In 2015, Nepalese mountaineer Nimal Purja set out to do what many thought impossible:  scale the world's fourteen highest peaks in less than a year.  So eager was Purja to counteract the skeptics that he labeled his project Mission Possible.

    After attracting sufficient sponsorship and assembling a team of crack mountaineers (all of whom were his closest friends) to assist him, Purja set out.  Quickly, so quickly he scaled the peaks, one by one, one after the other.  His drive was astounding, his stamina superhuman:  whether it was a winter storm or tending to his mother when she was gravely ill, nothing seemed to stop him.  Soon, mountaineers all over the world were pulling for him, sending him numerous notes and texts of encouragement to keep him going.

    In slightly more than six months, Purja accomplished his goal.  It was incredible.  Most incredible perhaps was that as a Nepali man, Purja did not have access to the lucrative sponsorships to which Western mountaineers are privy.  He had to work even harder to raise the necessary funds.  Yet in the end, how appropriate it was that a Nepali set the new record.  After all, it is in the mountains in and around Nepal that these peaks are located.

    Above all, Purja demonstrated the remarkable power of the human mind and spirit to conquer almost anything.  Gifted and determined, Purja reflected the power of the one in whose image he had been made and in so doing, announcing, once again, the marvel of the intentionally fashioned human being.