to death that they might be attacked too. So we went and took each and every one into our arms and comforted them, by popping a candy into their mouths, reassuring them that they would not lose their “Shanti home.”

Comforting them was our saving grace. We somehow directed our own anxiety into our care for the weakest in our centre.

We then had personal security for some weeks and moved into a safe house with guards, where I still live, when I am in Kathmandu and Heiko, our technical director, stays there permanently. He is raising a small 8 year old Nepali girl who was born prematurely and has no one in the world to take care of her. We all love her dearly.

My initial impulse 33 years ago was: to give leprosy patients, who are outcasts in the Nepali society a warm, welcoming home, right in the middle of a busy neighborhood. They used to live in a ghetto, far from the city, neglected, hungry, hopeless, cold in winter, rats attacking them at night…

Today we have a beautiful centre with colorful murals, (painted by our patients) close to the holiest Vishnu Temple Pashupatinath. We regard ourselves as the Shanti Family, and whoever is able to work  despite the handicap such as missing fingers…either works in one of our therapeutical workshops or as a caretaker of seriously handicapped children (tiny orphans a few weeks young to children old enough to go to college), or as a cook in our soup kitchen, a gardener on our vegetable farm…

We run a free clinic, conduct regular healthcamps for several hundred patients on a single day and feed hungry families (1,300 individuals every evening). Our fruit tree project reaches out to the desperate poor outcasts, called Dalits, who are shunned by members of the high castes.

I so much admire how very bravely the poor overcome their hardships, how they struggle yet smile, how they celebrate with ever so little….

Founding Shanti and keeping it afloat is an uphill endeavor—maybe because the country has the highest mountains in the world. I need to raise a million Euro per year to help all our beneficiaries, quite a major task for me—and it looks that we will need much more ….

Facing the suffering of the poor—which  is increasing  day by day—is a challenge. One of my mentors is Victor Frankl the admirably wise Jewish Psychologist, who overcame the hardships of the concentration camp and termed his view as “the defiant power of the spirit” or “spiritual resilience.” I am striving to abide by this resilience.

We see the suffering of the poor, hunger is visible. What could be more encouraging and heartwarming than children being happy about a bag of traditional Nepali porridge mix, called Lito. Eight Shanti women roast grains, legumes and peanuts, grind them and we distribute hundreds of kilos of Lito every month.

Their parents have no money for footwear that fits and the children  would go hungry at night, if Shanti did not feed them.

I hope, dear Phila, I could give you an idea, why I am such a happy woman: I just feel that  my work is making a difference in this world of suffering. What a privilege to have found such a task and still being able to do it at my age of 81.

And I also need to tell you one more reason for me to be happy: Heiko and I and all the Shanti family survived the big earthquake of 7.8 Richter Scale in 2015—whereas 9,000 people died. It was quite a traumatizing experience, yet it made us sensitive to the needs of people who go through catastrophes like earthquakes, floods, landslides etc:  we have sleeping bags in stock, tarpaulins, mosquito nets, warm clothing…

Shanti can act immediately…

And all our Shanti children have started knitting warm winter caps for children in slums. I do the same.

Being creative preferably for others is to my experience a wonderful tool to overcome the darkness of one‘s own soul.

If Marianne’s story moves you as it has moved us, please consider supporting the Shanti community here HERE (US$) or HERE (€ and other currencies). Every gift helps their work continue. Thank you!