WELCOME to a blogging series I am starting about Nepal it is called:
Earthquake: extremely loud and incredibly close
I hope that you enjoy each blog about how the earthquake, people of Nepal, Hinduism, and the aftermath of devastation has affected me. Without further ado here is..
Part One
Debrief:
Coming to Nepal was easy. We flew into Kathmandu which is a major tourist area for debrief. It felt as if we were on vacation with many adventures excursions that we could partake in. Everest is so close; you could fly to see it, trek along the base of the Himalayan mountains, bungee jumping, safaris, white water rafting. The city was ours. There were also huge markets with handmade things and vendors out hounding you to make a purchase so they could somehow support their families. “Please Miss just 120 rupees for this tiger balm. Please you name your price!” Our debrief went really smoothly, we worshiped, talked about what had happened these past couple months, and even got a team change. Meet my new team, Team Summit: Katie and Robbie Hill, Eric Larkin, Jarred McKinney, John Singson, and Christina Shore. Katie and Robbie are out only married couple on the squad and I get the pleasure of being on a team with them! Katie is super sweet, grounded in who she is both as an individual in the Lord and as a wife, and she absolutely adores scarves. Robbie is a movie buff, constantly down to play some cards, and has a huge heart to always put others before himself. Eric is a super outdoorsy adventurous person with a passion to serve Jesus and be continuously growing into a man of God with a force to be reckoned with. Jarred is really into reading…everything. He also loves to joke around, be outside, and do work for the kingdom. He has a lot of questions for God and I get the pleasure to see him work them out. John is from the Philippines. He loves music, worship, dancing, and food. Everything about food, especially making it spicy. My team leader and friend Christina is firmly rooted in being everything Christ. She tries her best to guide her life in a manner pleasing to the Lord in everything that she does while trying to guide her away from things of this world. Don’t let this fool you, she is serious about the Lord but everything else seems to be a goofy, funny story. Together we have exciting days with lots of laughing so hard your stomach hurts and tears fall from your eyes. Team Summit wants to embody reaching the summit together with one another. The summit being God’s will and picking up as many people as we continue toward the summit as possible, knowing we actually can’t reach it until we reach heaven. In an area surrounded by the most trekking options possible, we know that this is the greatest summit that we could ever achieve.
While we spent most our time just relaxing, regrouping, and contacting families with the copious amounts of wifi; we knew we owned the city at day but at night now that was owned by someone entirely wicked. As the sun went down the darkness came. The shops closed their doors starting at 7 and everything was completely closed by 9 except the bars, except the street kids begging you for food and milk but actually returning it so they could huff glue, and except the westerners who would come out buy any kind of drug you wanted too because they were on vacation and wanted to have a good time. This city was dark. It was heavy. Instead of all 54 of us permeating the city we stayed inside worshiping and praying to God for his love to reign down on it.
Kristen and I (my friend from team LOL) were taking the day to do some Christmas shopping for the loved ones at home. As we were walking through the endlessly, windy streets of the markets with never ending shops lined up one right next to the other a man approached me. He asked where we were from and I said the United States. His face lit up instantly and asked if he could walk with us and practice his English that day. I looked at Kristen and said “Sure.” I didn’t really know what to expect but I definitely didn’t expect what happened next. After walking with him for less than 5 minutes he asked us if we wanted to see some temples just outside of the markets. The city is huge so this could be quite far. I instantly thought of the movie Taken and was questioning if my dad would somehow have to turn into Liam Nelson to come save us. Which one of us would end up dead?! We were told that there were temples that were not far by basically everyone else that we have come across. I didn’t exactly have peace about this but Kristen sure did. We agreed that as long as there were lots of people around and we remained on bigger streets we would go. I know that my family reading this is already alarmed and yelling at the computer screen but they know how it ends. So we went to at least 5 temples. Some Buddhist and some Hindu.
Our guide Sonu, would worship at the Buddhist ones and explain what everything meant and why they were doing it. We would ask questions about both religions and Sonu wanted us to partake in his religion just like any other westerner would. To be honest though, there was no westerner in site it was just Nepalese people. We said that it was a privilege to watch the way him and his people would worship but we can’t do that because we only worship one God, Jesus. He just smiled and said that was okay. As the day went on we found out more about Sonu. That his family lives in the tent village because their house was ruined by the earthquake, that he believes in Karma and not really anything else, he used to be Hindu, he used to be Buddhist, he was a student at a Buddhist art center, that he was jobless and that his family was struggling to eat food. Beginning the first temple, Sonu would do the ritualistic manners ever other Buddhist believer would do. He would start spinning the peace trinkets, waiting for his prayers to be heard by Buddha when the flags would move in the wind, and blowing to candles and statues like he has done many times before. By the last temples, he didn’t do any of the rituals he stood observant like we did at the believers of his nation. Some of the temples we went to were Hindu and he told us that he was not Hindu but something had clearly changed inside him as he stood dormant watching people at the last Buddhist temple. We had to get back to a meeting for debrief so Sonu had to take us back to where he found us shopping in the streets. On the way back Sonu had asked us tons of questions of why we believe in our God. We stopped by his studio to see his artwork. Kristen bought food for his family at a shop and gave him a little New Testament Bible. We told him about the gospel of John. Told him to read it and it should answer any other questions he still had. We gave him our email and Facebook if he wanted to stay in contact with us. He stopped us and said thank you for giving him an opportunity to practice English. We looked at him and said something along the lines of: “Sonu, if you want to follow Jesus you can. He loves you and we believe that he wanted us to run into you today. Don’t feel any pressure from us to accept him but if you want to you can but you cannot worship other Gods or idols.” And he said that he wanted to have Jesus apart of his life. Right then and there in the middle of a crowded street Sonu accepted Jesus as his Lord and Savior. As he started to tear up, I will never forget the words he said next as they were extremely loud and incredibly close to what the father’s heart is:
“I just feel so much peace inside my heart right now.”
That right there ladies and gentlemen is what it looks like when someone genuinely accepts Christ and it was my honor to see it unfold. Neither Kristen nor I are responsible for anything. We were just there at the right time. His soul had been wandering for a while but now he is at peace amongst the devastation of his city. Although the earthquakes were an awful natural disaster, they have opened doors for his kingdom to come into this place. Before the earthquake, Nepal closed its borders. It would have been illegal for us to be there. The earthquake although killed many people, left them homeless, and devastated not only a nation but the entire world… it made Nepal reopen its borders for relief to come. In turn people like Convoy of Hope, like Helping Hands, like so many more and like us to come in and reign down our heavenly father’s love on this nation. This was only the first couple of days.
Continuing Thoughts:
Stay tuned for continued Parts as this was one of my most challenging months. I also am going to try something new and at each blog write prayer requests so you know what you can specifically be praying for!
Please pray for me and what my life holds after the race, pray for Sonu as it was at least 3 weeks ago that he accepted Christ, please pray for Nepal as a nation because they are hurting physically, emotionally, and most apparently spiritually. Please pray for my family as one of my family members is in the hospital. Please pray for my family as the holidays come nearer and I am not among them at the dinner table to celebrate. Please pray for endurance and perseverance as this month was very difficult and draining.
If you have anything YOU need prayer please email me at [email protected] as it is extremely important to lift one another up in prayer! I am trying to pursue a better prayer walk with the Lord.
